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missemmikat · 1 year
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Wig Seller Masterlist
Some people on were asking if I had a post about this and I didn’t, so I thought I’d make a big master post of wig companies I like! It’s in alphabetical order, with information about them listed afterwards. Currently I have fifteen brands on this list, but if I try and am really impressed by another, I’ll add it. I hope maybe one of them has that hard to find wig you’ve been searching for! I have the color samples for Arda, Assist, Classe, Coscraft, Cyperous, Kasou, and Swallowtail and am willing to help you check if a color from them is correct or not.
Airily
Japan only brand, so you’ll need a shopping service. Wide range of colors, including some that are hard to match in other lines, and a lot of base styles that I like more than other brands. Sells both wefts and lace front pieces. Lace hairline wigs are also available. Fit is medium (not particularly large or small). Price is higher. Swatch book not available.
Alice Garden/aiyaya
Amazon wig brand selling lolita/natural looking wigs. The variety is not good but if they have something that looks like what you need to wear with very little styling, you won’t get something as nice for the price! Styles are all very natural looking. Fit is on the smaller end of medium. Price is low. Swatch book not available.
Aoi Wig
Taobao brand doing character wigs, so a shopping service is required. These are hands down the best character wigs I’ve ever worked with. If you don’t want to do a ton of styling and they have the character you want, you literally cannot go wrong here. Fiber isn’t the world’s most durable but will hold up for multiple wears, and the price is good enough to make up for it. Fit is slightly small but larger than most taobao wigs. Price is a bit high for taobao but is still dirt cheap for what you get. Swatch books not available but the photo color is exceedingly accurate.
Arda Wigs
American based. One of the most common brands for a REASON! Wide range of colors in a wide range of styles. If you have a larger head or a lot of hair, this is your new best friend. They sell lace fronts but not individual lace pieces. The big problem with them, however, is the stock issues. Colors run out quickly so sometimes you have to compromise on which style you buy, or place an order from one of their sister sites in another country that actually has the color you need. Nobody has as much hair in their wigs as they do, which can actually be a problem in some styles; be prepared to pluck lace fronts and use thinning shears. Fit is LARGE; they have the largest wigs in the market. Price is a bit high but not exorbitant. Swatch rings are available for both their fiber types
Assist
Japanese brand, ships worldwide but EMS/fedex only so you’ll probably want to group order. Nobody in the market has as many colors as Assist; between their premium and basic lines, they have over 600 colors! DO NOT TRUST THEIR PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY TO PICK COLORS; you need to buy their swatch books or ask a friend who has them to help you choose, because those photos can be criminally inaccurate. If you ever order from them, buy a bottle of Face Cover Glue and watch it change your life as “wig sticks away from face and face framing pieces move out of place” become a distant memory, and I adore their contacts! They sell wefts and lace pieces in their premium line but not their basic. Price varies; Premium line is a great price for what you get, but Basic is incredibly cheap (but not quite as good quality). Fit is SMALL; they’re the smallest of the Japanese brands and if you’ve ever found taobao wigs too small, they’ll also be too small for you. Swatch books are available and also required.
Blue Beard
Taobao character wig brand, so shopping service is required. Blue Beard wigs are all affordable and decent. You won’t ever get a bad wig from them, but I’ve found that their wigs tend to require a lot of maintenance. Wide range of characters! No wefts available. When you find stolen taobao wig photos, more often than not they’re stealing from Blue Beard. The photos are all color accurate, but you’ll typically need to do a lot of styling to make the wig match the photo. Price is great for what you get. Fit is medium to small. No swatches available.
Classe
Japanese brand that requires a shopping service but oh what a brand it is. Classe has a wide range of colors but where it truly excels is in the range of extra styling supply options. You can buy lace front pieces, yes, but you can also buy stand alone skin top pieces in center whorl or long for parts. No brand is as flexible with what you can do with their wigs, not by a long shot. Make sure to check out their styling blog! Even if it’s all in Japanese, the diagrams are clear and the techniques are genuine life savers. The fiber is beautiful and the website’s color suggestion feature where the desktop version tells you a list of characters they’d use this color for makes picking colors a lot easier. You’ll pay a lot for them, but what you get will be worth it. Fit is a true medium, comparable to non-Arda western brands. Swatch books are available and affordable.
Coscraft
Based in the UK but ships worldwide despite being way too unknown outside Europe. Coscraft is an absolute gem of a site with a wide range of colors (more than 80!) with plenty that you won’t find in other non-Asian brands, a decently large variety of base styles to choose from, and wefts and separate lace front pieces in every color. Also for some reason they sell ridiculously inexpensive corset coutil so for all the craftsmanship people, new source acquired! Even if you’re outside of Europe, Coscraft is so nice for its price that with a favorable exchange rate, they can be more than worth checking out. Fit is larger medium; it won’t be too big or too small on most people. Color swatch ring is available.
Cyperous
Japanese cosplay wig source that theoretically ships EMS outside Japan but I haven’t been able to get that to work for years so shopping service it is. Pour one out for Cyperous; they’re clearly in decline but as one of the original heat resist brands, they’re still here and still worth ordering from while you can. Nobody has as beautiful and delicate blondes as Cyperous; their Milky and White Milky are the best blondes I’ve ever used. They have a nice selection of lace wigs and the much rarer lace bang wigs as well as regular wigs, and wefts of course. No other brand I’ve seen has synthetic wigs that photograph as much like real hair as Cyperous. They can tangle a lot as a result but it’s worth the upkeep. I have no idea how long they’ll keep limping along, but look them up before it’s too late. Price is high but reasonable for what it is. Fit is a true medium. Swatches used to be available and no longer seem to be, but the photos are pretty accurate to my ancient swatch ring and newer wigs.
Five Wits Wigs
Five Wits is the most criminally underrated of the American wig companies because most of their stock photos suck. They really, really, really suck. The photos are somehow incredibly color accurate but represent the wigs as pulled directly from bag and plopped onto someone’s head or a mannequin without even combing them in a flattering way. I wrote them off until I got to see their booth at a con and realized quickly that these wigs are wonderfully made with beautiful fiber that typically photographs like a dream (how do they get such bad stock photos?!) and is so easy to style! Five Wits mostly stocks character wigs, but many of them are versatile enough to use for tons of other things and they offer wefts for some of their colors. The owners are friendly, the service is great, the actual wigs are beautiful, the price for what you get is wonderful, but those dang stock photos keep people from noticing why Five Wits is one of my favorite suppliers! Price is great for what you’re getting, especially for an American brand. The fit is larger end of medium (very few people find it too big or too small). They don’t carry swatch books but every single stock photo, despite being terrible, is an incredibly accurate depiction of the color so feel free to judge colors accordingly.
Kasou
I almost hesitate to put Kasou on here considering that one of the problems with them is that their shipping when it’s from their Chinese warehouse is occasionally “good luck getting your wig”, and I disqualified another past favorite of mine for this, but Kasou squeaked onto this list for two reasons: 1) their fiber and wigs really are spectacular and 2) they have the ONLY Jolyne Kujo pre made wig that I don’t hate. Order from them with confidence that whatever you get will be nice, but keep in mind that there are enough people who’ve had issues with wigs from their Chinese warehouse that you want to give yourself months of lead time if you go that route. They have a decent if slightly expensive price range, medium cap fit, and they do offer swatches.
L-Email / wig-supplier
Not everyone needs premium wigs for heavy styling all the time, and that’s where L-Email comes in. This Chinese-based seller that ships internationally will sell you decent character wigs and decent base wigs for an incredibly affordable price. Nothing from here is going to be spectacular, but if your budget is low and you’re willing to put in a bunch of effort to make up for that, what you need is just a plain wig without tons of styling, or you want a character wig that’s a bit easier to upgrade with extra styling work than other brands because the hardest parts are typically done for you, L-Email is a great option for you. They’re just all around decent, and sometimes that’s what you need. Fit is medium, prices are pretty affordable especially if you go in with friends for shipping, and there aren’t swatches but the photos are typically pretty color accurate.
Sepia
One of the absolute oldest wig companies based in America; every cosplayer active before 2007 has bought at least one Sepia wig. They’re still here though, and now they have some heat resist lace fronts! Their range of fantasy colors is pretty atrocious but if you want some beautiful natural colors, you could do worse than shop here, especially considering there’s at least one more expensive brand (that I’m not putting in this list) that sources lace fronts from Sepia and resells! Fit is medium, price is medium, I haven’t bothered to see if they have swatches because I’m an ancient cosplayer and have the typical Sepia color codes memorized.
Swallowtail
If you’ve heard of this Japanese (shopping service required) wig brand before, it’s probably because the canon wigs in My Dress-Up Darling all come from Swallowtail. There’s more reasons than flexing about how you have the canon Shizuku-tan wig to consider Swallowtail, though! They have a massive color range with a lot of colors I’ve seen nowhere else in the world, and while the fiber isn’t the world’s most durable and is a bit shiny for my tastes in some colors, they’re affordable enough to be a competitive option even if you have to use a shopping service from outside Japan. They offer a full range of wefts and lace pieces and clip ons and a wide variety of base styles. The fit seems to be pretty true medium, and they definitely offer swatches (in the most chaotic ring setup I’ve ever seen. I have to go fix that sometime.)
Sylvia_Wig
You can get a lot of decent lace fronts on AliExpress, but Sylvia is my hands down favorite. If you need a natural looking lace front and you don’t want to spend tons of money, this seller is where you should be looking first. There aren’t any swatches or wefts, true, but the wigs have so much more lace than any of the American or Japanese cosplay wig brands, the caps run much larger than most taobao/aliexpress brands (comparable to Kasou or Five Wits), and there’s still plenty of hair to do more basic styles. The fiber is a bit thin and shiny, but it still photographs like a dream, and dollar for dollar you won’t find a better balance between quality lace front and budget friendliness than here. The hairlines are so natural that I have a few from here that haven’t required a single hair plucked to just… melt into my skin. There’s a reason this is my go to first source if I want a lace front and it’s not going to be heavily anime styled (like JoJo or Dragon Ball or whatever). Color stock photos are incredibly accurate; you can trust that what you see is what you’ll get!
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missemmikat · 1 year
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What are the best cosplay tips blogs these days?
In particular, I'm just looking where to find natural looking men's short wigs. Probably lace front? Kinda curly.
I need to update my Riley cosplay for the 2020s! Please and thank you!
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missemmikat · 5 years
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✨✨ Deja deja deja vu, believe it and it will come true ✨✨
- Photog: @peculiartrash Rabbit: @emmi-kat
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missemmikat · 5 years
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I post my cosplays more frequently @missemmikat  on instagram!
My Other Socials
Since everyone is freaking out, I figured I’d give y’all alternative place to follow me.  I’m on Twitter, Instagram, ArtStation, Mastodon (on the art instance), and Society6 as @emmikatjohnson  Same name as here, so it should be easy to remember!
And if you’re looking for a new place to set up shop, I would gladly recommend Mastodon!  It has different instances for different topics, and my experience in the art instance has been nothing but positive!
That being said, I will continue to post here, just as before.  Take care, everyone!  Try not to worry about the things that may come. 💕
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missemmikat · 6 years
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Another tip for gluing foam with hot glue!  This is the last one for now, and I have some Genos progress photos coming soon.
You probably have seen cosplayers achieve almost invisible seams when using contact cement to glue together EVA foam edges into dome shaped armor.  This is impossible with hot glue since the edges don’t bond instantly.  However, here is a method that creates hot glue seams that look almost as good as contact cement seams!
(Pictures are ordered left to right, top to bottom)
1.  Cut out the pieces of foam that need to be glued together.
2.  Using a heat gun, heat form the foam pieces to whatever shape they need to be.
3.  Using Scotch tape or another type of tape that won’t mar the foam surface, tape the two edges that need gluing together.  Start with one piece of tape, press the edges as flush as possible, and quickly tape it together.  Work your way to the other end of the piece, pressing the edges flush and taping them as you go.  Overlap each strip of tape over the previous strip.
4.  This is what it should like when the edges are taped together.
5.  Flip the armor piece over to the backside.  Starting at one end of the seam, press the tip of your hot glue gun in between the two edges of the seam.
6.  Slowly start squeezing hot glue into the seam, carefully sliding the hot glue gun tip between the seam edges.  As you glue, press the tip of the glue gun as deep into the seam as possible.   You will feel a lot of resistance, but don’t be afraid to press hard.
7.  Once you finish gluing the seam, squeeze some excess hot glue over the seam to make it more durable.  Let it cool completely.
8.  Flip the armor piece to the right side and carefully peel off the tape.
9.  This is what the finished seam looks like!  It isn’t perfect, but it is far cleaner than trying to hot glue the seams together without taping them first.
Using hot glue for gluing seams will yield a less durable and less seamless result than contact cement.  If you want maximum durability, use contact cement.
Let me know if you have any questions!
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missemmikat · 6 years
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3D-printed Sovereign Armor with LED lights [x]
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missemmikat · 6 years
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WOOOOHOOOOO x2 BOOTS ARE OFFICIALLY DONE!!! AND IM GONNA TELL YOU EXACTLY HOW I PUT THEM TOGETHER MMMHHMMMMM
the feet and bracer are two different pieces that i patterned myself and cut out of eva floor mats!! i glued together the necessary seams using barge contact cement!! this is REALLY important because i find it hides seams better than hot glue and keeps the foam nice and smooth!!
details were added using an xacto knife and a heat gun (my new cosplay holy grail), then the seams were sealed using caulk!! after that i used two coats of plasti dip, one-two coats of primer (if it was black) and two coats of color!!
after that it was weathered using cheap acrylics!! i liked to mix a bit of brown and red with black for the yellow portions since it seemed to not make the contrast so sharp!! after that i went over with my silver and drybrushed it onto high impact areas and then certain spots to give a more “heavy chip” effect!!
next post is about attaching!!
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missemmikat · 6 years
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missemmikat · 6 years
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missemmikat · 6 years
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KIMBERLEY MARGARITA
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missemmikat · 6 years
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Cosplay (and general sewing) life hack- easy pleats with a fork! For all those school girl uniform cosplays and more :) 
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missemmikat · 6 years
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Iridescent armor….#armor #pauldron #iridescent
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missemmikat · 7 years
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Ice Cream Man!  
Did a test run of my Halloween costume, today! ^_^ The goggles are a pain to wear, so I generally don’t.  Also, still not sure what to do about hands + ice cream scoops, but it’d be a pain for my hands to not be available, so I’m just gonna hold them.
But there’s so much glitter in the freezer, it makes me happy!
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missemmikat · 7 years
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Check it out! My art is displayed at Emerald City ComiCon! Don’t worry, Louisa’s a ghostly friend of the Ghostbusters. ;P. Booth #1673
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missemmikat · 7 years
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One Short Day at Emerald City Comic Con with @ashhollow!  Ran into another Elphaba the same day we were cosplaying Wicked, and then I saw this Glinda the next day.  There were others, but I didn’t get their pictures.
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missemmikat · 7 years
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missemmikat · 7 years
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