APPROVED!

I did it! I am officially a member of the Rebel Legion! Eeek!

After my last post, I quickly called up my mom, bribed her with lunch, and she kindly came out to my house to take my pictures. Thanks, Lady, you're the best! When she left, I put "Sing" on for my boys, so I could run downstairs to submit my photos, you know, like the great mom I am. The rest of my day consisted of providing snacks, wiping up messes, and refreshing my email every 28 seconds.

At 7:01pm, I received the email that the costume I submitted has been officially accepted! After I jumped around like a crazy person for a few minutes, I had to let the people who really helped me get to this point know about my membership! Thank you to Afton and Reid for helping me navigate, what can be a very long process, and for you being so encouraging!

So, this Saturday, if you happen to be at Sand in the City, keep an eye for Josh and I, as we participate in our first official troop! Did I forget to mention Josh got accepted into the 501st for his reserve pilot costume?! As he put it, we are now a house divided!

Whoa, it's JUNE!

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted since MARCH. I have started several posts, each about the different aspects of my costume, they're a little scatterbrained right now. I'm working on getting them to a point where a normal person can make sense of them, I also decided that since I'm so close to approval, I want to wait until I have the final okay before I hit that publish button, I wouldn't want to steer anyone in the wrong direction.

You may be wondering (or not) just how close I am to approval. Well I am happy to share that I have already submitted my costume, and have received feedback!

NOT approved. 

Through my correspondence with one of the Rebel Legion costume judges, it was determined that my pants are too gray, OR my tabbards and arm wraps are too brown. Rey's costume oddly has different hues throughout The Force Awakens, because of this, my costume can take on either the brown/tan color scheme, or the gray one, but not both. For me, this was an easy choice. Although I like the gray hues better, if something were to go wrong, my pants are way easier to redo than my tabbards and arm wraps. My pants were purchased through Amazon for $26 and got to my house in 2 days, there's no way I could make a pair of pants that quickly (but hopefully one day I will be able to). My tabbard fabric took me a few trips to Jo-Ann's to find, and my arm wraps were gifted to me from Jesse, his wife also has a Rey costume, and had extra wraps, I'm sure you can find them easily on Amazon though.

So I dyed my pants browner (is that even a word?!), and Princess Liz Fett (my judge) still thought they were too gray, so I dyed them again, this time they were definitely brown, but now they are too dark. *sigh*

Back to Amazon I went. I like the pants that I got back in June of last year, but I also wished they were a tiny bit longer, so I searched for something a little different and actually was able to buy 2 pairs of pants for the price of the one pair I got last year. You know, in case I REALLY mess up.

My pants arrived on Saturday, and I finally got around to dying them with RIT "tan" dye. It was still very light, I don't think I added enough dye to the bath. This morning I tried again with more dye. I sent a picture to Liz and she gave me the thumbs up to send in my updated photos as well as a new roster photo!

Hopefully by tonight I will be an official new member of the Rebel Legion!

A few thoughts...

So, I'm currently staring at my foam mock-up of Rey's belt, trying to figure it out before I transfer it over to leather, and needed a break, so here I am.

A couple of Saturdays back, Josh and I were invited to join an armor party with our local garrison. It's pretty self-explanatory, but for those who don't know, an armor party is a get together where everyone works on their different costumes, and get help if they need it. We had no idea what to expect, and if I'm honest, I was a little worried about whether or not we would fit in. Sure, we're super fun and cool people (*eye roll*), but you just never know!

When we arrived at Colin and Audra's house, they graciously invited us into their beautiful home and showed us what, in my humble opinion, was the coolest basement I've ever been in/seen. Josh and I like us some Star Wars, but compared to Colin, the term "newb" doesn't even seem adequate.

I got some good information on the direction of my Rey cosplay, and as of yesterday, thanks to Jesse, I have the last piece of clothing that I needed (arm wraps), as well as the Alice clip for my satchel. On a less-than-stellar note, I did find out that my blaster is smaller than it needs to be. I'm glad that I brought it though, instead of spending a bunch of time making it perfect, only to find out it's too small. That being said, I still plan on fixing it up and working on it, just as sort of a practice piece, so it's not a total loss.

Josh decided after speaking to several members, that Jango will be going on the back burner for the foreseeable future. It seems like Jango, along with Boba, are great when they're approved, but getting to that point takes a lot of time, effort, and money.

We met so many people, and I know it'll take a few meet-ups before we remember everyone's names, but these people were so unconditionally nice. I won't speak for Josh, but I felt awkward at times, I wanted to get to know everyone that was there, but I also didn't want to get in their way, we were, after all, at an armor party, people were a bit busy.

It was definitely a great experience. I am so excited to be finishing up my Rey costume so I can finally be apart of this amazing group!

Rey's Blaster Part 1

For anyone that is interested, here's a quick video of the beginning stages of my blaster! I'm still working on it, and will hopefully upload more videos soon!

Also, sorry this video is a bit blurry, I am not used to this camera just yet :D