I have been curious about colored contacts in cosplay, but I wasn’t sure where to start. Last year, I posted in a local cosplayer Facebook group and I’m glad I did. They advised me to go to the eye doctor to begin the process. It sounds silly because I didn’t even think I needed to visit the eye doctor. I figured I could order colored contacts online and that’s it. I decided to write my own guide as to how I proceeded with colored contacts because I wish this would have existed for me before starting this process.

I have seen professional cosplayers use colored contacts and I thought it made their cosplays look more realistic. It inspired me to want to try colored contacts for myself. After posting in that Facebook group, I took Vision insurance when my health insurance open enrollment began last November. I’m not sure if my Vision insurance covered much of my Vision care since technically it wasn’t medically necessary. I have no regrets about taking Vision insurance even if it didn’t cover the cost of colored contacts. It didn’t cost extra on my insurance and it’s nice to have just in case.

After CONvergence passed, I remembered how I wanted to prioritize getting colored contacts. It’s funny how fast time passes. I checked with my insurance to find an optometrist in-network and made an appointment at a clinic five minutes from my house. When I called in, I jokingly told the receptionist how I wanted colored contacts for cosplay. She assured me it was more common than I thought it was and booked me for my first appointment.

To get colored contacts, I had three eye appointments. The first appointment was a general exam to see if I needed colored contacts with prescriptions. I have 20/10 vision, so I could get away with contacts with little to no prescription. In my second appointment, I had an hour-long lesson on how to put on contacts. I’m not sure what I expected, but I STRUGGLED to put in contacts. I found myself feeling frustrated and wanting to give up. The person who was working with me was incredibly kind and she encouraged me to keep trying and that it took some getting used to. I finally figured it out and was sent home with clear contacts to try. For the final appointment, I had to come into the clinic with clear contacts. Surprisingly, it took me ten minutes to put the contacts in myself. I was shocked. When I arrived, the doctor checked my eyes to see if my eyes were getting enough oxygen with the contacts. Everything came back great, so I ordered my colored contacts. I chose green because I felt it complimented my Keyleth cosplay. I haven’t picked them up yet, but they have been ordered and should be ready soon.

When I got home from the final eye doctor’s appointment, I had to take out my contacts and that took much longer. It took me about 20 minutes to take them out versus 10 minutes to put them in. Oddly enough, I did much better with my right eye than my left even though I’m left-handed. I am going to practice with my clear contacts because I want to feel confident in wearing them and taking them out, so when I’m getting ready for a convention, I’m not late to it because I’m struggling to put my contacts in.

I learned so much from this process! I learned about my eyes and how to wear contact lenses. I know how to take care of my contact lenses and how to order colored contacts, so I’m not buying anything that can’t be put into my eyes. I won’t wear colored contacts for every cosplay I do. I will save colored contacts for those cosplays where it feels necessary to get the look I want. In summary, I would highly recommend going to the eye doctor if you’re like me where you never needed glasses or contacts. If you are already accustomed to contacts, I would be careful about where you order colored contacts to ensure you’re getting them from a good place. I’m happy I made the time to get colored contacts and I can’t wait to experiment with colored contacts in the future.

I was swiping through old convention photos the other day. When I was going through my photos, I laughed at myself because I saw a cosplay from several years ago that I used to wear a lot. I laughed because the cosplay was an old Halloween costume and not comic-book-accurate. A few days passed and I had a thought pop into my head. I thought it was sad that I had laughed at my old cosplay photos. Cosplay, like any other hobby, improves with more experience. I think it’s important to embrace my old photos to show how far I have come in cosplay.

When I started cosplaying, I was a college student, so reusing old Halloween costumes saved me a lot of money. If there’s anything to be told about Spirit Halloween costumes, the quality of the costumes is poor. Surprisingly, this costume lasted several years past my college Halloween days before the costume ripped and I had to throw it away. While thrifting has helped, cosplay is still expensive and the cosplays I do now, I wouldn’t have been able to afford while I was in college.

As I started to gain more confidence in cosplay, I wanted to expand my knowledge. I have been wearing wigs for several years and it’s one of my favorite parts of cosplay is if I get to wear a wig. Recently, I went to the eye doctor because I want to start incorporating colored contact lenses into my cosplay. I’m going to devote a whole post to that process which should be written in the next week or two. Once I have mastered colored contacts, I’d love to incorporate body paint. I will probably repeat the process I listed earlier, where I might cringe at photos where I first start using body paint, but then I will get better over time.

I am proud of myself for how much I have accomplished with cosplay. Cosplay has been a creative outlet for me in my day-to-day life. I am going to be more appreciative and respectful of myself as I think these older cosplay photos are inspiring to me. Cosplay wasn’t a hobby I gave up on and I intend to keep going and learning new things as I go.

In my CONvergence post, I mentioned how I put together my cosplay for Keyleth, the Druid in Critical Role’s first campaign, Vox Machina. I love Keyleth. Keyleth may not always say the right things and can be awkward sometimes, but I think she was an integral member of Vox Machina. For how much I talk about Critical Role, I had it on my radar that I wanted to cosplay as one of the characters in their world. I’m amazed at how well my Keyleth cosplay turned out and I plan on taking Keyleth to Gen Con this year.

I spend a lot of time on Pinterest for my usual cosplay prep. The nice thing about cosplaying as a character from a TTRPG live show is that there are many looks to choose from. I have seen Keyleth cosplays that focus on a more autumn-orange look along with Keyleth’s cosplays from her Sideshow Action Figure. I settled on Keyleth from The Legend of Vox Machina which is her green dress, brown tall boots, and her infamous staff.

With The Legend of Vox Machina airing on Amazon, I had a lot of options for cosplay. I found an identical Keyleth green dress on Amazon and it’s amazing! It’s screen-accurate and the quality is great. I was expecting this dress to wrinkle, but it didn’t. The dress came with brown legwarmers and armbands, but after reading reviews, many suggested buying those separately. I’m glad I did because the leg warmers don’t cover my legs which is odd. I bought these brown heels that matched the tone that I was looking for. They have just enough of a heel to give me a boost, but not enough that I can’t walk in them all day. For Keyleth’s antlers, I bought two different options. One is a floral headband with butterfly and leaves poking out of it. The other is not a headband, but a crown that ties in the back. I prefer the crown since it matches Keyleth’s dress, but also, headbands give me a headache after a while. Before CONvergence, I put the whole cosplay on just to see how it looked and I was happy with the results.

I decided to wear Keyleth on Saturday since Saturday is one of the biggest cosplay days. It was great timing because I saw a Matt Mercer cosplay and a Pike cosplay while walking around the convention. I got a lot of compliments on Keyleth and a few people who wanted to take my picture which is always a compliment.

Keyleth is probably one of my favorite cosplays that I have put together. I can’t wait to re-wear this cosplay to multiple conventions and potentially upgrade it as time goes on. This will be the first of many future Critical Role cosplays.

I can’t believe it’s taken me ten years to cosplay as Padme, but here we are. As I was planning what I wanted to cosplay for Planet Comic Con, Padme popped into my mind right away. I always liked her look from Attack of the Clones where she’s in the battle arena on Geonosis. It’s functional, yet sexy and I think it looks very recognizable. I am thrilled with how the cosplay came together and I wanted to share how it came to be.

When I started planning out this cosplay, I was contemplating buying a Padme costume from Amazon. However, once I started reading reviews, I turned away from this because many of the reviewers stated that the costumes were pretty cheap-looking. The nice thing about Padme’s arena look is that it’s easy to put together as separate pieces. I found a white crop top, white leggings, white boots, a white fanny pack, and a foam blaster. In total, I ended up spending about $110 on everything which wasn’t that bad considering everything that I purchased.

The white crop top was soft and comfy. It wasn’t as cropped as I was expecting which I felt worked out better than I had hoped for. The white leggings were awesome! I ordered one pair of leggings in medium and one pair of leggings in large. The medium was the better fit as I felt the large were a little bit too big in the waist, although, I ended up keeping that pair to use as comfy leggings. I will say, the leggings were pretty see-through. It’s to be expected since they were cheap leggings off of Amazon. If I were to make any upgrades to the cosplay, I’d invest in white leggings that were thicker. The white boots were another awesome purchase. They weren’t great to walk around in during the convention, but they looked exactly like Padme’s boots that she wore. I wore the boots to work and received compliments from coworkers about how cool the boots looked.

The one other thing that I wanted to point out was the gray armbands. I could not find any gray arm bands that I liked on Amazon. Thankfully, one of my friends is crafty and she graciously agreed to help me and made the armbands for me. She did such a great job! The arm bands were comfortable and not too tight. The material she used was gorgeous, the gray was shiny which I think made the arm bands look expensive. She did such a great job.

I am so happy with how everything came together and how accurate it was. I had a few people come up to me wanting to take a picture with me and I had a lot of fun taking photos with other Star Wars cosplayers. I will definitely cosplay Padme again in the future.

As 2023 comes to a close, I am looking ahead to 2024. There are a few trips that I want to plan, goals I want to accomplish, and new conventions that I want to attend. I had this post pre-written for a while as I wanted to have a few new cosplays to start thinking about going into next year. I wanted to come up with a running list of characters that I want to cosplay as. I split this up into various categories, so it wouldn’t become an unorganized list.

Gaming

Liliana Vess – Magic: The Gathering

In Magic: The Gathering, there are certain characters known as Planeswalkers. Planeswalkers are creatures that can walk between planes or walk in between worlds. Liliana is the necromancer meaning her abilities often involve raising the dead or a player’s graveyard. I like Liliana’s look. She has this purple lace dress, a gold head band that holds her hair back, and purple arm bands that help summon her undead powers. I love her whole aesthetic.

Meren of Clan Nel Toth – Magic: The Gathering

Meren is based off a Legendary Creature card in Magic: The Gathering. Meren, similar to Liliana, has abilities that revolve around a player’s graveyard. Meren is a card that has a special place in my heart because Meren was one of the first Commander decks that I played when I was starting to get back into the game. I think what would be cool about cosplaying as her is that there are a lot of different ways to complete the cosplay. I like being able to have my own spin on a cosplay and I think with Meren, there would be a lot of different ways to put the cosplay together.

Keyleth – Critical Role

When I first watched Critical Role, I felt myself drawn to Keyleth. She’s awkward, wants to do the right thing, and at times doesn’t make the best decisions. I’d highly recommend looking up “Keyleth Goldfish” as it’s one of the most hilarious moments in Critical Role. It’s funny, I have an orange wig in my closet that I haven’t figured out what to do with and Keyleth is a character that I could put the wig to good use.

Imogen Temult – Critical Role

Imogen is a Sorcerer in the third campaign of Critical Role. I’m playing a Sorcerer in my Dungeons & Dragons game right now and it might be my all-time favorite class that I have ever played. Imogen’s look is feminine, yet gives off this archaeologist look. I like the purple hair contrasted with the pale blue dress.

Comics

Scarlet Witch

Scarlet Witch was the first character I thought of when I decided to put this list together. I love her. I’m reading the current Scarlet Witch comic run right now and I am really enjoying it. I think the Scarlet Witch look I love the most is Elizabeth Olson’s look in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Another look I like is Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Endgame when she flys down to fight Thanos in the final battle. Similar to what I said about Meren, there would be a variety of different ways to cosplay as her.

Kraven

Since playing Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, I’m obsessed with Kraven’s look. The shark tooth necklace, the skull on the shoulder and the fur vest. I think it would be neat to take that look and make it my own. I could see finding a brown body suit, brown khakis, brown combat boots, adding the shark tooth necklace, the fur vest etc. I think this would be fun to do, I’m not sure if anyone would recognize it as Kraven, but I think it would be a blast to do it.

Doctor Aphra – Star Wars

Doctor Aphra would be one of the easier characters to cosplay as. It would feel more like taking my regular clothing and adding a few things to it. Sometimes it’s nice to have an easier cosplay in between the cosplays that are a bit more complicated to put together. I could see Doctor Aphra being an easier, casual cosplay.

Film / TV

Padme

Padme (besides Scarlet Witch) is the second character I thought of when I put this list together. As a fan of the prequels, I loved Padme and I think her character doesn’t get the recognition that other Star Wars characters get. I think my favorite Padme look is from Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones when she’s in the arena on Geonosis. It’s a classic look. The white crop top that’s torn in the back, the white pants, and her blaster on her hip. Another nice thing about cosplaying as Padme is that I wouldn’t have to wear a wig, which would be a nice break.

Nightsister – Star Wars

I have been adding images to my Cosplay board on Pinterest. I found the coolest Nightsister cosplay that I pinned to my board. The one concern I have with cosplaying as a Nightsister is working with body paint. The Nightsisters have gray skin and I would want to be accurate if I were to cosplay as a Nightsister. The nice thing with cosplay becoming more popular is that there are tutorials everywhere! I’m also in a local Minnesota cosplay group, so I think I could find some resources there.

There are so many characters and so little time. Knowing me, I will probably end up cosplaying something that’s not even on this list, but I’d love to start challenging myself to cosplaying as these characters that I have listed. I can’t wait to attend my next convention in 2024.

One thing that I’m thrilled about is how I have gotten back into cosplay. Cosplay was something I put on the back burner for several years, which is sad because I genuinely enjoy it. This year, I have been more strategic in the cosplays that I have put together and planning out conventions in the future. I wanted to share a little bit of what’s next as far as conventions, cosplays, and geek events in the future.

Regarding conventions, the next convention that’s coming up is Minnesota Con. Minnesota Con is a new convention happening on June 2nd through the 4th at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Since this is a new convention, it will be interesting to see how everything pans out. The same weekend as Minnesota Con is Des Moines Con. I would love to go to both conventions on the same weekend, but realistically, I’m not sure if that will work out. One of the best ways I find out about local conventions is through Twin Cities Geek Convention Guide I have it bookmarked in my bookmarks bar and I reference it quite often to figure out which event is coming up next.

As far as cosplay, I have been mulling around what cosplay would be fitting to do next. Part of me was drawn to a gender-bent Peacemaker cosplay since Freddie Stroma is appearing at Minnesota Con this year. I still think cosplaying as a Splicer from Bioshock would be fun. I haven’t definitively come up with the next cosplay yet. With that being said, with Minnesota Con coming up in June, I do want to have an idea narrowed down within the next week or two to ensure that I would have everything I need in time for the convention.

It’s funny because this post is titled “Cosplay – What’s Next” and I don’t even answer the question of which cosplay I plan on completing next. I’m sure other cosplayers must feel this way where it’s so easy to be indecisive. There are so many cosplays I want to do and such little time to do them all. I will say that even though I’m not exactly sure what I will cosplay as next, I’m looking forward to the future as there are many conventions that I will be attending coming up.

I started cosplaying in 2013 when I attended my first convention. Me and my friend thrifted overalls for a Mario & Luigi cosplay. My interest in cosplay developed since then as I have cosplayed Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, the Punisher, along with a variety of other characters. I set two personal rules for cosplay. The first rule I had was to wear comfortable shoes. I have no problems wearing heels for a nice dinner where I know I won’t have to walk too far. At a convention, I know that I walk everywhere, so I will not wear uncomfortable shoes and be miserable the entire time I’m there. The second rule was to never wear wigs. I figured wigs were itchy and I didn’t want to be uncomfortable. Recently, I started wearing wigs for certain events and I realized I was wrong. I wasn’t itchy or uncomfortable, and I loved how wearing a wig elevated my cosplay. I wanted to talk about my experience with wigs.

My first experience wearing a wig was for a friend’s birthday party. She was hosting a color party where each person would be assigned a color and had to wear that entire color. I told my friend to give me the color no one wanted because I wanted a challenge. The color I was assigned was orange. I ended up finding a short orange bob wig on Amazon and paired that with orange tights, an orange crop top, and orange shorts. Included in my wig were various wig caps to ensure that my hair was put up and out of the way. The wig I bought fit my head perfectly, and I didn’t have a problem getting the wig on my head and staying on. Unfortunately, I ended up throwing the wig out because I think someone spilled a drink on it? It smelled like booze, sweat, and it was clear some of the hair fell out through the night.

Besides the orange wig, I ended up renting Halloween costumes this year since I didn’t have time to plan out my costumes. I used Royal Fashions Costume Emporium to portray both Alice in Wonderland and Daenerys. Both costumes utilized the same blonde wig. Similar to my orange wig experience, I loved this wig. I felt sassier portraying Daenerys and part of the reason the look came together was because of the wig. The more I incorporated wigs into my cosplay or costuming, the more I became a part of that character. I slowly started to realize how wrong I was about wigs.

I’m still new when it comes to wearing wigs, so I find I’m still learning how to care for a wig to ensure it lasts longer. I found in both experiences I had, it’s important to find a wig that fits. This is an obvious statement, but it’s still important. If the wig is too small, it won’t fit and that can lead to excess rubbing. Additionally, I think wearing a wig cap is crucial. This keeps the hair in place and prevents any itchiness. Both of these statements may come across as being unhelpful, although coming from someone who didn’t like wearing wigs, I found that this helped me in overcoming these negative pre-conceived notions I had towards wigs.

For my future cosplays, I plan on ensuring I have a wig to match if that’s necessary. I have a long orange wig hanging near my closet that I still have to use. I want to make a Keyleth cosplay from Critical Role or use it for a future Starfire cosplay. I’m excited to start incorporating wigs into my cosplays!

I was telling a couple of coworkers about Gen Con. One coworker made a comment asking, why do you cosplay? She doesn’t know enough about cosplay to know why someone would want to dress up as a fictional character and parade around a convention hall. It’s a legitimate question especially because she had never heard of the term cosplay before. I thought about my answer and this made me want to devote a whole post as to not only why I cosplay, but how it improved my self esteem.

When I was in middle school, I was increasingly aware of how much I hated my body. When I say hate I meant I truly despised the way I looked in the mirror. I didn’t feel confident when I would wear shorts or a swimsuit. I didn’t know if I would ever come to appreciate my body the way it is.

When I graduated from high school, my confidence started to blossom, but I had a long way to go to address how I felt about my body. When I went to my first CONvergence back in 2013 was when I cosplayed for the first time. Me and a friend cosplayed as Mario & Luigi. It was a simple cosplay I purchased from Ragstock. However, once I put it on, I felt cute and could walk around and do what I pleased. I received some warmhearted compliments on my cosplay. Once CONvergence was over, I knew I wanted to do more with cosplay and challenge myself to take on other characters.

The more I cosplayed, the more my confident I became. There were cosplays that were more revealing than others. What empowered me though was the control I had to show what I wanted on my terms. It was my body and I could conceal or reveal it if I chose to. This conscious choice I made is what has allowed me to fall in love with myself and the way I am. Additionally, cosplay exposed me to other body types and seeing other people rocking what they have, creates this open and accepting environment. 

I owe a lot to cosplay and how it’s changed my way of thinking. Every time I know I’m attending a convention, my head starts spinning as to potential cosplay options. Once I settle on an idea, I’m determined to pull it off. My relationship with my body is one I will always have to work on and be aware of, but I’m at a much better place mentally and all it took was to dress up as Harley Quinn.