_________Mystel
_________Costume Stats
Character Name: Mystel
_________Reference
Series: Beyblade G-Revolution
Specifics: main outfit
Cost: $100
Time: 45 hours
Started: May 2005
Completed: May 2005
Worn: Anime North 2005, Anime Evolution 2006
_________Information
One Saturday morning, I turned on the TV to watch Beyblade and ended up watching the episode that Mystel is introduced in. I fell in love with his character right away. Although Mystel is a minor character, he's really interesting. He's a mixture of bouncy and mysterious, and he had an interesting costume to boot. And so, I ended up making his costume for Anime North.
_________Misc
I made his purple pants with a standard pant pattern. I put elastic in the bottoms of the pants to make them puff the way his does. The purple t-shirt took me longer than it should, but that's because I dislike sleeves. ^^;
The white "wrap" of his costume wasn't too difficult. I drafted a pattern and had the base of the white part done in less than a day. Getting it to fall the way I wanted it too was tricky, but I was proud of the result.
The belt was made out of black fabric and is held together by velcro in the back. His red "scarf" is made from a long red piece of fabric and was rather simple to make, although I needed Blue Rose's help to fiddle with it to sit the way I wanted it to.
The shoes were challenging. I bough cheep black slippers downtown and made covers for them. I made a pattern and played with it until it worked. When I got it right, I stuffed the points at the end of the shoes so they pointed up like his does. They're so cute. :3
Everything gold on this costume caused me much screaming in frustration. I bought some gold vinyl, and much to my horror, could not get my sewing machine to sew through it. Eventually, I came up with a new plan.
First, I made patterns for all the jewelry I needed to make. Then, I cut these patterns out of left-over vinyl I had from my Pharaoh Atemu costume. I sewed velcro to the vinyl so that I could put it on and take it off.
I carefully cut of gold vinyl to fit the vinyl and used vinyl glue (fuuuumes ><;;;) to glue the gold vinyl to the other vinyl base. For the gold detailing, I used a toothpick to painstakingly glue thin strips of gold vinyl to the jewelry. This method may have been time consuming, but it worked wonderfully and the jewelry came out better than I ever expected. ^^
The earrings (which I forgot to wear at Anime North ><;;;) were made out of model magic, some fake earring clips and gold paint. The gold detailing at the bottom of the white part of the costume was hand-sewed with clear thread so it would look good on the inside of the costume as well as on the outside.
The wig took forever. Most shades of blond look horrible on me, so it took me awhile to find a blond wig to use as a base. I settled on using the same wig Becky used in her Nana costume. It's a long blond wig with bangs and besides the color, looks nothing like Mystel's hair.
I used Becky as a model and fiddled with the wig. Starting at the top of the wig where the wig wefts meet, I began to slowly cut and spike very small sections of hair. It took me a few minutes to make each spike and I must have put in a close to a thousand spikes in the back. Spiking the wig alone took a couple of days.
I wanted to put in more spikes, but the wig didn't have enough hair in it. To keep the hair net from showing too badly, I left some of the wig hair down. I also lined the wig cap with fabric that neutralized the color of the cap as much as possible.
The bottom of the back of the wig was left long since Mystel's hair has a braid in it. The braid goes to my mid-back and is tied with elastic.
The front of the wig got some work too. I had someone help me trim the bangs. I left them straight and un-spiked so they would cover my eyebrows. I trimmed the hair that covered my ears. I spiked it slightly so that it would allow the bangs to blend in with the rest of the wig. It also made the wig look a lot like Mystel's hair. ^^
I did not end up making Mystel's mask, but I still like the end result. This costume came out better than I expected. I'm so proud of it. ^^ And it's comfy to wear too. I need to find more places and conventions to wear it to. ^_~
At Anime North, I was recognized by more people than I expected. I also met another Mystel cosplayer, who is to my knowledge at this point in time, the only other Mystel cosplayer in existence. ^^
_________Images
This costume also got me my very first Hall Cosplay Award at Anime North. ^______^
Anime North 2005
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