Firecracker Jinx Cosplay

It's funny how I look nothing like Jinx, but it was fun making the costume!  

I think last time I made a costume was back in high school, so it has been a while.

Without a doubt, many mistakes were had... Also it looks like I even forgot to iron the costume after pulling allnighter. RIP me.

 

At the lobby of Riot Games, under Firecracker Jinx splash art login screen.

Much fun was had with the coworkers at Riot. We take fun seriously!

Also yes I worked the whole day in this outfit, going to meetings and painting splash art.

Making of Firecracker Jinx : Dress

Awesome splash art done by my coworker, Jason Chan. Such a delightful image!

So having to rush the whole process with only few days left while working full time, I opted in for purchasing a Chinese qipao dress and modifying it instead of making it from scratch. I also could not find any embroidered red Chinese clothe that I liked, this was my best bet to 1) make it quickly and 2) enhance the quality of the dress. Quality of clothe is VERY important for the finished product, such as thickness, texture, sheen and embroidery. This is what makes a costume look like an wearable garment, or just a one-time use costume. I never skimp on when it comes to fabric.

Being an avid Amazon customer, I found this mini chinese dress on Amazon.

My leg is shiny because I am wearing a ballet stocking. I bought it back in High school for Dead or Alive Kasumi cosplay to hide my underwear, glad I kept it!

 First thing I did was to shorten the skirt to match Jinx's dress, and also making the burnt area.

 

 Not the most obvious detail from in game angle, but it's a nice little touch!

Bottom left corner is where Jinx burnt off her dress and then used candle to make the edges burnt. 

I had some chain that I have sewn into the bottom seams of the skirt. 

Why? Because this skirt is soooo short and I need to wear this to work tomorrow somehow! Also it is October, I'm sure there would be a breeze or two that could flip the skirt up. The skirt is already so short and revealing, I needed some kind of insurance. And it worked! 10/10 would recommend.

I started to hand sew the gold trims everywhere. Warning, this process was the most tedious & painful among the whole process of making this dress because leather was so thick! Thimble would help a bit with the pain but sometimes the thread just couldn't make it and would break off. I wish I had the right needle and thread, or a powerful sewing machine that goes through leather.

Small gems were the ones I got from Michaels, but I wanted some decently sized and heavy gem for the neck brooch, so I took out my old broken bracelet and cut it off with a nipper. Conveniently has a clasp on that side, too!

Close up on the neck area. I am pretty diligent when it comes to hand sewing. However I never want to do this part again, not with that thick leather trim that is all over the dress... *cries*

Added the gold ribbon details!

Checking the dress length with stockings and waist belt.
Red stocking was found in Amazon as well. A proud Prime member.

Now I measure my waist and make the belt. Purple goes on top of green, and I wanted the purple fabric to have some body and structure, so I am putting some thicker quilt fabric inside.

With more gold trims and hidden hooks and buttons, the belt is ready to go!

One thing that I did was to attach a leather thing around the waist to act as a gun holder. I added a little ring so it can hold things!

Making of Firecracker Jinx : Flower, hair piece and gloves

  
Now let's see how the rest was made!

I found this pretty fake flower at Michael's. It's pretty big! I was certain that I would make the flower rather large, than small already; with your focus on your face/head, white contrasting and black hair and green bang will grab a lot of attention! Also I made sure to get a good quality flower for this purpose because this is going to be next to your face. You can see I used scissors to shape the petals to my liking, because it was a bit bulky in some areas.

I also noticed that the bottom green area was pushing the flower up, shaping up nicely. However I wanted the petal to fall a bit more so I ended up cutting a bit of the flower green base. Now hot glue a hair clip and you are done.



Now, moving to Jinx's long pigtails!

I got some ropes from Orchard's. I looked for something thick enough but also light enough, because these are going to be pretty long and I need it to stay on my head for an entire day.
I tied the end with wire ties and scorched the end a bit with lighter, melting it slightly so it doesn't' unravel too much.

This is a bang/side hair wig that I got few years ago, and never used it again because I decided to cut my bangs, instead of keeping "goddess hair" as we Koreans call it (bang-less long hair). I'm going to repurpose this wig for this costume!

Carefully cut the "scalp" fabric, trying not to cut the hair. Man, black hair wig looks so creepy.

Using gluegun and wire, firmly attach the hair on the rope. It is quite easy to do this thanks to the "scalp" fabric on the wig!

 I'm using a bit of plastic sheet to give some cylindrical shape around where the hair attaches to the rope.

Later I decided that I wanted it to be thicker, and added the string rope that I used for making the Zapper.

Now I'm sewing red clothe onto the rope. Stitches can be sparse, but make sure you sew the fabric and the rope together so the fabric stays where it should be!

Here is the finished hair piece, with gold trim hot-glued in and wig hair clip sewn onto the rope for attaching to my hair.





Now let's make the gloves!

 Gloves were super easy. I got some fabric and measured a triangle-like shape with wrist part added, and sew them.

I always roll the edges in when sewing to 1) prevent unraveling and to 2) give a bit of firmness along the edge and 3) gives a nice finish. I wish I could get an overlock machine in future, but one can dream.

 I got this interesting golden flat rope from fabric store. Not sure what it is used for originally but I liked the amount of detail it had. One downfall was that all these needs to be hand-stitched, because I didn't want to use hot glue on a wearable costume, and there was no way that I would be able to keep it clean with a mess. I made a little loop in the end so my middle finger can go through.

 

Gold faux leather trim also needed to be hand stitched. It's thick and hurt my fingers a lot even with a thimble.

I glued a gem I got from Michael's on the back of the hand. For the glue I was using this one:

I wouldn't want to use hotglue on fabric unless emergency, so I used the one above. AFAIK it is quite toxic so do not inhale the fume or leave it in your room when it cures (~24hours)! I left it outside so that my pet rats would be safe. Their respiratory system is fragile like the birds.

Also don't forget to make the boots cover using the same fabric! I made mine in the last minute and didn't take any photos of work in progress, but it is basically the same as the gloves in a different shape.






Now lastly I will continue to talk about the dress itself on the next post.

Making of Firecracker Jinx : Zap

This is a post I meant to write nearly a year ago. 

Finally with this blog made, I would like to share my experience making this cosplay so you can get something out of it for your own costume-making journey!

2015 October 25th, I started making the cosplay for Halloween. Super last minute! Ayoo. Also I haven't made/dressed up for cosplay for a couple of years at this point, being so busy with irl things such as work.

Anyways despite working on League of Legends for over a year at this point, I still haven't done any cosplay related to League. Feeling ashamed, I thought that this skin was a great low-scope to make in few days.

 

 Beautiful model made by my coworker, Minoh Kim.

Well, I had to ditch minigun and rocket, but then how will I hold my drink anyways? ...right?

Jinx without weapon is not really Jinx, I decided to at leaaast make the Zap, her W ability.

Spoiler, finished pic!

This is the base I used for my gun. Water gun I got from an event, which was never used and hiding in my closet for this day. Also I will be able to shoot water from it, if I make the modification correctly!

 This part doesn't matter if you don't need it to shoot water, or your gun has the perfect silhouette, but for me I had to cut out the unnecessary part and seal it off waterproof. I believe I used epoxy and plastic water bottle cap to seal it completely.

Because I wanted to make this frugal way, I cut up this water bottle to make a cylinder. I'm also a huge fan of recycling, so I repurpose for my DIY projects whenever I can.

With use of tape I can make the ghetto plastic sheet into a cylinder. Red line is where I made a cut so that I can slide the cylinder in with the water tank hidden inside.

You can also see that I already started to papermache around the gun to start shaping the gun. Hindsight, I forgot to seal the cracks of the water gun with some kind of silicon or so --- this being a really cheap water gun, it started leaking little by little in the future. But past me was in a rush, esp because I didn't think I had enough time to dry papermache if I didn't rush the process. 

Here you can see I use extra plastic sheet to make a silhouette for the gun. Given how I'm building this over a watergun, it is not going to look 100% like the original, but I'm trying my best with the given option. on top of this sheet I will continue to cover up with papermache.

Here you see the back part sealed with plastic cap, and the shape is sorta there.

Here I got some carving foam from craft store to make the tip of the firecracker. I wanted to find the isopink which I'm familiar with, but I couldn't find it at Blick. This one sheds so much dust and can be pressed down easily, so I didn't really like it. Once you carve and sand the form of the tip, cover it with papermache.

Add the tip you made to the plastic cylinder you made previously! You can see that I flaired out the bottom of the cylinder for the silhouette, and also added TP roll in the middle to give that subtle bevel of the spiral look. Recycling is cheap and environment-friendly, just be creative!

This is how it looks when you slide in the cylinder to the gun. I made sure that I can easily slide the cylinder in and out because I wanted to be able to refill the water tank for the water gun.

Pusheen totally judging my flimsy looking Zapper. Hang on there, Pusheen.

Once I finished the layers of paper mache for the silhouette of the gun, you will have sooo many wrinkles created by papers. If you would sand them with sandpaper it would take a looong time. No worries, we can address it later.Here I designed on an elegant shapes of bevels using a thick rope string and glue gun.

Then this is where wood filler comes in. I never used wood filler before, but wow this is such a handy material! Dries fast, lightweight when dry, super easy to sand, with an okay durability. Once you have smeared it with love, sand it down to perfection.

Pusheen approves.

Assembled. Now coat it well with gesso and dry it before going to painting.

Painting applied! I used Acrylic paint for it. I had a thin layer of gold paint over green so it has a nice shimmer, and some fake shadow like 3d model texture would paint in AO shadow. The green rope has a thin wire twisted into it to shape it into forms, and burnt the tip a bit to look like firework.

Next, I will be writing about the costume itself.