The past few months have been exhausting.  My grandmother passed away after a long illness and my boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer and had major surgery.  The year has been riddled with grief and stress.  I knew I needed to do something to get back on track creatively, but I wasn’t sure what.  On a whim, I decided to make a Dark Phoenix costume and go meet Stan Lee at C2E2.

I had the idea a couple years ago, but it wasn’t until last year’s Chestbridge cosplay fun that the idea of dressing up in costume seemed like a good idea.  (In high school, I thought cosplay and Pokemon were dumb, and now here I am making costumes and addicted to Pokemon Go.  Oh well.)

In the course of 14 hours over 2 days, I made a Dark Phoenix costume and little fire unicorn in honor of my favorite scene in the 90s X-Men cartoon.  Thankfully Vogue Fabrics had the perfect metallic spandex fabric in both red and gold, as well as some felt for the little flame unicorn.

I also won Dark Phoenix cosplay bingo by taking photos with Jean Grey, Phoenix, and Wolverine on Sunday.  As a bonus, my friend CJ was dressed up as Stan Lee, so I managed to snag a photo with him, too.

The real Stan Lee looked me in the eyes and said, “Well done,” in the brief few seconds I got to meet him.  It was a nice reprieve from the stress of the past few months.  The only problem is that now I just want to make costumes all the time… although there are much worse problems.

Kali Butterfly

Aluminum Jewelry