Time for Yum! Mini chocolate pudding cakes

So, we have this dessert competition every year at work.  Every year I have entered,  and every year walk away empty handed.  Well, now all of that is about to change!  Maybe...

This year I put the dessert to vote and asked which folks would like best:

• Lemon cake with cardamom icing and pistachio garnish
• Banana cream tarts with sweet cream, fresh banana, and ground walnuts
• Chocolate pudding cake with whip cream, topped with raspberry and chocolate shavings

The chocolate pudding cake was voted the winner by a large margin.  The polled audience was a good indicator for the competition, as I walked away with 2nd place out of 9 total desserts---hooray!  Because there are a number of dessert entries that folks consume, we do a "taste" format where everything is bite size.  I tried to find a recipe online for mini chocolate pudding cakes and did not have luck.  Instead, I ended up using a molten chocolate cake recipe (one that specifically called for chocolate bars instead of cocoa powder) and modified the bake time for mini muffin-sized portions.  And here they are...

Assembled Mini Chocolate Pudding Cakes

Mini Chocolate Pudding Cakes

Mini Chocolate Pudding Cakes with Whipped Cream and Raspberry
Adapted from Molten Chocolate Cake recipe from Tasty Kitchen

Makes 24 delicious teeny tiny cakes

Ingredients

Cake

• 4 pieces (squares) Semi-sweet Baking Chocolate
• ½ cups Butter
• 1 cup Powdered Sugar
• 2 whole Eggs
• 2 whole Egg Yolks
• 6 Tablespoons Flour

Toppings

• 1 cup Real Whipping Cream
• 1 Tablespoon Sugar
• Fresh raspberries
• Chocolate shavings to taste (grate some of the chocolate bar)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray mini muffin cups generously with non-stick spray.
2. Microwave chocolate and butter in large bowl on high for about 1 minute, until butter is melted. Whisk until chocolate is also melted.
3. Stir in sugar until well blended. Whisk in eggs and egg yolks. Stir in flour.
4. Divide between cups.  Bake 5 minutes until sides are firm and center is soft.
5. Combine sugar and heavy cream and whip until stiff. Top with whipped cream and raspberry.  Garnish with chocolate shavings.  

Rydia Dress

And finally...Rydia's dress!  Even though this cosplay adventure started 6 months ago, it was not until one month before ConnectiCon that I started working on the dress.  I purposely waited as long as possible so it would fit my [new] frame (goal of 6-7% weight loss, plus building muscle tone).


This was my first experience making actual clothing and feel really, really good about how it turned out!  I made one alteration from Rydia's actual dress in order to hide the bra.  I wanted the bra to provide lift and support to give the illusion of more, and in order to do that I needed to maintain the integrity of the built in bra (i.e. keep the fabric/hook between the cups).  That's why it is not fully open at the breast area.  I used clear bra straps, which are hidden by the beaded straps that Rydia's cloak clasps onto.  You can see one of the straps in the photo below:

Like all the other pieces of this costume, the dress was also custom design.  I created my own pattern from scratch by taking numerous measurements.  The fabric is a thin, stretchy knit, which allows room for movement and expansion.  There's also a hidden zipper built into the side---another new sewing adventure for me!

My crown achievement is the embroidery and beadwork, which took about 50 hours to complete.  The smaller design is made of an embroidered plus sign (+) with a diamond-shaped exterior and a single bead in the center.  The larger design is a combination of beadwork (both "jimmies" and round beads) to emphasize the highlights and embroidery to bring life to the shape as a whole.

  
What went well:

1. Overall dress shape
2. Built in bra
3. Extensive beadwork and embroidery
4. Decorative leather straps & gold eyelets
5. Designed to take on/off without any assistance (woot!)

What could be improved:

1. Less modesty!  I was a bit nervous over how revealing the dress is on the legs and hips.  I could probably take the bottom up another couple inches without feeling too terribly self conscious.  As for the sides, those should probably come up another couple inches as well.  However, I may run into issues as the top of the tights and my underwear line are *just* covered up at the current length.
2. More boobs!  After sewing in the bra, I read some good tips online to create larger, fuller breasts.  If I had started a cup size or two higher than actual and used more padding, it would have looked like there was more.
3. Stronger material for beaded straps.  I had a couple wardrobe malfunctions at CTCon when seated---the stress put on the straps when moving my shoulders caused the bead string to snap.  Originally, the straps had 4 strands of gold thread to hold it together.  Then, when I used extra strength Gutterman brand thread (2 strands), it still ended up snapping.  I'm open to suggestions on how to make this work.  A friend suggested I try fishing line, so I may give that a shot.  The holes in the beads are rather narrow, which may limit the types of materials I can try.

Rydia Circlet

The circlet was one of my most and least favorite pieces.

I am really proud of the paint job, which was done using an airbrush.  A base coat of black airbrush paint was applied first.  Then, I watered down Martha Stewart's pearl acrylic craft paints to bring the piece to life.  By using the black base coat, this enabled me to get a shadow effect in the crevices.  And, it made for richer colors from the acrylics; the gunmetal color would have otherwise come out as a lighter silvery color.

The rest of this piece was largely unsatisfying.  I would have preferred to use some sort of gem or bead in the center rather than painting this section in.  However, I did not find one that was 100% satisfactory.

After having success using Instamorph moldable plastic on part of the belt, I decided to use it on the circlet as well.  Because the headpiece is very thin, however, I found it difficult to get an even length on the band.  It was also frustrating to attach and/or mold some of the details, which sticks out quite obviously in the photo above.  This would have been alleviated somewhat had I sanded it.

Lessons learned:

1. Moldable plastic is good for large pieces; it is hard to shape nicely for thin pieces.
2. Don't be lazy! Applying a base coat color can really enhance your paint job.

Rydia Wig

I've saved the details on the best cosplay pieces for last: Rydia's dress, circlet, and her hairdo.  Ok, I didn't really save them on purpose... they were the last pieces to be constructed.  But!---you do have to admit, the wig and main clothing are essential to a successful cosplay.

Let's start with the wig first.  I spent several hours trying to search for the right wig.  Most of the options were just simply waaaaay too green.  Super green.  Neon green.  Totally-not-right-for-this-version-of-Rydia-green.  Must...have...gorgeous... sea form green.  A-ha! There we go!

I found this "mint green" curly cosplay wig on Amazon for $30.  It looked pretty good when it arrived---but I am by no means any sort of wig expert.  The curls are more gorgeous in reality than the photo above, which just doesn't do them justice.  I was loathe to trim them off ;_; but...sacrifices must be made for the sake of accurate cosplay!  Ganbatte, Elathera!

Here you can see what it looked like after styling.  I did keep a slight bit of the original curl at the bottom.  I also attempted to use layers in the back.  The Styrofoam head is sitting on top of an empty wine bottle to keep the lengths nice for storage.

I used got2Bglued hair spray to hold everything in place.  It held up ok the first day of ConnectiCon in the air conditioning.  However, after wandering around in 90 degree weather, it did not hold up as well the next day.  I think one of the problems is that I do not use enough hairspray on the roots---the tips keep their general shape, but the lock of hair itself falls out of place.  If anyone has advice for me, I am all ears!  I never use hairspray on my own hair (or pins, or curlers, etc etc), so this totally foreign territory.

Rydia cosplay complete!

Had a terrific time at CTCon last weekend!  It was nice to come across so many folks that appreciated a Rydia cosplay.  My costume earned a Judges' award in the novice division at the masquerade---one of the judges was impressed by all the beadwork and embroidery done by hand.  Next year I will have to shoot for first place!

Rydia costume for ConnectiCon 2013
Time to make: 300 hours
Time to put on: 3 hours (mostly to pincurl hair and put on makeup)
Cost: $400
Weight lost: 3%
Result: Candice's Photographer Award

Here are a couple photos of my trial costume run taken by Glitterforge Phoenix.  My apologies on the quality...I'm not good with photo editing.  Will post professionally done photos once they are available. Stay tuned!
 

Rydia of Mist - Final Fantasy IV cosplay trial run by Elathera

Rydia of Mist - Final Fantasy IV cosplay trial run by Elathera

Rydia Belt Accessories

I really like the accessories to Rydia's belt. There are a number of fun, visually pleasing details that add a touch of flair to her ensemble:

1. A pink and yellow bead chain that runs from front to back, with a large round "bead" in the very front
2. A yellow sash that hangs around Rydia's waist and drapes off to the right side.  The draped part has pink trim and is weighted by a small bead string at the bottom
3. Lastly, a sheer green draped number with embroidered interior and yellow trim.

The bead chain is fairly straightforward.  A.C. Moore had a huge supply of beads in various pearlescent colors and different sizes, as seen below.

For the larger "bead" I used InstaMorph moldable plastic.  This was my first experience working with moldable plastic, and it will definitely not be the last.  It's a very handy material in that you can shape it virtually however you want.  I bought a small can of it for $20 and still have a lot left over.

In order to get the correct shape, I made a pattern in clay and then froze the clay (so the headed plastic would not melt the mold and cause it to warp).  I then inserted the ink tube from a pen inside the mold so that there would be a clear path to string this "bead" on the rest of the chain (any type of straw or small tube would suffice).
Lastly, I airbrushed the design details.  This step is very important for moldable plastic.  If you try to paint by hand, you are going to get brush strokes and it won't look nice.  In order to only spray the targeted area on the "bead" I covered up the other sections with a paper towel.

I designed the sash as two separate components: the waist wrap and the drape.  Because my choice of fabric is a satin-like material, it is very slippery, and I was afraid that the sash would unwind itself throughout the day and malfunction.  The waist wrap goes around my waist twice and ties in the back (cloak conveniently hides the ties).  The drape attaches (clips) on to the belt.

The drape was extraordinarily frustrating to make, and it was 100% my choice of satiny fabric.  I ended up throwing out my first attempt because none of the lines were straight.  And, despite my attempts to iron and smooth out any creases, there were a number of creased lines that I could just not get out.

Satiny fabric is very difficult to sew straight.  It is slippery and uncooperative material.  I made sure to use the proper sewing needle for the sewing machine and even looked up some helpful techniques, such as placing a layer of tissue paper in between the layers of fabric to prevent slipping.  While these helped, they did not solve the problem entirely.  I am not fully satisfied with how the drape turned out, but I decided it was not worth dwelling on further to have any chance of finishing this Rydia cosplay before ConnectiCon.

For the beads at the end, I used Martha Stewart's Pearl acrylics and hand-painted them.  I did this piece before learning how to use the airbrush, so there are some paint lines on the beads if one looks close enough.
 

The green draped piece in the center was more fun.  I used sheer green fabric from Joann in two different shades of green.  I used two layers of light green for the entire drape and one layer of dark green for the middle section.  The sheer material is very delicate and frays easily.  A thin yellow gold rope was used to separate the three sections and sewed on by hand.  The yellow trim around the edges is made from the same satin fabric as the belt.

For the two gold studs, I found something close at JoAnn's in the button section.  The rest of the detail in the interior is hand-embroidered.  I used metallic silver thread for the very bottom.  The remainder was done with normal embroidery floss.  To make the flowers stand out just a bit more, I added a couple red and orange beads.

You may be wondering what that small dark green thing is in the corner.  I made two drawstring bags to hold personal effects (ID, credit cards, etc), which are tied around my arm and hidden inside the sleeves.  It helps avoid those situations where someone asks for a photo and you either A) have purses or other non-cosplay items in the picture or B) make them wait while you pass all of these items to a nearby friend.

Lessons learned:

1. Moldable plastic is awesome.
2. Airbrushing is superior to hand painting.
3. Avoid working with slippery fabrics.  It is extremely hard to sew them to one another in a straight line.   Or even to cut in a straight line.  It's impossible.
4. Hand embroidery really adds something.  Look for opportunities to include this level of detail in small amounts (enough to get that "oh-ah" effect but not enough to drive you insane).

Rydia Leggings

The leggings were a very difficult problem to solve, and I am pretty sure I went about it very ineffectively.  Rydia's leggings have giant openings toward the top with golden trim on the edges and lots of fancy gold designs.
 

 I was able to purchase leggings in a very similar color that were super opaque (partly because they were a one-size-fits-all and actually men's leggings).  That's the only piece that ended up going according to plan.


Lessons learned:

1. Do not cut stretchy material while wearing it, as it may result in overstretching and/or warping.  I thought it would be a great idea to cut the leggings into just the right shape while I had them on.  The material ended up stretching out significantly in the thigh and had to be hemmed.
2. Match the stretchiness of the fabrics being sewn together.  I really wanted to match the trim on the leggings to the yellow fabric I picked out for the rest of the outfit.  But, the yellow fabric is not stretchy as all, and in fact is downright slippery to work with!  I was able to overcome the issue with fastidious execution.  I basically measured out one-inch increments of the stretchy fabric while wearing it, and then pinned those stretched out increments to one-inch sections on the trim.  Heck of a lot of pinning work.

The slippery yellow fabric also frays very easily.  In order to make the trim, I folded and ironed the strips of trim into quarters, with the raw edges tucked into the center.  This technique seemed to work well.

I could not solve how to make the pretty swirly designs in the yellow fabric, and ended up using some of the leftover material from covering the interior of the boots.  The discontinuity in colors is a bit bothersome, but it was certainly better than not including the details at all.  I used Elmer's spray adhesive to get the designs to stick to the leggings and then did some hand-stitching to ensure they would not fall off.

Rydia Boots

 
Oh boy.  Rydia's boots are pretty crazy.  Crazy and gorgeous.  This portion of her outfit took a bit of research to try and pull off.  I spent several hours browsing the internet for all manner of possible boots that could possibly be:

• in that color
• with a thick, low heel
• reaching just above mid-calf
• that didn't have a zipper in the front (difficult to cut)
• and were less than $100

Needless to say, nothing was an absolute perfect match.  Fortunately I was able to find something fairly close on Amazon for about $70: Diba Women's pro gress riding boot.

The boot is suede, so it was fairly easy to cut.  For the intricate pattern around the edges of Rydia's boots, I decided to do beadwork.  All of it by hand.  All of it.  I probably poured close to 60 hours into plopping beads onto the boots.  When showing them to a friend, they asked why I hadn't simply used a bejeweler.  A bejeweler?  Never heard of one before!  I have heard of a Time-turner though, and could have used one to turn back the clocks before starting on this arduous beading endeavor.

Lesson learned: before tackling a difficult and/or time consuming task, do your research first!  It may end up saving you a lot of time and frustration.

It may look like the body of the boot is staying up nicely.  Lies and slander!  It was horribly flimsy even before cutting out the front.  Removing the front simply made it a lot worse.  In order to get the boots to stay up, I decided to attach them directly to the leggings.  Original plan was to use little velcro patches, however, they did not work very well. I ended up hot gluing the boots to the leggings.  Not the classiest approach, but it was at least functional.

Also, with all the beadwork I had a lot of knotted string on the interior.  In order to not have any of that nasty business show or irritate my legs from constant friction, I lined the insides with a suede-like cloth.  It ended up working nicely.

You can see that the bottom does not fit snugly to my leg, as the boot is wider around.   And, when walking (as above), the boot material bulges out toward the bottom.  If I had to do Rydia's costume over again, I would have tried to make boot covers instead of modifying the real deal.

Rydia Arm Socks

To be honest, I had no idea what an arm sock was until very recently.  Rydia wears arm socks underneath her flowing sleeves.  They are attached to her middle finger at one end and to a gold band on her upper arm at the other end.

I could not find a helpful tutorial online for making arm socks that attached at the finger, so I developed my own pattern.  This may look a little oddly shaped, but it miraculously worked out!

The basic idea behind this odd-looking design is to have more material at the upper arm where the arm is thick which then tapers down at the wrist.  Then, the top of the wrist to the middle finger tapers again.  Lastly, the end is for a simple cloth ring "fingerloop".

A stretchy material seemed appropriate to use...the sock needed to be able to bend at the elbow and flexible at the wrist.  Since the last sewing tutorial for slippery fabric helped me tremendously, I took a look at FashionSewingBlogTV's other videos.  Lo and behold, she had another fabulous tutorial for sewing stretchy fabric.

Lessons learned:

1. The type of sewing machine needle actually matters.  I picked up a ballpoint needle from Walmart.
2. Use a lower tension setting and a stitch width of 2.
3. Stretchy fabric may only be stretchy in one direction!  It is super important that you keep this in mind when cutting out your pattern.  Luckily I caught myself just in time.

For the arm bands, I ended up purchasing men's arm cuffs from Amazon.  They don't stretch per se, but do expand just a little bit.  I would not recommend using these unless you have very slim upper arms.  They are a gentle snug fit on me, yet do not look all that flattering for the exposed upper arm.

Rydia Sleeves, Part III

Only two parts remained to finish for Rydia's sleeves:

1. Incorporate gold-colored string ties for the upper arm
2. Add the starry details

For the upper arm tie, I decided to use gold eyelets and weave a thin rope through the openings.  I bought one of those multi-dial eyelet crimper tools.  The tool itself worked nicely.  The tool in the hands of yours truly, however, ran into a small snag along the way.  The multi-tool ended up being too handy for me... when the gadget is squeezed shut, it has three different (simultaneous) uses:  1) make a 1/8 inch width hole in your fabric, 2) make a 3/16 inch hole, and 3) crimps eyelets shut.   Yours truly was trying to do #1 and had the fabric all bunched up in my hand, so I actually did #1 where the eyelet was intended to go (hooray!) and inadvertently made a small hole with #2 in the sleeve (doh!).

As for the stars, I thought embroidery would look the best. But, there are a lot of stars, and...

...so I listened to my husband (for once) and went with his suggestion to try airbrushing instead.  By making star-shaped stencils and using airbrush fabric paint, I was able to get crisp edges and vibrant color without having any nasty paintstroke lines.  I wish I had bothered with airbrushing around the sleeve opening, as that did have paintstroke lines.  It was actually kind of fun to use and gives a great result (with a little bit of patience to figure out how to spray evenly).  At least, it was fun for the first couple stars.  After that, it was downright tedious.  There are about two dozen stars on one side of the sleeve.  With two sleeves and two sides each, we're talking roughly 100 stars to airbrush!

A word of advice: use a hairdryer on a low heat setting to expedite the drying time for airbrushed paint.  Also, music and/or mindless tv shows on Netflix help to pass the time.

Rydia Sleeves, Part II

So, about those intentions to blog concurrently with costume design...blogging definitely fell by the wayside.  There were a couple months where I had to take a hiatus and figured if I only had time to do one or the other, costume should come first.

As of today, I can officially say that it is finished with a week still to go before ConnectiCon.  Woohoo!

It's definitely a great feeling to have seen this process the whole way through.  Now, time to start sharing the rest of the process with you! 
Some of the posts were drafted back in January/February and simply never published until now, like this next part about the sleeves...

Sleeves are starting to take form!  At this point there are only a few finishing touches left to make, but I can't help give a sneak preview.  Again, this took me far longer than expected...I was hoping to spend perhaps 3 to 4 weeks tops to completely finish this piece.  In reality, it has taken me almost 6 weeks.  It's hard to stay motivated when ConnectiCon seems so far away.

Here are a few handy tips for how to get yourself back on track and to stay motivated:

1. Plan ahead how much time you will need to complete your project.  If you set milestones along the way, you'll gravitate toward trying to meet your self-imposed deadlines.
2. If there is a craftsman competition, register!  It will put the pressure on you to fully commit to your project.  (Be sure to register way in advance, as spots fill up quickly!)

It was not easy to sew the yellow boarder around the sleeve opening.  First, I sewed the outer edge the length of the green fabric to eliminate raw edges.  Then, I carefully pinned the yellow strip to the midpoint of the sleeve (with raw edges ironed and pressed underneath).  The hardest part was ensuring the strip length was even on both the exterior and interior of the sleeve.  I used a shorter stitch length when putting it all together.

The next step was to put a yellow/gold trim around the edge.  I traced a pattern in paper and transferred it into the cloth using pastel pencil, and then carefully hand painted the design.  The pastel transfer pre-painting is just visible below.  I was not very impressed with the quality of the paint job, but it looks ok from a distance.

Rydia Sleeves, Part I

I first began my journey on what looks to be the easiest part of Rydia's outfit: her long, flowing sleeves.  When you boil it down, there really is not much to them, yet somehow they still manage to take an inordinate amount of time.

 

Part of the snag I ran into was how to get the yellow border around the opening while still effectively hiding the inner seams.  I decided to do a test run with some scrap fabric and hand-sewed it to get a feel...

Practice attempt did not go as well as planned.  Originally, I was going to give French seams a shot --- this would hide the seams on both the outside and inside edges.  However, my mind simply cannot wrap itself around how to do that when working with one continuous piece of cloth.

I took custom measurements based on my 5' 6" height to develop a pattern for the sleeves.  It looks like the point on each sleeve hangs just below Rydia's knee when her arm is out straight, and falls below her knee when her arm is folded.  I used tissue paper to make the pattern (for best results, iron or flatten prior to making a pattern).  Here you can see the work in progress with the yellow trim around the sleeve opening:

It's a slippery material.  This is good because it will help the sleeves to "flow" nicely.  But, it makes it darn tricky to sew.  I've tried working with slippery fabrics before with lots of frustration and mixed results.  This time I am [hopefully] coming at this more prepared.  I found a helpful video that provides some tips on working with slippery fabric.  It was incredibly helpful!  I never eealized before that all those different dials on the sewing machine had a real purpose.

Lesson learned: for sewing slippery fabrics, use a lower tension setting, smaller needle, and shorter stitch length.