INSPIRATION: What's more fun than a split-personality summon creature? Cosplaying said creature! Dinah is a very obscure character, it seems. I would never have heard of her had not Cantarella, being the huge gaming girl that she is, suggested we cosplay as Angel-side and Devil-side Dinah from Summon Night 2: Swordcraft Story. It was originally a little bit of a joke--although we were cosplaying completely different characters, people kept mistaking us for eachother at Ohayocon. So why not cosplay as the SAME character, and really throw people off?

THE WIG: My favorite part of this costume is the wig. We bought 3 foot long white wigs from Ebay and custom dyed them using fabric dye. I must warn you, this does NOT work with every synthetic wig! They have to be made out of a specific sort of fibers... and of course I forget what kind that is. >.< But the color turned out perfectly.

My first real styling attempt was at Colossalcon. I was happy with it, but I was blown away when I had a REAL styling job done by Terranell for Matsuricon. She pulled it up and wove extensions in, and I didn't have to do much else since I'd already attached the wings (making her life hell to style around >.< Sorry!)

The wings were made out of four pieces of thick foamie, feathers, and glue. I basically cut out four shapes and glued feathers on all sides, hairsprayed it so they'd stop shedding, and then sewed it on the wig. It was messy, but turned out very neat.

Although it's not shown in the ref of Angel side, Devil side has little angel wings in her pigtails. So we took my Gaia hair clips and stuck them in each other's pigtails. This looks really cute, but that tiny detail got us mistaken for Gaia characters (we were also mistaken for Lilith and Morrigan, and even ETNA at one point. WTF. Green hair =/= red.)

The halo was also added on for Matsuricon. I got clear plastic tubing, and originally wanted to put miniature Christmas lights in it, so that it would always glow. However, this looked kind of silly since the mini lights had a very dark cord and it looped down the wire in a very obvious way. So I went with the kind of 'joke' and stuck a glowstick in. Surprisingly, this works perfectly. I LOVE IT. I have always wanted a light-up costume. This is it.

THE BELTS: These were made out of some very soft but thick upholstery vinyl. I sewed the bias tape on (not a very fun adventure--my sewing machine likes it fine, but the pins do not) and then used a tool to grommet it and stick the eyelets in. Hand sewed on a buckle, and viola! We added an extra one that wasn't in the design for the legs to keep the darn things up. It helped a little...

BODYSUIT: I hate stretchy material. Upholstery thread is a MUST for sewing with it! The Matsuricon photos show my second attempt. This bodysuit has lining (whoot) and I can feel proud of it. It's not amazing, but for my second attempt? It's not bad. The heart is made out of red vinyl, and a zipper mutilated and pieced together down the front. It would be awesome if the zipper would be functional, but it's actually not physically possible, sorry. I tried.

STOCKINGS: The arm and leg stockings were made by carefully draping material over said limb, finding the best 'line of stretch' (it's hard to describe) and then pinning it carefully along the limb, then even more carefully sliding it off. They aren't hemmed--at this point in my skill level, I've found it's best to NOT hem spandex. It tends to stretch it out, making it not stay firm around the area you need it to. Plus, it doesn't fray, so you don't really need to.

This did bother me at the tops, though, where it's supposed to have a pointy look. I ended up making a separate strip of triangles sewed onto interfacing and then hand stitched it loosely onto the leg stocking. I had to be careful that the belt covered up this area, but it looked ten times better than the alternative. And helped it stay up more!

SOCKS: Cantarella made the socks, all I had to do was sew on the elastic 'trim.' Simple enough! I just put in some padding and arch support for comfort. They are so fun to slide around in!

I love this costume, but it makes me feel very naked. So I think I'll only wear it to smaller cons, and only when I have my devil side along!