I've been knocking around ideas of dressing like my characters for a while. Eventually I'm going to be making a red robe and cloak so I can dress as V from Order of the Stick, possibly next year (maybe I'll get to a con next year? Who knows!), but the main appeal of that character is that I can use the same costume to dress as one of my Messengers for Halloween. I look nothing like Cyn, being a slight, short, pale elf-girl, but Raff I could pull off. Wouldn't be my first male costume. ;)

Unfortunately, fabric is expensive and I'm not so great at sewing yet, so I decided to work on a different costume first: Meren. Or a wood elf in general, but I look a lot like her so I'll say it's her. ;) So if you wonder what a real-life Meren would look like, it would be something like this:

Next time I wear this costume, I'll paint more tattoos on me since I now know the paint works well- and because Meren is covered in tattoos, as are most wood elves. (I do need a smaller brush, though, because the face vines were hard to keep thin.) Meren usually wears her hair in a ponytail, but I couldn't do that because then obviously my real ears would be visible. And I have to break the boots in better. Talk about ouch! I crocheted the green overskirt and made the leather cuff around my calf- you can't see it in the pictures, but it's this:

I do need to fix it because it ended up too loose for my arm. Most of the rest of the costume is handmade, too- the bodice/vest, bracers, pouch, ears, boots, makeup, and necklace all came from artists on Etsy or Artfire. Yay, handmade!

After wearing this to the renfaire for a bit, I realized no one knows what a wood elf is! I got called "Frodo", "dryad" and something from WoW. Next time I need more tattoos, I think!

It's not odd that I want to dress as my characters, right? No odder than the rest of my cosplays, I guess!

I've been gradually improving this costume, so eventually I'll do another photo shoot.

~Meri