Guest Blogger Jordan: OOTD - Cosplay Edition! "There's always a lighthouse..."

If you didn't notice, I like going to cons. I like them a lot and pretty recently I've gotten into cosplaying. This past weekend was Wondercon down in Anaheim, another all around comic book and pop culture con under the CCI umbrella. This year I actually had the time and money to put together a really awesome costume and I super excited about it - especially because I had a partner!

My friend Taco is pretty punk rock. He has a beard and tons of tattoos and is generally awesome. A while ago we'd tried to figure out what sort of characters we could do, but with a punk twist. I had just started play Bioshock Infinite and remembered seeing everyone and their mom dress up as Booker and Elizabeth last year at every other con I went to. And then it hit me - Punk Booker and Elizabeth! I'm not sure how many readers have played Bioshock Infinite, but it's the story of Booker, a guy who is taken to a floating city in the clouds called Columbia and told by a creepy couple, "bring us the girl and wipe away the debt." Not knowing what it means or why, he finds the girl - Elizabeth - and realizes it isn't that easy at all.

The best part about punk costumes is that you can screw up whatever you're doing and it still works. It was also fairly cheap and easy to put together. I basically went through pictures of her outfits and kind of kept some of the silhouettes and colors the same, but gave them a punk twist. I also wanted to keep some of the icons from the game included, but more subtle. There's a part in the game where Elizabeth asks Booker (who you're playing as) to choose a cameo for her for her necklace - a sparrow songbird or a cage. It's just a little moment and not super integral to the story, but whatever you choose sticks on her for the rest of the game. I wanted to try and use both, somehow.

Finding a way to do the icons was a little tougher than I anticipated, but was pretty proud when I figured it out. I had a set of gold sparrow earrings I could wear, but finding a way to work in the cage was a little more complicated. I ended up finding a stencil of a bird cage online, cut it out, and spray painted it onto the back of a jean jacket I found at a thrift store. The spray paint was like $6 at Michael's and the jacket was less than $20 - and looks so cool I'm definitely going to keep wearing it. I also found a creator on Etsy (Christine of Rosewine, here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Rosewine) who had a set of buttons with the logos of the Vigors (bottles you can drink to give Booker special abilities in the game) that I used to decorate the jacket.

For the top, Elizabeth is shown with either a vneck collared sort of top, or a corset. Since I definitely wasn't sure about the corset, I decided to simply get a pack of those Hanes white tees from Target and cut it. I ended up cutting it into a pseudo crop/tank top, but it didn't matter because punks don't care! Also, in the Burial At Sea DLC, she's shown wearing a high wasted skirt. She actually wears skirts in all outfits, but I figured if she's challenging style, she'd wear cutoffs instead. I had a pair of high waisted jeans that I'd gotten on sale from Madewell a long time ago but never grew to love. So what better way to fix them than cut them off? I didn't do a perfect cut, in case I wanted to go shorter later, and I dyed them a darker blue as well to match the royal blue color story she had going on.

Last but not least, I bought a pair of royal blue tights from Target as well and took a pair of scissors to them to distress them quite a bit. Punk is destruction and anarchy, and there was no way a good punk would wear a perfect pair of tights. Finished them off with my new favorite pair of combat boots from Forever21, and a yellow kerchief around the leg, and voila!

Ashley was a HUGE help in trying to figure out how to do my face, although I'm 90% sure I somehow messed up the smoky eye thing we were going for but again, punk rock don't care. I used the Urban Decay Naked Basics palette on my eyes and cheeks for contour, and Milani lipstick in Sangria and lipliner in fuchsia for the perfect purple color.

I might do some things later to update it but for now, this costume was a huge success. I felt appropriately bad ass in it and got tons of compliments on it and my blue hair (which was also new!). It was fairly easy, no more than a few hours max to put together, and most of all fun because I didn't have to care about perfect edges or sewing. My next convention isn't for a while and I most likely won't be cosplaying, lack of time to really do it being the number one reason, but I'll find other ways to keep you nerdy girls informed of my outfits while there!

Also HUGE thanks to my friends Jon at Joits Photography and Erik of Estrada Photography for making me look so AMAZING in my first cosplay photoshoots

Follow Jordan on twitter @jjkeebs