The Magician's Looking Glass // version...hope.comfort.cloud.1

Kino Makoto // Lina
Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon

My first cosplay costume ever! I'd set upon Sailor Jupiter as my chosen character because I have long brown hair...and the fact that she's my favourite senshi (I was quite interested in Sailormoon at that time, though my interest has dimmed with the horrible new dub of the S series). I thought about doing her sailor senshi outfit, but I didn't want to dress in such a scandalously short skirt (though now that I've seen what other cosplayers dress up as...erm...it doesn't seem so scandalous) and I thought the school uniform might be easier. This costume was supposed to be ready for Anime North 2000, but circumstances intervened and I was unable to attend the convention at all.

Afterward, I used some leftover bits of heavy white fabric from Bardiel's costume and made the little triangles at the end of the collar. I used leftover white cording to make the white lines. The cording was really just thin fabric folded toward the centre and then in half, so (on Bardiel's suggestion) I opened it up (still with the fabric folded toward the centre, so it was doubled), sewed along the centre with my olive green thread and then sewed down the two outside edges with white. So, it's really just one cord, even though it looks like two.

Cording/Fastening: The original shirt buttoned up (like most shirts here do) and so, we kept the buttons, but created extra button holes on either side at intervals. Then, the edges were handsewed to prevent fraying and voila! This was probably the worst part of the costume, though, as the holes ended up being very oddly sized and, for the most part, gigantic (which made modest little me very nevous).

Bottom Edge: I cheated and made this part of the skirt.

Skirt: Picked up at a secondhand clothing store for $10. The skirt was, at some point, pleated, but the pleats had long since disappeared and so the skirt ended up being much more expensive than it was at first glance. With no guidelines except for the semi-existant pleat lines at the top of the skirt, I ironed in pleats and hoped for the best. The skirt had a row of buttons all the way up the front and some weird sort of fastening in the back, but it was the best I could find. I had it shortened, which ended up being $20 to $30 (O.O;), as well. I used more white scraps to line the waistband and wore my shirt tucked in (since the white should be part of the shirt). Then I sewed two pieces of white fabric together and threaded a brown ribbon through it and throught the beltloops in the skirt. I used safety pins to keep the white band in the centre. ^^;

Shoes: Bardiel lent me an absolutely perfect pair of shoes and the best part was: that didn't cost me a thing!

Hair Accessory: I thought this would take me all of five minutes to find. You know, walk into a drugstore where they sell cheap hair accessories and: Bingo! Yeah, right. Eventually, I was saved by my mom, who went out to all the nearby malls searching for it. Turned out the only green set of bobbles (if that's what they're called) that existed anywhere that we could find was in this backwater, totally unknown store that sold these hair things in packages of 7 or so. Even then, only one package out of all the ones on the rack had green ones. Strangest thing ever. O.o; I didn't trust the bobble, so I wore a regular hair elastic underneath so my hair wouldn't go all over the place.

Hair: My own, natural hair. It's about the right colour, if a little dark, and about the right length, so I just went with that. ^_^v

Eyes: The only part I missed (aside from the sleeves) in this costume...p-q Sadly, I have brown eyes and, since I don't need glasses, I couldn't use contacts to change my eye colour.

Earrings: The finishing touch! My ears aren't pierced (just like Makoto! *starry eyes*) so I search high and low for clip ons, but the only clip ons I could find were huge ugly, ugly gold ones in assorted tacky shapes. Needless to say, that wouldn't do and I looked instead at magnetic earrings. I didn't find any pink roses, so I was going to give up, but then I realised that I really wanted to be as accurate and complete as possible, so I bought some magnetic earrings and used a glue gun to stick on roses that I drew on paper. ^^; Hey, it worked...^^;;;;;