Costumes

For a convention, movie premier, or just Halloween, these Harry Potter costumes can be made at home, free of charge.
Harry Potter Costume Tutorials:

How-To Harry Potter Costume	How-To Ron Weasley Costume	How-To Hermione Costume	How-To Draco Malfoy Costume
How-to Lucius Malfoy Costume	How-To Death Eater Costume	How-To Voldemort Costume	How-to Severus Snape Costume
How-To Luna Lovegood Costume

Mang’Azur is a French Japanese Culture festival. Here are some cosplay pics from the 2008 Mang’Azur by Styleb:

Princess Daisy Cosplay

Sailor Moon Cosplay

Photos by Criss! fromLucca cosplay, 2008.

Today I wanted to post some discount costume shops that are offering deals during the off-season:

4 Discount Costumes- These costumes have been knocked down a few bucks here and there. What I liked about this site is that the pet costumes were discounted as well.

Costume Craze -Deluxe Batman and Spiderman costumes, with about 100 bucks knocked off the price of some of the adult deluxe costumes. This one is worth checking out with sale prices of around %25 off retail.

Import Costumes -Order $85.00 worth of goods and the shipping is free.

 All Costumes -Huge 50% off costume sale. I’d check this one out first for kids costumes.

Costumes for Less -These are apparently on sale,but I’m not seeing the original price listed on some of the items. The upside is that they also have props on sale.

Crazy About Costumes -This site is hard to navigate and I’m not so sure that the costumes are at a discount.

You can make Hannah Montana costumes at home using just a few simple elements. I suggest pairing a gold or yellow tank top with flared jeans, then wear a thick sequined belt in a crooked style at the hips. For shoes, try a pair of tall boots or gold heels.

The Hannah Montana Accessories kit includes the bracelets, belt, headband and earrings you’ll need for this costume. They are also fun to make.

If you don’t have some of these elements hanging around, you can opt to buy a Hannah Montana costume.

There are a few different types, including the Red Jacket Hannah Montana Costume, Hannah Montana with Gold Jacket Costume, and the Blue Hannah with Shrug and Wig Child Costume Child.

More How-To Costumes

 Today I wanted to show some images and video of Sailor Jupiter cosplay costumes. Some of these are the best, and some have been included to show you what won’t work.

This video is just a short walk-on of a decent Sailor Jupiter costume at Anime North in 2004. I wanted to include this one so that you can see what happens when you don’t pay close attention to the sleeves on a Sailor Senshi uniform. The sleeves need to have a puff to them, or they will end up looking like wrinkly holes.

This cosplay of Sailor Jupiter by yuzuru shows the seam that cuts across the chest on your typical senshi uniform. This seam is critical to making the costume look like a senshi uniform, and not a dance leotard. Be sure to find a nice emerald color, avoiding forest greens and lime greens.

I can’t figure out why, but it’s hard to find a high-quality video of PGSM on You Tube. Here is a good one, which shows Jupiter’s transformation sequence.

Sephiroth is one of the more romantic of the video game baddies. To cosplay Sephiroth, it takes a kind of quiet dignity…there’s nothing worse than someone acting like a goofball in a Sephiroth costume. Here are some examples of good Sephiroth cosplay.

This is a good slide show of some of the best Sephiroth cosplay costumes that I have seen to date. These come from a variety of conventions and photo shoots.

Sephiroth cosplay skit at Supanova Sydney in 2005.

Have you seen any good Sephiroth cosplay?

Sailor Venus is the senshi of love, and her fans are more than eager to portray her long blonde locks and orange skirt. Here are some examples of Sailor venus cosplay to get your started on your own Venus cosplay costume.

Eternal Sailor Venus at AWA 2007. This one looks like she used knee-high socks, and her uniform is a little too much like a dancer’s leotard. The skirt looks nice, though.

Check out these photos of some of the best Sailor Venus costume I’ve found so far at Cosplay.com:

• Sailor Venus from PGSM
• Super S Sailor Venus 
• Princess Venus 
• Another PGSM Venus 
• Another Princess Venus 

Have you seen some really good Sailor Venus cosplay?

I have been a fan of M. Alice LeGrow’s Bizenghast series for a long time, since before the first novel came out, if you can believe it. I started looking at her work on DeviantArt before TokyoPop published the series. A unique aspect of M. Alice is that she is also a seamstress and creates cosplay costumes for her own characters. I went out on a search for some Bizenghast material to help with your own Bizenghast cosplay:

This is the official TokyoPop Bizenghast music video. I would use this as a guide to some of the tones and costumes of Bizenghast. If you’ve never read Bizenghast, this is a good introduction.

This is a Dinah cosplay at JaCon 2007.

Here is another Dinah, this time with less bones.

Another, less impressive boney Dinah from Ohayocon 2007.

Finally, here is a cosplay skit featuring Dinah at Anime Expo in 2006. Have you ever done a Bizenghast Dinah cosplay?

Well, you’ve probably seen some cosplay over the years that is downright ugly, wrong or just plain awkward. Add scary to the list, because ‘kigurumi’ cosplay is becoming more and more popular in America. Kigurumi cosplay is when someone wears a strange mask to accompany their cosplay costume, turning them into a kind of walking doll.

I think that the masks used in kigurumi take the personal element out of cosplay, covering the cosplayers face and taking the fan out of the equation. It gives anime fans too much of a cult-like enthusiasm for the cartoon..imagine 20 years form now, whole conventions of kigurumi cosplayers.

What do you think about Kigurumi?