Bee and Puppycat Cosplay

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

Making a 70s macrame owl look pretty again

 I really like owls and vintage stuff and cool things for my house. So when my mum happened across two smelly, old, woolen owls in a bin outside an op-shop, she grabbed them for me. She took them off the sticks they were threaded onto, popped them into a plastic bag, and then flew interstate with them. (She was coming back from interstate, she didn't make a special owl-bringing trip, btw)

Here they are! Fabulous, aren't they? When I opened that plastic bag, they STUNK! But, I felt that they had potential. First, I washed them. An important first step! I actually soaked them in a potent mixture of nappy-san and washing powder for a day. That made them a bit more palatable. But, they were still ugly colours. I don't know if the photo really captures that. The brown/orange one looks pretty similar, but the white one was actually more of a was white, now is stained yellow one. So, it was time for some dying! I brought some washing machine dye from Spotlight. Brown/orange was to be black, and "white" was to be red.

I did the orange/brown one first. I filled up the machine, put in the dye and vinegar, and dropped the owl in. The cycle was set for half and hour. When it finished, I opened the top of the washing machine, and there was brown/orange owl. Not dyed and also *dry*, looking up at me like, "You think you can defeat brown/orange owl!? NEVER! NEVER I SAY!". I seriously don't know what that owl is made of. Some creepy '70s fabric is my official guess.

So, then I tried "white" owl. I used red dye. Same thing, machine, dye, owl. When I came back, "white" owl was gone and in its place was ...

PINK OWL?! 

I can't win at dying. Still, it is fluffy and clean, and quite a nice shade of pink. So, I threaded it onto two blue vintage knitting needles, trimmed its tail and fluffy eye parts, and hung it up. Against our original '70s wooden door (I don't actually know that, but our house does *look* very seventies ... brown bricks, feature wall of brick, dark brown wooden staircase ... so I just assuming that the door is. Maybe someone in the '90s was like, "you know what? The '70s was awesome. I'm going to make an ugly house that looks like the worst decorating ideas of the '70s!" You never know.) it looks quite good.

So, I kinda failed. But, now we have a pink owl. And can that ever *really* be a fail? I don't think so ~_^

- Lisa