On Saturday, October 26th, 2024, was the Halloween art market inside my local mall, featuring plenty of vendors and artists. For the Animeuwu/Pinstash event, the organizers also invited several voice actors from Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End anime as special guests. I decided to last minute start and finish one of my aforementioned secret cosplays, which was Fern the mage from Frieren. Because I had the week off for staycation, I did finish it 2.5 days, right on time before the event, surprise!
This anime event was also the same weekend and location as the mall’s indie artist event, which had a trading station for collectibles and even more artists vending their artwork and wares. That was more than fine by me, but I was feeling attacked financially trying to spend at as many booths as possible by the end lol. Since I was not tabling, I had plenty of time to leisurely peruse the artist tables and get autographs from the voice actors and chatting briefly with them. I headed first to the artist that I recalled sold Transformers stuff, which is now my latest obsession after watching the Transformers One movie so highly recommended by my twitter following list and getting totally pilled by tragic robot bromance, got some Starscream and Bee stickers. Then I tried to do a stamp rally (finished one out of the two possible) and of course buy new stickers for journaling or deco cards or trading. I resisted getting anymore keychains and large prints, which was hard, but I pulled it off for the most part lol. I also randomly entered the raffle because the other guests checking in were doing so, and I did win one of the raffles which was just icing on the cake! It came with a special edition Frieren print signed by all of the guests, plus a Frieren tote bag, couldn’t be happier. Of course, I got compliments on my Fern costume even though I didn’t wear the wig because it was high 80s F and kinda warm sometimes in the mall.
Here is a photo of my haul plus the raffle prizes! See alt for descriptions and artist names if needed.
I didn’t get any full-length photos of my costume because my DSLR camera battery died and won’t recharge anymore. It is very old, so maybe I do need to buy a replacement. But here is the mall selfie at one of the spooky decorated areas (they had a giant skeleton too lol)
The Fern costume itself was easy, that’s why I was sure I could finish it in two days. I combined a few patterns from my Otome no Sewing books for similar lolita style blouses with pintucks and high ruffle collar and ruffled cuffs, and combined the bodice to a long gathered rectangle skirt, all made of white muslin. I still haven’t fixed my previous button mishaps from my Obanai cosplay, so I just sewed fake buttons over snap closures to make it super fast and easy to open/close. The black robe body was traced off a cheap costume robe of my mom’s and I used the sleeve and hood pattern from my trusty Western sewing pattern that has been the basis of so many cosplays. I decided to line the hood with white, but I think her entire robe is lined with white. However, I didn’t have enough fabric for lining the rest of the robe, and also that would make the costume extremely heavy and stifling in the unseasonal heat, so I just folded over the raw edges twice. Fern’s silver butterfly barrette was sketched on on paper then constructed from layers of black foam sheet and cardstock, painted with silver acrylic paint and a top coat of mod podge. I actually used 2 star stickers instead of cutting out the stars, then the completed barrette was hot glued onto a hair clip. I spent some time fixing the long purple wig I used for previous cosplays to wear for the final photos, but haven’t done so yet because of the dead battery I already mentioned. Soon, though. For this outing, I just wore clip on bangs.
Overall, another fun event put on by the local anime store. I am grateful to have these frequent small markets nearby to buy new stuff, meet industry folks and fellow fans and have an excuse to wear a costume without having to travel so far and be stressed out and forget stuff. Stay tuned for more cosplay photos, new art uploaded (already uploaded a few if you haven’t check out my portfolio galleries yet), and recipe reviews. Do not expect any game play posts because I’m getting my shit rocked by the computer enemies for Fire Emblem…