Renna Mira

@rennacosplay.bsky.social

She/Her. Utah cosplayer whose goal is to learn new things, share with others, & have fun doing it!

Staring at my test pieces trying to decide if I’m ready to paint the real thing. It feels like every picture I take looks different and sometimes it matches the reference and sometimes it doesn't. Color is my nemesis because I have ZERO confidence in myself when it comes to evaluating color. 😭

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As cool as it would be to get a bunch of CritRole signatures at FanX, ya girl cannot afford to drop $375+ for scribbles. Even if they are scribbles from people who have made a huge impact on my life.

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Plus, even if I could get the dye to work NOW, veg tan leather darkens over time. So eventually (maybe even by the con 😬) they would go back to being the wrong color. And so I have turned to leather paint. And as sad as I am to not be able to use dye, Daggum if I didn’t get exactly what I wanted.

Test piece immediately after painting. The tips of the feathers are painted with a slightly darker color. After adding antiquing gel into the low places, and comparing it to my fabric sample.

I REALLY wanted to dye the armor for Owlbear. And my dye tests on the untooled leather looked promising. Problem is, tooling & wet-forming darkens the leather. And the dye I’m using is so diluted, that the color of the leather has a HUGE impact on the final result. So things were coming out too warm

My two test pieces that have been tooled and then dyed, next to my original dye sample piece of leather that was not tooled. They have much warmer undertones than the sample. 
I tooled and dyed these two pieces to test how the dye would look on tooled leather. They came out very pink/warm toned. Some more test pieces on top of the fabric I’ll be using for the gambeson. The leather is much warmer times than the fabric, and they should look like shades from the same family. 😭

Y'all, I MUST purge some cosplays. I don't wear/don't have space for. Goal is getting them into the hands of someone who will actually wear them more than $$. So make an offer! Measurements: 34-36 Bust 28-30 Waist 40-42 Hip LMK if you’re interested & I’ll give you specific measurements/details!

Making good progress on the greaves! Each greaves is made up of 6 different tooled pieces. I will have to do the final assembly after dyeing them, which is very scary, because if assembly goes wrong… that’s a lot of work lost. 😭 Here’s hoping it doesn’t go wrong!

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This might be the craft room clean that I am the most proud of. I didn’t just tidy, I went DEEP. Organized. Three things away. Unearthed things that hadn’t seen the sun in years. So excited to have this space be the most functional it’s been in a long time.

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Both bracers are now mostly complete! Gotta wait until my glue arrives until I can make any more progress. So now is a good time to take a break and clean my house. Unsure if next I’ll work on the greaves or work on putting together the under layer & armor attachments. 🤔

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Awkward video because I was too lazy to set up my tripod. 😝 But all the components of bracer #1 are complete! Waiting until I have at least the other bracer and greaves done before I dye/glue/etc because I want to do as much dyeing at the same time as possible.

Figured it was about time I uploaded my cosplayer “resume” to my profile. I would absolutely ADORE more opportunities to guest at conventions, both as a panelist and a judge. And I figure the only way to make that happen is to start putting myself out there. So… hello world! Here I am. 😁

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I have been bad at updating progress on BSKY. 😅 But for the most part I’ve just been trapped in the hell of priming-sanding-priming-sanding ad nauseam. But I finally have all of these pieces in their ready-to-be-painted state! Though I’m going to hold off on that until I also have the armor done.

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Not sure I can forgive Dropout for making the blue of the shirt and the blue of the pants TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT SHADES while not including the teal of the shirt anywhere in the pants. The teal shirt is my favorite, but the fact that it doesn't actually match the pants prevents me from buying it. 😭

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Almost exactly 6 weeks after starting the first book, I finished all 2200+ pages of this trilogy. And it was very good! But I'm genuinely starting to worry I can’t find joy in books that are <500 pages long anymore. Gonna take a break from epic fantasy & look for some smaller standalones to read 😅

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