However, one thing that doesn’t get much discussion is how long it takes to make one of these outfits, and like a lot of things, it’s hard to predict unless you’ve already made a few costumes. So: I have decided to share my sage wisdom (read: five and half costumes) and give all three of my readers some pointers on how it takes to make a cosplay outfit.

Not surprisingly, it actually depends on a lot of different factors. There are five big ones. First; how experienced you are with sewing. If you’ve never sewn on a button, it doesn’t matter how simple your outfit is, it’s going to take you a while. If you are truly and utterly inexperienced, you’re going to want to pad your timeline a lot, and hopefully find someone who knows what they’re doing to help you thread the sewing machine. I’m working with the assumption that you have some experience with sewing – you’ve repaired some clothing, maybe made a shirt or something. If you’re really new, you’re going to want to at least double whatever time I say, and have a sewing resource very handy.

Second factor is how complicated your costume is. If the character you’re imitating only has one or two major pieces of clothing that aren’t too complex, you can probably finish it off in a week or two, assuming you put in an hour or two work each day (or do marathon sessions on the weekends, like I do). If you’re making a costume with lots of pieces of clothing, or with lots of lace and fancy details, or something with a lot of accessories, it’ll take you a lot longer at an hour a day. A month isn’t out of the question, with more time being a good idea if you’re doing something that you’ve never had to do before. Of course, if you’re spending several hours a day sewing that time line will get a lot shorter. In addition, things like screening a pattern onto the fabric can take hours or more. I’ve never done it personally, but even painting small designs on the cuffs of a sleeve took an hour or two. Painting, especially on fabric, is extremely time intensive.

Third factor is the resources you have access to. One of the most useful resouces is a sewing machine. Although a good portion of sewing might be tiny obnoxious seams that you’ll do by hand, things like shoulder seams and hems are almost omnipresent. And while it’s certainly possible to do them by hand (I have) they can take hours that way, and only ten minutes or so with a sewing machine. The second most useful resource is someone who knows how to make costumes or clothing. They can explain the notation on patterns, how to rethread the bobbin on the sewing machine, how to fit a dress by hand in a half hour. People with experience are unbelievably helpful, and they’re not necessarily cosplayers. My mother’s made clothing, and helped me figure out how turn a Halloween elf-cloak pattern into Ed Elric’s coat. The final useful thing is premade clothing patterns. Really good cosplayers and costumers can wing it, draping outfits with no patterns whatsoever, but I’ve always liked working from a pattern, even if I end up heavily editing it. It’s nice to have a base to work off of, if only to make sure you haven’t forgotten to make sleeves or some such things.

All the time estimates I’ve said assume you have a sewing machine; if you don’t, how long your costume’ll take will depend on how fast you sew, but plan to put in almost an entire order of magnitude more time into your costume. It can be done, certainly; I’ve made a number of costumes that way, but don’t expect it to be done quickly unless you sink days of sewing into it. Someone who knows how to costume can’t make you sew faster, obviously, but they’ll help you with problems you run into, and can help you get started. My rough estimate is that knowing someone like this who is willing to help you could reduce the time needed by a third or a fourth. A pattern’s usefulness varies a lot, depending on the complexity of the design and how much you’re editing the pattern, so it’s hard to give even a rough time estimate. It does help, though.

Fourth factor is accessories. Oh, accessories. These are another item that’ll make the time required vary widely. They may take longer than the entire rest of the cosplay. As with the costume itself, the time they add largely depends on how complex they are. If you can scavenge them from somewhere, or edit something you already have, the time required goes down by a lot, but a decently complex item probably takes a few hours to construct, and if it requires any sort of craft – paint, clay, carving – pad your estimates with a couple days and make sure you have everything you need before you start working. And never assume it’ll take just a few minutes. A friend of mine has made Miroku’s costume, and apparently his beads, which I would have predicted to be a fairly quick portion, took 45 minutes. And she’s the most experienced cosplayer I know. My advice is to, until you get an idea of how long it takes you to make things, limit each costume to one or two items, unless you have time to burn. Or, do the most vital items first, and finish the others as you have time.

The final factor is free time. I’ve always found myself to be most effective when I do my sewing in huge chunks. It may be because I have to take down and set up all my sewing stuff, and sort of settle into it, but I am much more effective when sewing for several hours at a time rather than a half hour here and there. You may be different, but doing the work in chunks can be a time saver, especially when you have to clean up whenever you stop. As a special note: it is possible to complete an entire cosplay in a week or less, but that generally requires a lot of free time and a fair knowledge of what you’re doing. I always try and make sure to add time to my internal schedule.

Well now, my intrepid cosplayer, now you have a rough guide to how long your cosplay’ll take, and you know if you can make that Chi outfit in time for the next con. Just remember; there’s no real harm in trying and overshooting your time line (usually). You don’t need to be in cosplay for a con, and it’s perfectly acceptable to wear a single piece of your costume. And remember – there’s always next year.

1) Figure out exactly what the costume is.

Make a list of items that you need, and get some pictures or screenshots to help you remember what they look like, even if you know the show really well. You probably also want to get colors of the items. A trick my friend recommended is tracing the seam lines in dark ink on a screenshot; or possibly tracing and/or drawing a line drawing of the costume with the seams, to get an idea of what it looks like without irrelevant details distracting you. If you’re sewing something, check and recheck the measurements, and unless you’re really comfortable with sewing, you probably want some sort of pattern. And my personal tip; always give your self wiggle room with the fabric, either by making it slightly too big or having very large amounts of material at hems and seams. It’s a lot easier to make something smaller than make it bigger.

2) Salvation Army is friend.

As are flea markets, as are thrift stores. If you can find clothing similar to what your character wears for a decent price, it’s almost always worth it, even if you have to do some alterations. It’s likely cheaper than sewing the item, and it’s far faster. Note: just make sure the item of clothing will work before you pull apart the seams; it’s hard to return after you’ve destroyed it. For example, in my Edward Elric cosplay, the only thing I made from scratch was his coat. His boots, undershirt, pants, shirt and belt were all bought, and only that shirt even needed altering. Make sure your pieces match though, and sometimes the simplest costumes are the hardest. L from Death Note does require a little bit more effort than scavenging at Wal-Mart.

3) Coats, cloaks, and robes are surprisingly useful.

If you’re cosplay has a large, encompassing outerwear, you can probably get away with a high quality outerwera and lower quality in the layers of clothing below that. Good examples of this are Edward Elric’s coat, Genjo Sanzo’s robes, Kamiya Karou’s outer kimono, Kino’s coat. Of course, some cosplay’s aren’t suited to this, but its a useful cheat when you can use it.

4) Ignore all the accessories you can.

Now keep in mind, I’m telling you how to cut corners. Given the chance, go all out with accessories; they’re fun! But if you’re Ed Elric wearing gloves and a long shirt, you don’t need to make his metal arm. However, there are some accesories that you have to make if you’re doing cosplay, such as Wolfwood’s cross-punisher. Use your best judgement as to which type is which.

5) Hair.

Getting your hair to match your character’s is always a pain. As far as I can tell, there are a couple different ways to deal with it. First, you could buy a wig. If the hair is really important to the character, you paln on reusing the costume or you’re really precise, it might be worth buying a wig. I’ve never done so, because I’ve heard they’re expensive, finiky, difficult to maintain and can still look rather fake. (Keeping in mind I’ve never bought a wig) You can also decide on a cosplay based on the hair’s suitability, and then gel and/or dye your own hair. This might also work. The biggest problem is if you plan to reuse the cosplay and you want to change your hairstyle (for example, my hair has grown a foot since I made my Sanzo costume). Finally, what I usually do, is take it with a grain of salt. Pin your hair and gel it and dye it (temporarily) within an inch of its life, but don’t worry overmuch if it’s too long, or too short, or curly instead of straight. You’re just having fun; any one who starts to bug you about your costume really needs a life of their own. A tip: if you’re spray dying your hair, do it before you put on your costume. I didn’t, and the back of my Kenshin costume is now red on top of blue. And while it’ll likely wash out, you’ll still be spending the day with part of your wonderful cosplay the wrong color. The spray in dye also sometimes leeches onto clothing just by being in contact with it, so be careful. And make sure to give yourself lots of time to do hair, cause you’re never gonna get it just right the first time.

6) Go cosplaying in a group.

Oddly enough, this helps. It doesn’t improve the quality of your costume, obviously, but being with a group of friends that are just as oddly dressed as I am always makes me less self-concious.

So there you go! 6 Tips for cutting corners on cosplay. Note: there is an art to producing a brilliant cosplay in anything from 24 hours to 30 minutes. That’s a different skill set entirely, usually requiring many many years of cosplay experience (and leftovers), and I’ve not yet mastered it.

For those of you unsure what I am talking about, please note the below picture.

This is the Oracle Bell from the anime Shaman King. I will be teaching you step by step how to make one from “common” household items.

First, you should set up the space you will need to complete the prop, which amounts to opening up a newspaper and laying it on the ground and finding somewhere for you to sit while you go about this.

Now, you will need your supplies to actually creating the bell. The items I used are as follows:

• The box a 12-pack of soda comes in
• A can of soda
• The hard plastic that handheld electronics come in
• Acrylic paints
• Acrylic primer
• Sewing materials
• Box cutter
• Duct tape
• Black Sharpie
• Buttons
• Gorilla Glue

This may seem like a lot of items for this prop, but in reality, it is not much. Now for the construction of the actual device.

Step 1

• Scale the device to your body. What I did was measure out the dimensions on my reference pictures, and then scaled them up based on my arm length. Do this for the basic pager frame, as well as the ornamental attachments on the ends of the bell. Now, scale and measure your screen and note where it will be on the bell.

Step 2

• Mark your measurements on the box and cut it out using the box cutter. In addition to this, draw out the dimensions for the screen and give it a couple of centimetres on each side. Then cut this out as well.
  

• After cutting out the pieces, psuedo-assemble them by simply putting one piece where it should be and seeing if it fits. If not, just cut out another piece and repeat until they match your specifications.

Step 3

• When your basic pieces have been cut out, it’s time to drink up! Drink one of the can’s of soda (didn’t think they would go to waste, right?) and then slice into it using the box cutter. This will be the backing of the screen and will provide a rather clean appearance, so make this even larger than the oversized plastic. Again, check to see if it fits your specifications.

Step 4

• With the cutting out of the way, it’s time to get to get ready to start the “long” parts of the project. First, you must lay primer down on the cardboard, so no one knows that your bell was sponsored by Vault (or in my case Diet Pepsi Max). After the first coat has dried, put down a second, and repeat until you can no longer see any distinguishable markings. I used three coats, but you might have to use less.
  

Step 5

• With the primer down and the pieces completely white, it’s time to get down to painting the device. Using your acrylic paints, put down the first layer and wait for it to dry. After about an hour, lay down the second coat to the pieces, making sure the paint does not adhere to the paper you are using to keep the area paint-free.

Step 5.5

• In between your coats of painting, you can do nearly anything. If you wish to be efficient, then you will start making your straps you will be using as armbands. First pin them together, sew them inside-out so you cannot see the stitching.  Once sewn, roll them inside out (the hardest part) and sew the ends together. Congrats, you have made a set of bands.

• After doing this, you have two options to make the clasps to get the bands to stick together. The first is to use a set of actual fasteners. The second, and method I used, was to buy a set of plain gold buttons and use them. Either way will work fine, just make sure they have the same appearance as the character’s.

Step 6

• After the paint has dried, it’s time to assemble the pieces together into the bell. First, attach the plastic pane to the inside of the frame using the duct tape on the edges (and out of sight), and then back the pane with the can of soda.

• With this done, attach the ends of the frame together, one side at a time, using duct tape on both sides of the inner part of the connection. Do this on both sides, and the basic frame is done. Now, attach the caps to the end of the frame (I only made one so I could use it as an extra storage pocket), also with duct tape. If your ornamental attachments can fit, put them in first and attach them, also with duct tape, and then do the caps. If the attachments are too big, just tape them to the bottom and paint over the tape twice to hide it.

• When the basic frame has been completed, and the straps done, it’s time to put them together. Put down a layer of Gorilla Glue, or another strong adhesive, lay your strap down in the position you want it, and then pin it down onto the framing. Do this with the other one. Wait for this to secure the connection and viola!, one genuine Shaman King Oracle Bell is ready to be used as a prop.
  

Enjoy!