Otakon 2016

Hello everyone! Sorry for the late post but Otakon was not too long ago and here is our account of another fantastic weekend. Before the con, things were looking kinda grim. We had a nice hotel across the street from the convention center with all our friends for a pretty reasonable price, however a lot of people were last minute canceling due to personal reasons, Lilitare included, which left only Kuritare, Rintare and RUDEBOY. However this did mean a lot of extra space for those three!
Our line up was a little less uniform this time around because Kuritare no longer does Love Live crossplays. The first day was Rintare as Rin's Unidolized Marine and Kuritare as Djinn Equip Alibaba. We started the morning at Kuritare's house still and arrived around noon where we ate at Ekiben. It was delicious!

Kuritare featured on @ekibenbaltimore instagram!

After arriving at our hotel RUDEBOY and Rintare went to the GoodSmile booth to pick up some exclusive nendroids. Unfortunately the FightClub Mako figure ran out as soon as they arrived!! After perusing the dealers room we went to the Boku No Hero photoshoot hosted by our beautiful friend Aprile (@1paprile on instagram!). Her Bakugou was amazing! Afterward we just hit the game room and met up with Aprile and Lois (@yourfavoritedaddy on instagram) so that RUDEBOY could photograph their One Punch Man cosplays!

We had a very Hectic Saturday morning...Lilitare miraculously made it but had so much to do for her cosplay. We cosplayed Sakura, Hana, and Tsubaki from Fire Emblem Fates. This also included Kuritare because he had collabed with Lilitare and was waiting on his final piece. Kuritare and Lilitare's cosplays weren't as great as expected but we plan to work on it more to make a truly wonderful trio. Rintare worked hard and diligently on her cosplay and it shows! She is absolutely beautiful as Hana. This time around we hit up the artist alley and got some great prints! It was over 100 degrees this day so photos were tough but we managed to avoid time in the sun as much as possible and got some great photos from RUDEBOY. (Check more out on our instagram!).

Sunday was much more relaxing, but still extremely hot! The girls were part of a wonderful full Love Live Marine group where they got some really awesome photos on the harbor by the boat. Kuritare was rocking his Kimono Yato from Noragami...honestly a poor choice to stand out in the heat with but still had lots of fun! That was the rest of the day and we all winded down at Temari Cafe to conclude an awesome weekend.

How to Add Details To Worbla (Without Using More Worbla)

Please refer to this video on some basics on Worbla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZl65FRUZnw

She makes adding the detail seem so easy...unless you're like me and suck with molding materials like clay.

Here I will tell you how I achieved the ridges/trim on the edges (and this could be applied to any kind of worbla detail) without using extra worbla.

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So you'll notice in the video she actually tells you to use a double layer of worbla to make the trim, but thats a lot of worbla! So instead lets use craft foam, its way cheaper!

Materials:
-Craft foam (I'm using 4mm thick) ~ $0.90 per  12in (30.48cm) x 18in (45.72cm) sheet
-Thermal Plastic (I'm using black worbla) ~ $86 per 39.25in (100cm) x 59in (150cm) sheet
-Sharp X-acto or Utility Knife
-Contact Cement
-Heat Gun

Step 1: Cut out your base shape as well as the trim detail

NOTE: KEEP THE CUT OUT SECTION!

Piece that came out of detail

Step 2: (carefully) glue the detail to the base piece

Apply glue

Place detail onto base

Step 3: Cover with Worbla and apply heat until it sags over the foam and is moldable

Step 4: Pushes edges down to get that embossed detail

Use a tool, your fingers, or a piece of soft material (I use a piece of scrap foam) to push the outer edges down.

Now this is when you put that cut-out piece to work. It just so happens to fit exactly into the empty space! (Not exactly though, don't force it too much) What this also helps is avoids those harsh push marks from something like your nails or a credit card because the foam will slowly mold into a round shape.

You should get something like...

Beautiful isn't it?

Step 5: Trim off the excess worbla, according to the video above

Step 6: Use the heat gun again to mold the shape you want.

And you'll notice it maintains that beautiful detail you masterfully placed!

This doesn't only apply to line trims, here you can see I cut in little circular details with the same method

Of course you can stack it as high as you want, this will require you to stretch the worbla more though, so a little more might be safer. Just be mindful that its a flat piece of foam though, so you might want to modify some of the edges flush to the design you want. This can be achieved with cutting bevels or sanding.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below. Hope this helps!

Colossalcon 2016

Hi guys! It's been awhile, but we're here to share our awesome trip to Colossalcon 2016 in Sandusky, Ohio!

Last year when we went to Colossalcon everything was so new to us... we didn't even know how to get to the pool!! This year we definitely had a better idea of our surroundings. We probably also consumed about triple the amount of Blue Rhinos we drank last year ^-^; This time around we stayed quite far from the Kalahari resort where the convention is held. We stayed in a cute cabin at Cedar Point with a dozen of our friends. Even though it was a bit of a drive, it was a lot of fun being a little "family" for the weekend! We had a lot of fun cosplays for this con that we can't wait to share with everyone, so keep on reading!

We set out for Ohio super early on Thursday (3 am!) and arrived at Cedar Point somewhere around 11 am. We spent the afternoon in Cedar Point and rode roller coasters all day! It was definitely worth heading out so early. Afterwards, we settled into our cabin and had dinner at Danny Boy's, our fave Italian restaurant in Sandusky! Of course we had some cosplay crunching to do that night, but it was well worth it.

Friday was the day we wore our Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash (Hai to Gensou no Grimgar) cosplays! We steadily worked on these outfits and weapons for about a month. With school and work going on for us, we really had to squeeze some cosplay into every free moment we had. Kuritare was Haruhiro, Lilitare was Shihoru, and Rintare was Yume. They were our favorite characters and we felt that they fit us pretty well! Kuritare worked hard on all of our weapons and his hard work definitely showed! All of us felt super proud of what we made because we could see a big visual improvement over time. Our friend Andrew (aka RUDEBOY) was nice enough to be our photographer for the whole weekend, and he got some awesome shots!

On Saturday, Lilitare and Rintare split up from Kuritare. Lili and Rin were invited to be part of a couple Love Live groups, so Kuri decided to take on a Alibaba Djinn equipped cosplay from Magi! In the AM, Lili and Rin were part of a Love Live mermaid group. We had a blast shooting pictures on the beach at Cedar point even though there were some decaying fish on the shore... at least the sand and water made for some good shots! Everyone in the group was super nice and we had a lot of fun together. The sun burns were well worth it!! A special thank you to Aprile for being the mom of the group who put it all together. It couldn't have happened without you! Our precious Kyo senpai was also our second photographer for this shoot. Thank you gorgeous senpai ♥! Lilitare and Rintare were also fortunate enough to be part of another Love Live group! In the afternoon, they joined a few other girls for a small Love Live marine group. Lili and Rin adore that costume very much! It's just so cute :') We were glad to see old friends make so many new friends through Love Live cosplays! Kuri's Alibaba cosplay also turned out great! It was our first time working with the thermal plastic, Thibra. It was a fun challenge that yielded some nice results! Kuri used it for his shin guards and bracers. At night we played in the game room for...too long and then got home to pack up to leave early-ish on Sunday.

For Sunday, we decided to do some Fire Emblem Summer Scramble DLC cosplays to sort of preface some future Fire Emblem Fates cosplays we wanted to do! Lilitare decided to be Sakura. Rintare and Kuritare chose to be Hana and Tsubaki as her retainers! It was a cute and quick cosplay. We were glad we did it and it was easy to change out of to head home. 

The drive home was long, but we made it back safely. Shout out to our fun cabin family for hanging out and having a blast with us during the weekend! We love you!

Now we just have to somehow get over this lingering con depression!

Katsucon 2016

Hey everyone!! Tare is back after a long period of being busy with our personal lives...sorry for the lack of posts, but we're glad you guys stuck around! Also, hello to all of our new friends!
Katsucon was a lot of fun for us as usual, but we did have some ups and downs along the way :( !!
All three of us worked extra hard on our new Fire Emblem Awakening cosplays and we really dropped the ball on sharing our progress pictures, but we'll get to sharing posts about our cosplays individually, soon!
All of us were pretty stressed out leading up to the con. We even dropped one of our cosplans because we just didn't have enough time :'( Unfortunately, Lilitare had a family emergency right before the con and couldn't make it, but she still worked really hard on her cosplay and hopes to share it with everyone as soon as she can! Katsu felt incomplete without her ;___;
Friday we arrived at the con at about 10am and got in line for our passes. We checked out the artist alley and dealer's room briefly and then moved all of our crap from the car to the room. We did a thorough sweep through of the dealer's room and kept tabs on things we wanted to buy! We actually went back to buy things on Saturday, but nothing we wanted was left!! (I wanted a shiba and banana plushie!!! -R). We checked out the maid cafe. Our maid was Meiko and she made Rintare's first maid cafe experience magical~~~ Kuritare was unfortunately done for the day at around 5pm after an encounter with his best friend, alcohol. On Friday night our fabulous Kyo senpai treated us to a homemade Korean food feast ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ Good times with good friends!

Met up with Aozora and other Love Live friends!

     

Saturday was a big day for us, the debut of our Fire Emblem Awakening cosplays! It took us soo long to get ready x_x We woke up at 8 and weren't out of the room until 11! A huge thanks to our friend Same-san for taking our pictures with his fancy new camera! We can't wait for you guys to see all of our pictures! This was of course the fire alarm day and we spent most of our time in costume outside in the freezing cold!! Rintare had a hard time walking around with the knee armor and Kuritare had a fun time doing his sword hand motion to people. We missed the Fire Emblem meet up too :(( At night, we did some BakaProof work and interviewed our good friend Terumi. She gave us all Boo (the pomeranian) valentines, so sweet!

   

On Sunday we winded down a little and got into much more comfortable love live tracksuit + skirt combo. We mostly spent the day with friends, finalizing purchases in dealers and artists' alley. Kuritare realized he was having too much fun and needed more footage for his video so he split off with Same-San to get more for a while. We were able to watch μnite's performance, after missing their debut at AUSA! They did a great job and we can't wait to see more from them! We ended the day by going to a cheap Chinese restaurant with our friends from far away. We can't wait for our next con and we hope that we can have all three Tares together again!

With Risa Chan!

A big shout out to all of our friends who hung out with us, old and new!

Check out our friend Kimeeji and her awesome buster swords group!

So you’re doing your first cosplay… - Rintare

You might be feeling self-conscious or scared about doing your first cosplay… It’s a big step to enter the world of cosplay and it can be a scary step to take! Luckily for you, there is so much out there for you to learn from. There tons and tons of blogs, videos, tutorials, and other cosplay community members out there just waiting to help you out! You are most definitely not going into it alone!

In my opinion, the most important thing about cosplay is exuding confidence!!! Even if you’re feeling uneasy now, when it’s the day of the convention, or photoshoot, or whatever it is, you better be the shining pinnacle of confidence! Confidence is key! I know it’s been said many times over, but if you are feeling self-conscious and down about yourself, it will show! After all, you should have nothing to feel bad about if you’ve done all this hard work slaving away for your cosplay. Even if you didn’t make your own cosplay, have confidence in the effort you put into hair, makeup, and whatever else you spent 3 hours watching YouTube videos for. Be proud!

Another way I think we cosplayers can exude confidence is by becoming the character! Do not let the costume wear YOU! You are that character for the day, so be freed from your concerns. On the day of the event (convention, photoshoot, etc.) make sure you are the best you can be! Your hair and makeup is on POINT! Your costume fits you like a glove and there isn’t a wrinkle in sight! If your cosplay has some flaws…rock it with confidence!!

Here are some more specific tips I think may help!

Costume

• Gather references of your character/outfit. A lot!!
•    Regardless of whether it’s bought or made, make sure it fits you and flatters your body shape!
•  Make alterations where needed! Shorten a skirt, hem some pants, pull in a shirt, do what it takes to get the perfect fit!
•  Remember…we are not cartoon characters with stick thin arms and legs with mile long torsos! 
• As you’re planning out a cosplay expect to run into some proportion issues. Just adjust accordingly.
• Don’t bite off more than you can chew! You should have adequate time and resources for the cosplay you want to do.

Hair

•  It can be hard to match colors and styles for your character. Just do the best you can and sometimes that means putting a wig in your cart and praying it’s the right color!
• Wig hair is not real hair and it needs to be treated as such! Learn everything you can about what you’re trying to accomplish. Even if you’re just trimming, make sure your cutting technique is the right one.
•  Hairspray is your friend.

Makeup

• Look at references or look to other cosplayers whose makeup you really like!
• PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!!! There is nothing better to do!
• Watch tons of videos! Technique is very important!
• Don’t think you can get away with cheapy makeup, spend the money where it needs to be spent so your makeup doesn’t melt off of your face!
• If someone else is doing your makeup, ask them to tell you about their process and why they’re doing whatever step they’re doing.

In short, take the time to learn your craft and the time you put into it will be the result you get out of it. You should always be learning and learning and learning and then MORE LEARNING!! Learn how to be the best you can be and then GET BETTER!! Be confident in what you’re doing! Radiate dat confidence and go out there and slaaay!!

Thank you for reading!

Super Easy Kotori Hair Loop Quick Tutorial (Love Live)

Hey everyone! This is Rintare with a reaalllyy quick tutorial on how to do Kotori's (Love Live) hair loop. I know a lot of people have trouble with this, so I just wanted to share my own take on it. I hope you find this helpful!

Here's the finished loop! Read on to see what I did!

So for starters, the Kotori wig I purchased came with a small ponytail clip to attach to the wig. I know not all wigs come like this, so sorry if this tutorial doesn't apply to you! The wig I purchased was from aliexpress: here

First, take out the ponytail clip, brush it out, make sure it's all nice, yadda yadda!

Next, take a small section of hair from the top layer of the ponytail. You want to make sure you're not taking too much hair or else you will begin to see the netting underneath. I took about an inch or so wide of a section.

Third, begin forming your loop by flipping this section of hair forward (so it's in front of the teeth of the clip)! Here's a side view of that:

Fourth, go ahead and clamp that section with the clip! You can clamp so the loop is a little smaller and pull the hair up to your desired length. Spread the hair out at the top so it looks loopy!

Next, you might want to secure the loop with a hair tie so it stays! (I didn't do that yet because I plan on fixing up my whole wig later on). Somewhere around where my thumb is should be perfect!

Finally, HAIRSPRAY IT. Use the best hairspray you can find! The kind that freezes the hair in place. I find that Pantene Pro-V 24 Hour Volume Hairspray works well for me. A lot of people are a fan of got2b freeze spray as well.

Tada! All ready to be attached to your wig base.

You are now ready to clip your ponytail clip and loop onto the main wig base. Be careful not to let your loops fall out of the teeth in the process! I clip it onto a section of hair that I gathered previously. On the wig base, it's basically a side-half-ponytail and I just clip right over where I tied that section. Here's a reference that may help:

I also find that many wigs are styled so that Kotori's loop is also what makes her ahoge (the little tuft of hair on top of her head). I don't think this is the case after thoroughly researching it for myself! To style the ahoge I just grabbed a little piece of hair from the top of the wig and teased it. I hope this tutorial was clear, easy, and helpful!! Have fun styling, little birds!

Tare Spotlight: Risa Chan

Risa Chan

Meet Risa Chan! Watch out for this duo danger cutie! Cosplay AND photography! She is one of our friends from way back. Lilitare was the first to meet Risa through a mutual friend at school during her pre-Tare days. They ran into each other at a few cons and their friendship bloomed from there! Kuritare met Risa at Katsucon 2014, and Rintare met her at Otakon 2014. Risa, with all of her cosplay wisdom, showed us the ropes! Senpai ¦D

Here's Risa with Lili and Shifty as Miss Fortune, Caitlyn, and Ezreal at Otakon 2013 

After Otakon 2014, Tare became closer and closer to Risa. We hung out often at cons and always had tons of fun! Our most recent cons were Otakon 2015 and AUSA 2015 where we spent a lot of time free loading in her room...and hanging out with her :))) She is always a ball of fun and we love partying together!! A big shout out to Risa for picking us up from the metro station to go eat KBBQ together...that's REAL LOVE!!

Tare and Risa from AUSA 2015!

We planned on doing a Shokugeki no Soma group with her, but unfortunately, only Kuri could be part of the group :( We also want to cosplay Love Live together in the future! We hope to make more fun memories with her, but we fear for having to stop for people to take pictures of her every 5 seconds! Yes, we know she is beautiful, but can we go eat now???

Risa Chan as Nidalee from League of Legends
Photo by: Kyoplay

Risa Chan as Iron Woman (original costume)
Photo by: vicissijuice

Check out Risa Chan on all of her social media:
Facebook
Photography Facebook

Anime USA 2015 - Lilitare

Hi everyone!

Lilitare here! With my first post (haha oops).

Well we just finished up our one year TareTareTare anniversary with the end of Anime USA!
I wanted to write something about this convention before I forgot everything that happened (since that's kind of what happened to my Otakon post).

First off, it's a bummer some of our cosplay plans fell through due to some shipping errors. But it did give us another chance to revisit our Danmachi cosplays and our once-worn Mogyutto outfits.

Friday was a relaxed and slow starting day, since most of the programming didn't start until mid afternoon. We got ready and took the metro to the convention hotel. Upon arriving, we met up with some friends and then stood in line for our passes. It was nice being in Danmachi, since Kuritare and I had upped our costumes a bit since Otakon! Hopefully the slight improvement shows in our photos haha;;

Anyways, walking around the convention was neat. It was kind of hard taking photos of other cool cosplayers as Hestia though... That was the downside of my Danmachi cosplay. :c Oh well! It was still nice since we got to catch up with a lot of cosfriends who usually live far from us. We also passed out Halloween candy to new people and old friends we met!
Programming wise, we didn't end up going to a lot of panels, but we did visit the burlesque at the end of the day. ; ) We also visited the dealers, artists, and game room at lot. We were very sad that all the rhythm games were gone this year! We were really looking forward to them! ; n ;

For dinner we were recommended to try Medaterra! It had great prices on drinks, burgers, and wings! I ordered a pizza though haha. We had a blast there and ended up going again on Saturday!

On Saturday we decided to wear our Mogyutto outfits from Love Live since the meet up was scheduled for this day. We arrived a bit late and even got a bit lost at first... But we did get to see Yashafluff for a bit! She's a huge sweetie pie and even recognized Rintare and Kuritare from their Danmachi outfits from yesterday (; A ; it was when I was away so I missed this).

Anyways, we ended up finding the meet up and met some cute Love Livers too bad I was a bit too shy! Shout out to Aozora Cosplay though! You hosted a nice meet up, and you're so sweet as always! = w = / I also met this super cute Hanayo cosplayer that was dressed as the Halloween UR card! It's one of my top favorites, so I kind of flipped out haha. Luckily I was able to get some pictures with her and hopefully didn't spook her with my enthusiasm too much! Overall it was fun meet up, but unfortunately we had to speed off again to meet up with some of our other friends. :c

 

After meeting and catching up with some friends, we walked around with Shifty Studios while he took some sick cosplay video shots. We saw so many talented cosplayers! Hopefully Shifty Studios' video will be out sometime soon! ;) Be on the look out! We will post some AUSA pics on our facebook in the meanwhile.

Anyways, we did try to go to the maid cafe to request the lovely Terumi Hanabi! Unfortunately she was resting due to her losing her voice and the maid cafe had to close an hour early. ;___; /
We did meet some really nice maids who were Love Live fans that chatted with us for a bit! Thank you for that. u w u

After the failed maid cafe attempt, we went to grab an early dinner at Medaterra again. I ordered their Veggie Penne Pasta, and it was pretty good. We ate early in hopes of seeing the masquerade (that we found out Terumi would be a judge in!), but by the time we got there (45 minutes late;; ), it was already over... We did get to see the prize winners though, so that was nice. c:

The rest of the night was just chilling with friends and visiting the game room again. It was hard coordinating to play Rock Band with our friends, but it somehow worked out once! And playing Just Dance with friends is always fun. After playing until about 2 am, we decided it was time to head back to the metro.

Sunday was very short for me! I was only at the convention for an hour, and so I decided to just wear normal clothes! Kuritare and our friends were part of a Shokugeki no Soma group. It was also Rintare's photography debut! We met up with a few friends to say good bye, and then the Tare^3 squad sang Kaguya no Shiro de Odoritai like giant goofballs. All in all, it was a pretty good way to end the convention. Hopefully everyone else's Anime USA was good too!

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I just want to thank Kuritare and Rintare for sticking with my cosplay shenanigans for a year. Love you guys! ♥