Hello! So, Oz Comic Con kinda sneaked up on me this year! Luckily, I had a pretty strong idea of who I wanted to cosplay as - Bee, from Bee and Puppycat!
Unlike some other cartoon characters, Bee has quite a few different outfits. I decided to go for her trademark yellow bee embellished top and pink skirt because I prefer wearing skirts to shorts and didn't have the time to create one of her more intensive outfits!
It's technically Autumn in Australia right now, but it's still very warm so I decided that a t-shirt would be a more sensible choice than a jumper. When I do a cosplay, I usually write a list of things that I will buy, things I will make, and things I already have. Yellow t-shirt was on the "to buy" list, but I couldn't find one anywhere!
So instead I brought a white t-shirt and dyed it using the Procion fabric dyes my mum handed down to me. My dyeing skills are somewhat basic and the t-shirt is not a perfectly flat colour, but it was good enough for the day!
The bee applique on my top is crocheted, using a great pattern by Twinkie Chan. I had all the right colours to make it in my stash and it was quick and easy to make. I attached it to my top with a safety pin because I think I will wear it as a badge until I revisit this cosplay.
The wig was probably my least favourite part of this cosplay because it was a tiny bit small for my head so I felt kinda constricted! Maybe it will stretch out after a couple of wears though? Other than that, it is actually a pretty good wig, especially considering it was (yet another) cheap purchase from eBay. A couple of people were actually surprised it was a wig, thinking it was my real hair!
I got my Puppycat from Perth Supanova last year, but I also saw them for sale at Oz Comic Con and they are also available at We Love Fine and, I'm sure, various other online stores.
I didn't have any luck finding pink shoes, so I wore my black Doc Marten Mary-jane's instead. I found some cute white socks with scalloped edges in Target; they are made of a thin stocking type material so were not too bad for wearing on a hot day!
The skirt was the hero of this cosplay, and I was very happy with how it turned out! I already had a pattern for a circle skirt cut out from my mermaid costume so I re-used that but, since I was using a cotton fabric with not much stretch, I also wanted to add a zip. Zips are seriously the bane of my existence, but I did manage to insert one successfully ... after a couple of goes! ~___^ I hemmed the skirt following this method by Colette although I'm pretty sure I managed to slightly singe the skirt while doing so, so I'm not sure if I'll use this method in the future.
I didn't really follow a tutorial for the patch pockets, but I did find a post on patch pockets by Itch to Stitch which was very useful. I made the pocket bows using my hair bow tutorial and pattern and safety pinned them on. I decided against sewing them on because I thought that if I had to wash this skirt, it would be better to be able to remove the bows beforehand.
I always like to have a bag when I'm cosplaying so I used some of the leftover fabric from the skirt bows to make a small tote bag. I applique a felt eggplant on the bag, since aubergines seem to turn up quite a bit on Bee and Puppycat!
I used pink ribbon for the handles simply because I had some which was the right colour in my stash. I was worried that they were going to snap during the day, but they held up well!
I saw this replica of Bee's sword at one of the stalls on the day and decided it needed to come home with me. It was pretty funny though because as I was looking at it, some of the other merch was blocking me mostly from view of the stallholder so he said to me, "Oh, have you ever seen Bee and Puppycat?" I moved around slightly so he could see my costume and the Puppycat under my arm and said, "I think I've heard of that ..." ~___^ He was a good sport and we had a bit of a laugh about it and as I took it away he called out "don't forget - use the sword as a sword!"
Great advice, merch guy!
- Lisa xx
