Otakon 2012- Sakura and Nadeshiko cosplay

Thank you to the wonderful Photo Suite at Otakon for these beautiful pictures!

Series: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles (CLAMP)
Characters: Princess Sakura and Queen Nadeshiko
Cosplayers: Me as Sakura, my mom as Nadeshiko
Reference pictures: Sakura, Nadeshiko



Costume details:
These outfits and props were made from scratch by me and my mom. The main fabric is a white sateen cotton. The black, red, and purple are satin, and the gold may have been satin tafetta, but I don't really remember.

Almost all the black edging and tiny gold trim is handmade bias tape. (So many hours!!) Some of the trim also used Heat-n-bond to help stick it in place before sewing. After sewing it down, it's finished with a tiny, dense zigzag stitch to look like embroidery.

Sakura's outfit consists of a raglan top, gypsy pants, a sort of circle skirt and front flap attached to the black waistband, shoes, bracelets, feather, wig, a choker necklace, and a headband. I also made the matching shawl, which isn't shown in these pictures.

Nadeshiko's outfit is a petticoat, a white circle skirt with purple trim, a long-sleeve dress with a cut-out piece in the front bottom, then a cropped short-sleeve jacket, the staff, choker necklace, shoes, wig, and hair chain.

The pink and red gems are resin. For the pink, we used a slightly shiny pink eyeshadow. The red is the ink from a regular BIC ballpoint pen, then were backed with foil. The pink resin turned out opaque but the red is more translucent.

The gold coins on the trim were all hand sewn individually by my mom! (Thank you so much!) They were two sizes of gold paillettes, and were attached using small gold beads on the outfits and gold jump rings on the chain hairpiece.

The wigs are from cosplay.com's site. Sakura's is the Scruffy wig in classic orange, and Nadeshiko's is the long Holly wig in black. For Sakura, I also bought wefts in the same color to make the ahoge and curls. [here is the wonderful ahoge tutorial I used!]

I made my shoes using the soles from a moccasin kit. I made the fabric pieces in the shape and size to fit my feet and then sewed it to the leather of the sole (I felt bad for my sewing machine. And even worse for myself when I had to hand sew a lot of it.) My mom's shoes are fabric covered store bought canvas shoes.

The staff is made of wood and plaster, sanded and shaped over many layers. Finally, it was painted with gold and silver paint.

My bracelets are regular plastic (which meant the paint didn't hold well) bangles spray painted gold. My feather is a regular white craft feather painted with red and pink acrylic paint using a fine paintbrush.

Phew! I hope that explains mostly what we did. It was an incredible amount of work, but entirely worth it.

Find the other photos from this shoot here!


Thanks for looking!　♡＾▽＾♡