The Sailor Moon girls I had done the Final Fantasy Sailor Moon mashup the year before had such a good time that we decided to try for another big group at New York Comic Con again! A lot of ideas were tossed around, but once it came down to a vote, we decided we wanted to do something that would allow for a lot of creative freedom, and thus the Steampunk Senshi group was born. A lot of the girls designed their costumes themselves, but I already had a vision of what Steampunk Sailor Mars would look like, thanks to art done by my dear soul-sister Hime-chan years prior. The OPIB girls have her designs on our "To Do" lists already, why not treat this as an opportunity to do a beta version?

And, because I figured having this commissioned from head to toe would be prohibitively expensive, I decided to try to piecemeal it myself. I found the goggles on Etsy from a seller named Discombobulous, who threw in a free pair of green lenses that can be swapped out, so, you know, maybe future cosplay possibilities. The tiara, earrings, resin heart for my front bow, and the little cogs on the top of my garter straps were all made by Patti & Steph. The blouse came from Milanoo, and as luck would have it the bow was already detachable when I bought it, which was helpful for dyeing. I bought the belts from Belt.com, but even though I bought two brown suede belts at the same time, they somehow came in different shades. I found the pocket watch on eBay; it was a little smaller than I was anticipating, but really works, which was a bonus. I found a faux leather corset on Epic World Store, and even though I searched for and found a wine red faux leather skirt on eBay, and a pair of wine red suede boots at Aldo, none of the three shades exactly match. The brown suede gloves come from Medieval Collectibles, and are a bit darker than I would have liked, but at least they matched one of the belts. The two rings Mars wears on her right hand came from eBay again. I knew I could neither find nor make the perfect back bow, so Rae (the Moon in our group this year) agreed to make one for me.

With all that, there was one piece I didn't want to buy from anybody--the purple bustle fabric Mars wears around her hips. I really wanted it to match the front bow perfectly. So, I figured, I will buy the fabric myself, cut it, finish the edges, and dye it myself, and dye the front bow at the same time. Easy enough, right? I have to tell you, I felt like a "real cosplayer" for the first time, shopping for fabric in the Fashion District of midtown Manhattan. The size of the fabric daunted me--I knew it would take forever if I tried to hem it by hand, so I brought it along to my grandfather's house and used a sewing machine (that my grandmother had bought in 1958 and still works--the Singer brand is no joke) for the first time in I want to say 24 years. This was the first costume piece I ever machine-sewed for myself and I am disproportionately proud of it. And after all that? The bow must be made of a VASTLY different material, because while the fabric came out the exact shade of purple I wanted, the bow, in the same dye bath, somehow came out a weird pink. Oh well. One of the reasons we chose to do steampunk was because things don't *have* to be perfect; the aesthetic is very much about "making do".

If I wear this again (and I do hope to wear it again with my OPIB girls) I have a laundry list of things I want to fix. Longer, matching belts. Maybe lighter gloves. Putting the Mars Arrow on the pocketwatch. I *definitely* want to try using spray dye to make the front bow darker, and maybe try to make the boots match better as well. But, I mean, other than that though! At least the accessories Steph and Patti made me are 100% perfect.