Your Dreams are your Wings!: Lyco and Leeta Cosplay!

Hi!
This post may be intersting not only for polish people, so this time, I'm going to write in english ( and perhaps not only in this post? ) :)
Soooo.. please - forgive me for mistakes, I'm still learning.
Let's get started~!
Since I started cosplaying I've always thought the opinion that 'cosplay is an expensive hobby' a bit funny. Well I agree that some of the materials might cost a lot but it's easy to find a cheaper replacement. Actualy I think that the most poweful cospay material is... paper! Yeah, that's it. With addition with a glue for wood it's almost unbreakable :) Why am I telling you this? Well it's beacue one of my silent cosplay promisses was to create my every costume as cheapest as it's possible to show that anyone can have fun as a cosplayer.
I've described my work in progress many times on my other blogs, and now here I come again~!
This is a short story of a easy costume made mostly for fun :)

The character I cosplayed is named Lyco. She is a Wolf Nation's freedom fighter from Sonic Archie Comic.
I actually decided to do her costume to try some funny make-ups aaaandddd.... because she has a twin sister named Leeta. The difference between these two is the color of their clothes. I really wanted to play with photoshop to make both sisters appear on one photo.
But let's move to the costume.

Materials I used:
Black and blue fabric ( a bit shiny )
EVA foam ( white + some other colors' scratches)
a mop ( yeah xDDD !)
elastic string
velcro
pink fur
old safety googles
sheet protector
wire
acrylic paints
hot glue
cyanoacrylic glue

The first thing I've done was a little trip around second-hand shops. I'm actually not very good at sewing, and it would be a waste of time and money... I bought a bit too wide black blouse with lycra and a furry jacket ( aaaand it was much cheaper. Jacket cost ~5$, but if I would buy the unsewn fur it would be more than 20$ for the same amount! ). This was almost all the fabric I needed.
From only one blouse I had a full suit and sleeves. Only sewing I did was in the inside to make the parts tighter.

I needed a second, blue fabric ( this time I had to buy it, because I didn't find anything nice and yet so big to cut all the parts I needed from it ) and EVA foam. I could use a white ribbon or another fabric for the white lines but I wanted to get a smooth look ( as it isn't even a fabric :D ). Foam was good here, because it's a bit elastic so it didn't made my hand's movements impossible.

Aaaaaand here's the finished piece. I sewn the places between my fingers at the end.

I didn't have much work for the suit. It was almost ok. I only sewn the velcro and some of the blue fabric.

And then - addes EVA foam ( glued with hotglue ). I also added the foam around the armpits.

( nearly finished suit with the 'gloves' ( sleeves? ) )
Ok. Here comes the fun part! THE HAIR :D As you see Lyco and Leeta's hair looks more like a dreadlocks. I was searching for a cheap synthetic hair to tangle and glue them... but I figured something much easier and better. I used ... a mop. It's made out of hairy strings, right? I used acrylic paints I had to color those 'hair'.

And then I cut and attached those to a head band ( which I made myself of a wire).

on the top I added a EVA foam covered with blue fabric to cover the place where hair were attached.
Inbeetween I did the tail and ears ( I had only one color of fur so I needed to dye it for darker pink. I also used acrylic paints, and when it dried - I combed the fur )

The most challenging part were her boots. I found my old winter boots and decided to change them a bit. I added fabric and EVA foam to the tip to make it less pointy ( well it was VERY pointy ;w; ). The problem was to cover the whole boots with black fabric. I used... tights ( cotton ones ), hotglued them to the sides of boots and cut the bottop part. The circle above the boots was made of cartboard covered with EVA foam. It was kind of annoying to wear. but fast and effective to make :D

The last part I did was the googles ( just gluead the foam and blue sheet protector )

And the thing-on-her-hand-whatever-it-is was also made of foam + cartboard.

( yeah - failed with painting - the paint was too dry... and it didn't turn out very smooth as I wished :< )

Ok. See? Cosplay is so much fun if you using very strange materials and objects :) The whole costume costed about 60zł ( ~20$ ) ( or even less) and lots of time and fun.
Now how it turned all out.

Here's the make-up test to see if I don't look too silly :D I used the fur from the jacket for cheeks.

The main idea of the photoshoot was to make both of twins to appear on one picture. I needed two photos of the same place with me in two different poses. Here's the example:

Aaaaaannnnnd here come the twins!

I merged both photos into one. It was quite easy. You need to erase one half of the photo to allow the lower layer ( the secong picture) to be visible. The problem starts when the perspective of the photos is slightly different... But you can fix it by rotating, moving, warping and distorting one of the pictures.

Now. Let me SPAM you with some more photos :)

( this one was tricky, beacuse I the 'green sister' was half behind the 'blue sister' when I merged the photos... So. I cut myself out and moved a bit to the left. Look at blue's boots, there's something wrong with the grass ;P )