Cosplay | Marine Nozomi
I'm very excited to share one of my newest costumes, the "marine" version of Nozomi from Love Live! This was completed over the course of three months for Connecticon 2016.
Click under the cut for a full walkthrough (with photos!) on how I made this costume:
Costume Details
HAT: I bought this hat on Amazon as a base. To make the patches I painted some craft foam – first red, then added gold details. I used a brown marker to add shading and stuck on some black gems. The ribbon “flowers” are just strips of ribbon folded into many loops and sewed together in the middle.
JACKET: I used Simplicity 1759 as my pattern. It’s not lined and I followed the pattern pretty closely...I used the largest pattern size as I wanted the jacket to be oversized. THe only alterations were chopping about a foot off and taking about 6" total off the front area (since it didn't need to button closed).
DRESS: This was surprisingly challenging to make. In order for the dress to be fitted, but still have panels, I used an existing bodice pattern that already had “panels” in the correct spots. Using muslin, this took 2 tries to get the right fit. Then, I traced the pieces onto wrapping paper and “extended” them down, taking into account waist and hip curves. If you have pattern-drafting skills, this may have been easier but for me it was a lot of cutting, sewing, altering the pattern, and sewing again. I made this fully lined. The red “scarf” is hand-tacked to the bodice and I added the red bottom portion last as one piece.The problem with this dress was the lining I think…in the end, I just wasn’t happy with it. So I went and bought slightly different fabric (I ended up using the wrong side of “special occasion satin”) and made it again, with no lining and a back zip instead of a side zip. Much better! I used puff paint to write out “School Idol Festival” on the red.
BOOTS: I bought the same boots used for my Shinoa costume, only in tan. I had this leftover light suede fabric that I cut and sewed into strips with pointed ends. I added buttons and trim for flair, and they’re hot glued onto the boot. I sewed gold bias tape to the top of the boot, and glued it around the boot seams on the bottom.
WATER GUNS: I found water guns for less than $1 each at wal mart. The top part are leftover plastic bottles from Spellthief Lux, filled with those weird blue plant orbs. They’re superglued to the top.
TATTOO: Using temporary tattoo paper I printed out my own design.
DOWNLOAD THE TATTOO DESIGN
This was a fun costume to make and wear, but if I'm being honest...the majority of others cosplaying from this particular fandom were all about 10 years younger than me - so I did feel quite old ( ^ ‿ ^)Do you any of you play (or watch) Love Live? This particular character is one of my favorites, and I actually created a second costume of hers for this convention (photos coming soon)! Love Live really has some great costume options.