Game on!

I don't generally make costumes for everygame wear.  Instead I like to reserve grand costumes for grand events like conventions.  Part of what drew me to gaming in the first place was the ability to wear fantastic clothes, and I don't mean that in the stylish sense.  The opportunity to create unique looks for each character was very exciting to me.  While it is certainly not the only reason I game I still love designing and creating costumes, and my skills have only improved because of it.

I joined in 2007 and later that year attended my first ICC.  It was in Nashville, TN and I was playing Katherine my, at the time, Ventrue Crone.  Unfortunately not many pictures of this dress exist so this is all you get.  Sad I know.  It was a red halter dress with a low cut back.  I based it on a dress from the Kusheil series.  I also had a rose drawn on my back (sadly no picture of it exists). 

And now we will skip to last year because I don't have any more pictures from my beginning times in MES. 







This bra was made for my original costume design for Anat.  Which consisted of this, snake patterned silky wrap pants and a red belt.  I also wore the top for Grand Masquerade 2010, but there are currently no pictures of the full thing.  I know they exist because I posed for a lot of them but none ever made their way back to me :(  But!  I plan to wear it again for this years Not-so-Grande Swell Masquerade in Atlanta so hopefully there will be pics in the future!

For Anat I began to base costumes off of paintings of Cleopatra.  So I will post the painting as well as the finished costume.

 Obviously the top couldn't be exactly as it was in the painting.  That would be inappropriate <.<

It's hard to see the slits in the skirt from the way that I'm standing but I was really pleased with the shape of the belt.  I still need to find a badass collar though.






For this next one there are no actual pictures of me in the whole outfit.  But I mismatched the pieces at various other conventions so you'll have to use your imagination.  Hey, we pretend to be vampires right?  How hard can it be?

taken by Seraphina

These skirts + this scale bra =

Tada!  Not quite as close to the painting as I had hoped but it's meant to be based off of and not an exact replica.  Also my torso is no where near that long.  I thought the top turned out great and the skirts are multi-functional.  This was the outfit I wore for Grand Masquerade 2011.  I also danced in the white skirt from the costume above and the scale bra on one of the nights as well.  It was a smokin' combo.  I also paired the first coin bra with the blue and red skirts for the second night of XX con (first night was the courtesan dress).

Now for my most successfully executed costume ever!  This dress was completely designed in my head.  I saw a picture of a lace dress in a magazine (it was just the back and the front was actually velvet) and thus the idea was born.  It may also be my most daring dress to date.  Unfortunately there's only one picture and it's not great.  There was one that was taken in the hallway but I lost the card of the guy who took it and I don't know where it ended up.  As a side note I would like to get some photos done is several of these costumes of a more professional variety.

Anyway, the dress...
What you can't see is that the back buttons all the way up with little red buttons.  It was epic.  I need to wear it again *sagenod*