Spring and summer bring convention season into full swing for me. And I have been busy.
As many of you may have seen, I built an Arcade Sona in a week’s time to wear for BaseLAN 29.5. This is on top of my normal day job. Quickly following that was a little over a week to put together a cosplay of Amber from the movie Suckerpunch in time for the Manitoba Airshow.
And there’s no time for breaks now. In another week, I will be heading South to Austin, Texas for RTX (Rooster Teeth Expo) with a brand new cosplay in tow. The newest addition to my cosplay closet is Arcade Miss Fortune and it is taking me to new places where I can learn skills I’ve never dealt with before.
Pleats! Here’s somethin
g I never thought I’ve have to learn. All things considered, even though the fabric I chose for her skirt was not the most cooperative as it is not stiff, nor can you really iron folds into it, a lot of patience and methodical processing make quick work of this step.
I managed to complete the skirt in about five hours of work. However, an iconic detail for Arcade Miss Fortune is the checkerboard pattern plastered across her skirt. I knew I didn’t want to just paint it as this would cause the skirt to become very stiff, the fabric to lack its stretch, and create contrasting textures that, I felt, would cheapen the look.
I recalled a while back, during one of my many craft-supply shopping trips, a product which would tint and dye fabric without flaking or stiffening. I found a few reviews of it online and it sounded like exactly what would help make this pattern a piece of cake.
Allow me to introduce you to Design Master’s TintIT! This stuff is magical. It comes in a full-size rattle can, similar to what you’d expect to find as a spray paint.
It’s a gradually building tint, meaning you can do the slightest hue on whatever material you have (fabric, paper, wood, fresh flowers, you name it) or you can layer it over itself to build up more of a saturated colour. You get quite a lot of product in this can, it goes a long way, and it dries very fast.
Once I masked up my skirt by painstakingly cutting dozens of squares out of masking tape, I was able to get the contrast I wanted and try on the finished skirt in an hour. You can see in the picture to the left all the squares I had cut.
I have to be honest: peeling these little babies off was more satisfying than peeling the protective film off of new electronics — and my skirt still feels like a skirt. It’s a little bit stiffer where the dye is, however it still feels and moves like fabric and there’s no visible texture difference.
And voila! The finished product all completed thanks to patient pleat-making and the magic that is TintIT. If you’re working on your own cosplay projects that need unique patterns or logos on them and you have the patience to mask off what you don’t want dyed, I’d give TintIT a try.
And here’s an obligatory wig test for Arcade Miss Fortune as a teaser for the finished product. Keep your eyes open for next week which will be my only other progress update before the cosplay gets its debut at RTX.
I wish I could say Design Master compensated me for this review, but I bought it after reading other reviews online, loved the results, and just had to share it with you in case it might spur ideas for your own cosplay projects.
… I wonder how it would work on a wig?
J. Tanooki is a Contributor for aybonline.com. She has been a lover of cosplay for over 10 years and regularly works on new and exciting cosplay projects. She actively posts about her cosplay plans, progress, and random shenanigans on her Facebook page, Twitter, and Instagram. Her opinion is her own.
