Fun Fact:

• I am completely incompetent at gloves.

When constructing these:

I hot glued them to my hands via the fingernails.

Pr0 tip:

• If you hot glue gloves to your hands via the fingernails, soak your hands, gloves and all, in lukewarm water for a couple of minutes. Despite certain misled opinions, most glue doesn’t stick particularly well to human tissue (except for maybe spirit gum but fuck that shit).

And the gloves for this costume?

During a moment of sheer brilliance I decided to paint them while wearing them. Then realised that any attempts to take them off prior to the paint drying completely would result in a huge painty mess and was stuck like that for hours.

So, naturally, instead of just boycotting gloves from all future projects I arrived at the truly profound conclusion that it would be far better an idea to make a pair of cosplay “armsocks” out of stockings.

What could possibly go wrong?!

Let’s call it “trial and error” and pretend I learned from the experience.
_{(LOL, jks! We both know I didn’t learn shit.)}

On Tuesday I completely mangled not one, but two pairs of perfectly good stockings. The first I tried to hand sew which, given, some people have great success with. I am not one of those people. It ended up stitched directly onto my skin. Except for the parts where it was fused to my skin via nail polish.
_{… Mostly both…
… At the same time…
… And that was just the left hand!}

Then I sort of gave up because it was shredding and laddering faster than I could nail-polish it (don’t ask).

For the second attempt I made a cardboard template of my hand and sewed around it by machine. This was hugely successful!
_{… Right up to the point where I tried to put my hand inside before nail-polishing it and the whole thing self destructed.}

So yesterday I packed a bagful of determination alongside a pair of 80 denier light grey stockings and hoped like hell that whole “third time lucky” saying was true.

The cardboard template is a trace of my hand, which was neatened up some.

The stockings were pulled inside-out and the template placed inside the toe end. I then machine sewed around it very carefully, trimmed the excess and painted both sides of the seams generously with clear nail polish (nail polish, once dry, stops the stockings from laddering, some craft stores sell a specifically designed product which does the same thing, but, y’know, I didn’t have any of that so $3 clear nail polish it was).

Once the nail polish was dry I pulled out the cardboard. In some places it was sewn quite thoroughly into the glove, so to fix that I just soaked it in water and pulled out the disintegrated cardboard with tweezers. Then pulled them the right way out and put them on in order to coat the outside of the seam with even more nail polish.
_{Overkill or not, I’d rather be safe than sorry after Tuesday’s shenanigans.}

After both hands were done a hole was cut in the crotch for the head to go through. Like a top, yo!

Again, the raw edge was coated generously with clear nail polish and also overlocked, just in case.

_{Don’t talk to me.}

The legs become the sleeves and it finishes just under the chest. If it wasn’t so see through it could almost be a legitimate top?!

A dart needed to be taken out of the wrists as tights are made for legs so can tend to come across as rather baggy and shapeless on arms.

Then, as per tradition, I painted myself into the bastards (using acrylic paints mixed with something calling itself “textile medium”). But I swear it’s only because if you leave them to dry when not wearing them they tend to shrink out of shape as it dries- and that would make me a sad panda.

Lastly, fingernails (which were picked up from a junky dollar store because I am literally the cheapest cosplayer you know)…

_{Q: What looks creepy and mangled without my hands inside it?
A: YOUR MUM! These bastards.}

The nails were painted with red and yellow nail polish prior to being attached (along with a decent quality base and top coat in attempt to minimise chipping).

Did I adhere to custom and sufficiently affix them to my hands via the nails? Oho, don’t you know a lady never asks and a gentleman never tells?
_{Wait… did I get that backwards? Seriously though; I totally did. Glue them to my hands. It hurt. The glue was hot. Be careful not to mangle the nails with the hotness of the glue.}

The armsocks will likely be used for my Homestuck and Maggot boy costumes (for Owen the armsocks would be worn with the fingerless gloves over them), since I’d kind of like to wear those to conventions. Face painting is one thing but after much thought and deliberation it seemed like it would be very cumbersome to have makeup on my hands. It would likely rub off on anything/everything/everyone I touched, thus needing to be constantly reapplied and potentially smudging onto other people’s costumes/merchandise.

_{They’re on the clothing/costume/craft page in the gallery.}

POTENTIAL CRISIS AVERTED! POSITIVE RESULT!
_{Washing my hands with these things on, under layers of costume, will be a whole other dilemma.}

Yesterday also happened to be Thursday. Do you know what that means?

That means the second page of Separation Anxiety has gone up! It is the cover for the prologue. Actual story pages will commence next Thursday (the 11th of July).

But right now? Right now I’m going back to the safety of costume binging. It’s like binge drinking but without the hangover (and arguably more embarrassing… like, a lot more embarrassing).

In fact I recently had to accept just how bad the costuming has gotten. You know that dream where you’re naked in public and it’s utterly humiliating? I often have naked dreams where the nudity is completely irrelevant and nobody notices despite the fact that I’m the only sans-clad one (maybe it’s because I have no genitalia in my dreams? But that’s a discussion for another day). On the other hand, if I have a dream where I’m at a convention and realise there is something wrong with my costume? Utterly humiliating! And I always have those dreams during costume binges.
_{[/priorities]}