ragmig

Sometimes I wonder why I still make so many things by hand, if I could just print them, buy them, ‘cause it would spare me a lot of time, effort and believe me, money too (after too many trials and errors, the budget for a cosplay just vanishes lol).

I could buy a lot of what I make. Costumes, accessories, wigs.. it would definitely be easier to just order them and wait for a package to show up. But somehow, that has never been the point for me.

When I make a cosplay, I want to be involved in all the little details. My Yani Neko accessories, Toph Beifong's pieces, Sciel (that was hard), Jinx (almost went insane on this one) that take me way longer than they should have all started the same way: "I could probably make that myself." 😂 And now also the damn wigs, I was hating the process of learning in the beginning, now it is becoming an addiction and a personal challenge to make them everytime more anti-gravitational hahaha

And it is mostly because something happens with me during the process. It stops being just a costume for me. When you've spent hours sewing, painting, gluing, fixing mistakes and starting things over, you end up putting a little piece of yourself into it. By the time I finally wear the finished cosplay, I know exactly how much love and effort went into making it.

That's actually why I have a hard time selling some of my costumes afterward and now I have to rent a storage for my more than one hundred cosplays 😅 I can look at one and remember making it, the things that went wrong, the tiny details nobody else would notice, and the feeling of finally seeing the character come together. Technically, it's just fabric and accessories, but to me, it's also a memory, the moment I felt the skill upgrade in my brain and got ready for the next level.

I think that's what I love most about making things by hand. They don't have to be perfect. Sometimes they're held together by an unreasonable amount of glue and luck, but they're mine. I know their whole story.

And after putting that much of myself into something, it's hard to let it go. So I guess that's why I still make things by hand. Not easier, faster or cheaper, but because somewhere in the middle of the process, it becomes an affective memory, a tiny part of me.

Ok no crying!!!! Thank you for reading until here!!