This is the manga version, I made this before the colors in the Anime came out, hence they're not all the right color....

I spent about 8~10 hours working on the wig....and I think I ended up cutting it too short in the back XD;; will have to add extensions to fix it later. I used the cosworx Ivy wig in Golden Blonde. The wig itself is way too long for the character, but by cutting off the extra lengths I was able to make them into wefts and add it to the front, since the bangs that came with the Ivy wig aren't long enough for Cloud 9. Wefts were also added into the side to cover the "empty" spots in the wig resulting from pulling half of the hair back in an updo. Lots of layering, a little bit of hotglue and a lot of aquanet super extra hold hairspray and more wefts created the 360 degree fan of spikes in the back.

To create wefts, I used the EXTREMELY helpful sewn weft tutorial that can be found here: (http://www.cosplay.com/photo/1079221/) It was very easy to understand and you only need a sewing machine and appropriate colored tulle. This tutorial was a godsend. Thank you so much to user Kukkii-san for sharing it.

I love Cloud 9's character, despite the fact that she barely gets any showtime in the series at all, so I was really excited to cosplay her. To create her scars I used Ben Nye Liquid Latex, and Ben Nye Castor Sealor.
For the liquid latex, I used the kind that dries in a flesh color, not the clear one.

Using this picture (http://i32.tinypic.com/fjdn49.jpg) for reference, I flipped the image horizontally before printing it out so I could paint on exactly what I see on the pic while staring into the mirror and have it come out the right way. The Ben Nye Liquid Latex bottle comes with a small applicator brush, but I also used some smaller, thinner paint brushes in quick, light strokes to create those sharp jagged ends to the scars. I used a total of maybe 5~7 layers (toughest part is waiting for each layer to dry), piling on even more liquid latex towards the regions closer to the nose and leaving the edges thinner. Then dabbled on castor oil, blotted, and put foundation powder over it, then a layer of translucent powder to set it. After all that was on, I used a brown brow liner to stroke over the edges, focusing more on the "bottom" portions of the scars to make it look like shadows, in order to bring out the scars more. Finally, on top of the scars itself I smeared on color using a rosy pink lipliner and more brown eyeliner to make it look more scar like.

A good idea at this point would be to set it with makeup setting spray or even just a light mist of hairspray. I forgot to do this and the makeup was melting off/peeling off a little towards the end of the gathering. Thanks to Silver-Ruby for letting me hog her bathroom for 2 hours in order to get all the makeup for this costume done.

The monkey was made entirely out of hotglue LOL. But I made him a little bit too big and didn't have enough time to figure out a way to get him to stay on my shoulder. I chose a black satin-like fabric for the top, it has a little bit of sheen to it, which I liked. The hardest part was probably the sleeves, since it was hard to get the poofy shoulder part right, and it kept sliding off my left shoulder....

There are definitely parts I want to improve on this costume, but overall I'm pretty satisfied with it =)

Thank you to the photographers who took these photos:
AndyRak http://www.pbase.com/AndyRak
Mihn Soi http://msoi.smugmug.com/
Tony Quan http://www.tonyquan.com

Photos may have been edited/cropped/tweaked by me, such as removing safety pins and bra straps that were showing from the photos etc. But you can see the originals at each photographer's respective websites. =)

Edit: I was completely surprised that this costume got showcased, but....I honestly don't feel that I deserve it at all. Sure, I put effort into it, but there's so much better costumes out there, and I really hope each of you get featured in your own right. What really deserves to be featured are the amazing photographers who took the photos of this costume, not the costume itself. (go visit their websites!)