Captain's Blog, Star Date: whateverthefuck: C2E2 2014 Cosplay

C2E2 is the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo. Every year since 2010 C2E2 has been at the McCormick Place each spring. The year it opened we went and I cosplayed as Poison Ivy. My brother Bo went as Old Gregg from The Mighty Boosh. We are by no means professional cosplayers, and more than likely never will be. We love to go to these conventions to nerd out and throw back a few beers, not to get into heated competitions. Our costumes are like creative odes to the characters we enjoy. We love to make people laugh, and my brother often causes a scene at the convention halls screaming lines from The Mighty Boosh like, "I'm Old Gregg, I got a man-gina!" The patrons love him so much we often find ourselves waiting at the outskirts of the convention for him to catch back up with us.

Any who, my boyfriend Stan has a pretty awesome Batman costume that he wants to wear to the con this year, so I am working on revamping the Poison Ivy costume I made a little over four years ago to complement his outfit. I thought it would be a nice tip of the hat to the Hush comics in which Poison Ivy takes over Superman with her pheromones and havoc ensues. There is a piece of cover art for the comic where Poison Ivy has Batman and Catwoman caught in her vines that looks awesome. I'm hoping our rendition will do it justice.

I made the costume by taking a corset and attaching and layering faux leaves in a consistent pattern across the entire thing. I then took white gloves and shorts and dyed them a forest green, as I could not find a matching color in stores or online. I am still trying to figure out the best way to do the shorts, if any of you have a good idea for attaching leaves onto my butt without them falling off please let me know in the comment section below! (Dammit Jim, I'm a nerd, not a seamstress!)

The boots were my first excursion into the wide world of spray painting almost everything you can imagine. I had an old pair of scuffed up go go boots that I spray painted the same forest green color that I had dyed everything else. They looked great until I wore them a couple of times, and then the spray paint started to crack off at the flex points of the boot. Not good! I later found out that there is actually a spray paint you can get for leather and car upholstery. I ended up using this spray paint to make boots for my Rogue costume, but in the mean time, with this costume, I decided to buy a cheap pair of boots I found on clearance at a Rue 21 and attach leaves to them in the same way I had done the corset. They are coming out pretty awesome, and are also way more comfortable than the go go boots because they don't have a heel. Heels are death and they are not functional. Flat soles are where its at.

I don't have any pictures from how I made the corset, because, honestly, at the time I didn't think I'd end up getting so into this (haha) but I do have an in between pic of the boots I'm working on now. I also plan on posting steps for all of our other costume trials and tribulations as they come up. Hopefully they'll either help someone out with their costume issues, or give someone a good laugh. Either way, that works for me.