Day 58

Day 58...

The morning started with a special delivery. Through doing the Disney Dream Girls podcast and being part of the Disney community I have made lots of new friends, most of whom I have never even met. One of these Disney loving friends, Angie, has been making (amongst lots of other creative endeavours) face masks...Disney ones of course and this morning mine arrived and they are fab! I figure if I have to wear a mask in future I'm going to try and make it as fun an experience as I can and bring a little Disney magic to it.

The twist in this tale is that the masks should have arrived yesterday...and in fact they did but not at my house. Late yesterday morning I took a call on pre-school's phone from a lady asking to speak to me and explaining she had a parcel for me. I was a tad confused because I'd not ordered anything for pre-school and she then went on to apologise for opening the parcel and said it was some masks. At that point I knew what the parcel was but couldn't figure out how this lady was phoning me on pre-school's phone number. The courier had my email and landline number but not my mobile number and definitely not pre-school's number. So we arranged for her to drop the parcel around this morning which she dutifully did and I thanked her by giving her some Hotel Chocolate mini slabs that I happened to have in. So I asked her...'how did you find me?'...turns out she googled me! Well that's a first!

Today was then split between a little work; mainly reading more government documents and to be honest I had to stop reading because my eyes were crossing! Next I made a couple of cakes; one is for a special occasion tomorrow (more details later) and the second was a low carb banana bread which is lovely. Then this afternoon I did some more podcast recording with the lovely Michelle for our Disney Dream Girls show and today we chatted with Seth Kubersky who works for The Unofficial Guides and was chatting to us about the re-opening of Universal Studios CityWalk area yesterday.

More podcast recording

Simon has been busy this week making helmets and has now cast three using the new mold and one from the existing mold. After cleaning them up he took over the kitchen to wash them!

And the finished four...

Oh and in amongst all that we still managed to get out for a couple of miles walk at lunchtime! Another surprisingly busy day, and tomorrow we have another lockdown birthday to celebrate!

xx

Day 49

Day 49...

Well today has been another mix of work and chill. A few emails checked and dealt with, some interesting links followed, articles read and information gleaned and stored.

Today we received an order from an online butchers that I had placed at the beginning of the lockdown when I was struggling to get some items on my normal grocery shop. So I took the plunge and placed an order even though the delivery was at that point about 5 weeks away. Well today it arrived and I had to get Molly to move the box from the front door to the kitchen for me because I couldn't lift it...12kg of meat...think we might be ok for a while...although being the carnivore family that we are...

Simon and I took our usual walk out at lunchtime in the glorious sunshine and decided to walk over the fields today.

I then enjoyed a relaxed afternoon of sitting outside drinking coffee, topping up my vitamin D and reading my current book by Dr Ted Naiman called The P:E Diet...

...along with completing my current jigsaw...

...looks like I'll have to start a new one tomorrow so I may have to place another order so I have one ready and waiting for when I complete it!

Simon has spent an hour or so out in the garage this evening as the resin he needed for fibre glassing arrived today which has meant he has been able to complete the other half of the outer shell of his Mandalorian helmet mold.

Molly has spent her day sorting through all her photography work and is just in the process of re-organising the digital files which sounds like a mammoth job and one where she will probably need yet another hard disk. You can see some of her work on her website for Shutter Studios.This evening she took over the living room to complete her karate class online via Zoom!

So all in all a pretty decent day in our house.

Stay safe xx

Day 47

Day 47...

And Happy Star Wars Day...May the 4th Be With You!

Sorry it had to be said and quite appropriate in this house today as most of Simon's day has been spent with the next stage of his Mandalorian helmet mold making process. He is now beginning to make the outer shell of the mold which is made from fibre glass but unfortunately he needs more fibre glass to complete the project so at the moment the outer shell is only half completed.

He's also been working on some of the detail work for the mouse droid by assembling some of the 3D printed parts.

It is five years since we got into this cosplay malarkey which all stemmed from plans for Simon's 50th birthday to go to Star Wars Celebration in July 2016. This resulted in a year spent making Mandalorian costumes for both us so that we could attend the event in style. As a result we became members of the Mandalorian Mercs and then as we attended more troops and met more like minded people we became members of Joker Squad and East Midlands Garrison.

Simon and I as Mandalorian's at Legoland Winsdor, May 2018

Over the past five years we have made lots of new friends, we have attended numerous conventions and events, we have trooped twice at Legoland Winsdor for their Star Wars Weekends, we have helped raise money for a number of charities, we have given out too many high-fives to count and made people smile. We even got to meet one of the creative forces behind the various Star Wars animation series, Dave Filoni - such a lovely guy, a fabulous experience and one that resulted in a new tattoo for me! See my post - My Disney Sleeve

Meeting Dave Filoni at Star Wars Celebration, July 2016

Star Wars tattoo inspired by meeting Dave Filoni

I now cosplay as one of the characters from his series Star Wars Rebels, Governor Pryce and Simon has fulfilled a life long ambition and is now a Stormtrooper.

Governor Pryce & Stormtrooper - December 2019

The Star Wars universe has opened up a whole new world to us, one where we have made new friends, helped charities and one that has become an integral part of our lives.

The rest of the day has been fairly quiet; a few odd jobs done around the house, a couple of work emails and phone calls and a little more jigsaw completed. We managed to squeeze in a quick two mile walk out this afternoon in between coats of resin and fibre glassing as well!

So all in all not a bad day...May The Force Be With You...

xx

Day 45

Day 45...

And it's the weekend! And the sun is shining after a very grey week!

First job of the day was for me and Molls to head off to get our click and collect grocery shop. Very happy that we were collecting today as I think the queue into the store was one of the longest we'd seen. Saturday morning wouldn't be my choice of shopping day ordinarily at the best of times as I never want shopping to interfere with weekend plans but today it was a case of going with whatever delivery slot I could get. The great thing was that when we parked up at the lockers one of the store employees (who me and Molls affectionately call Marky Mark - not to his face though), was there, saw us and brought our shopping straight to us - no messing!

Once home we had the job of wiping everything down and getting rid of what packaging we could before we could put it all away.

Simon has spent the day building a new helmet mold which has involved multiple layers of latex being applied to the master helmet which is a long process as it's apply a layer...leave it...apply a layer...leave it and so on! This is the progress so far but there is still a long way to go yet;

Initial thin layers

Mixing latex solution and catalyst

More layers going on and many more needed

My afternoon was helping Simon where I could as in between helmet mold making he was sorting out his work space; a compact area that has lots of cables...lots and lots of cables...my main job was supplying the coffee! Oh and a little more online birthday shopping! Oops!

It is sometime hard to grasp the situation that we are in at the moment on days like today when we have had a pretty ordinary day, in fact the sort of weekend day we would have had prior to all this virus malarkey. Watching a YouTube video by Dr Hope's Sick Notes it really brought home what is happening to those at the front line and how awful this virus is and just how long this is all going to go on for. Please pop over and give his videos a watch for a insight into what our NHS are coping with.

It makes it really hard seeing social media posts from people who are blatantly ignoring the guidelines to stay at home, people venturing further afield than they are supposed to and meeting up with people outside of their household. Do people not understand that stay at home means stay at home and not pop round to your 'insert name of designated individual'...you may think you're being safe but it really is a slap in the face for the rest of us who are making sacrifices to do as we are told.

My heart breaks for my Molly and her fella as they have not been able to see each other now since this whole thing cracked off. They had weekends booked off work and plans to do things that simply have not been able to happen. They live 190 miles apart as it is so their time together has always been that bit more precious so when I see others flaunting the rules so blatantly it really does make me quite mad!

We all need to be in this together, it is not one rule for one and one for another we must all do the same. Stay home, simple...

xx

Day 44

Day 44...

Last day of the working week and we were actually up and about pretty early today which turned out to be a good thing as Simon sold another Mandalorian helmet! So first job of the morning was packing and posting it out to the US.

Next job was the online grocery shop as tomorrow is pick up day! Which took me way longer than I would have liked; time spent finding alternatives to unavailable items and noticing a fair few items with price changes and not in the direction I would have preferred!

There was also a little more online birthday shopping followed by trying to track down icing sugar of all things. Molly's birthday is in about 10 days or so and she has plans to bake her own birthday cake which needs icing sugar to make the required buttercream. Now I do enjoy baking and I think Molly has picked this up from me, although she's a lot more adventurous than I am, but being a low carb house it's not something we do that often and consequently I don't tend to keep baking items in the cupboard. So as there was no icing sugar available via the online grocery shop my next option was Amazon (of course) which would be great if I wanted to buy in bulk or wanted a flavoured icing sugar (which I didn't even know existed) but that won't be delivered until Molly's actual birthday (at the earliest)...wonder if I could wrap it as a present for her!!

Lunchtime saw our usual 2 mile walk despite the grey clouds and a few spots of rain as we returned home we still managed a good pace. Thankfully the rest of the afternoon brightened up and ended with a bright and sunny evening.

This afternoon I spent a lovely hour or so chatting with my friend Michelle and recording a new podcast episode with her. It was lovely to chat away and hear how well she is doing with this horrid virus; she sounded so much better than when we last spoke and although it has really taken it out of her she is getting there. She has another test tomorrow to determine whether she is now negative...fingers crossed for her.

Knowing someone who has been diagnosed with this awful virus really helps to confirm that this is a disease that we need to stop and that the only way we can do this is to keep this lockdown going for as long as we need to. I really think an approach of 'slow and steady' wins the race is needed; there is no point in jumping back into normal life too soon only to have to go back into lockdown later on. Let's get this thing sorted now; let's adopt an attitude of a bit of inconvenience now is going to save us all so much in the future. And while we all do that can the government please get themselves organised with testing, PPE, research into treatments and vaccine and formatting a plan out of this..Oh and please make sure our NHS staff get the rewards they deserve? Don't think that's too much to ask?!

xx

Day 43

Day 43...

Today has been a pretty quiet day. There was not much happening on the work front just a return to complete and a couple of phone calls. So the majority of my day was spent online buying birthday presents as I have at least 4...or is it 5...birthdays coming up in the next couple of weeks! May is a busy month!

Despite another grey day we ventured out at lunchtime and are now pretty consistent in our 2 miles done in 39 minutes. It started to rain a little on the way back and I did comment that this time last week I was in shorts and a t-shirt while today the winter coat was back out and I had gloves on!

I was reminded this morning through Facebook memories that three years ago we took part in our first Star Wars Weekend at Legoland Windsor. This was an event held over the closest weekend to May 4th...because that's the official Star Wars day (May the 4th be with you!!!) and involved multiple costuming groups held over three days.

Back in 2017 we attended just one of the days as part of the Mandalorian Mercs, representing the UK clan know as the Vok'Chi. The event organised by Legoland involved Star Wars costuming groups from across the UK who provided screen accurate characters to roam their park and take part in daily parades as part of a weekend devoted to all things Star Wars. In return for the costuming groups donating their time Legoland donated £15,000 to a childrens hospice called Alexander Devine.

It was a great event and we met lots of people which ultimately resulted in our joining another costuming group called Joker Squad which enabled Simon to create his Stormtrooper and me to become Governor Pryce.

Here are a couple of photos from our first Legoland event back in 2017;

With our fellow Mandalorian Mercs

It was a fun and tiring day full of high fives, smiles and photos and a fantastic opportunity to help raise money for a very worthwhile cause.

The rest of today was spent doing a little more on my jigsaw followed by a home workout; Simon and Molly down the gym again with me doing a few kettle bell moves!

See you tomorrow,
xx

Adventures in Cosplay

Over the last couple of years I have taken a step into the world of cosplay, more specifically the world of Star Wars cosplay!

This all came about when we were deciding what to do to celebrate Simon's 'birthday of a significant number' a few years ago. It was July/August 2015 a year before said birthday and the conversation turned to what Simon would like to do to mark the occasion and I mentioned that there was this 'Star Wars Celebration thing' in London that might be worth a look.

So we decided to book tickets for the three day event...and then a few days later came the infamous words from Simon 'well if we're going it'd be rubbish walking around in jeans and t-shirt...how about going in costume?' My response was along the lines of 'well I'm not wearing Princess Leia's brass bikini!!'

And the rest as they say is history...check out these previous posts to see what we got up to!
Star Wars Celebration
Black Thread and a Heat Gun
The Force is Strong
Looking Ahead

Since Celebration in 2016 we have joined two more costuming groups; Joker Squad and East Midlands Garrison. We have been able to troop at Legoland in Windsor in both 2017 and 2018 as part of their annual Star Wars Weekend to help raise money for a children's hospice along with lots of other conventions and events. We even turned up in costume at the pre-school I manage just before we finished for this years Summer break!

We have continued to troop as Mandalorians and Simon has been keen to keep our kits functional and upgraded. He has made special 3D printed parts to house Go-Pro cameras, updated parts as they've shown wear and tear, upgraded belt pouches and even as I type he has been upgrading the holsters for my guns!!

Simon's skill-set over the last couple of years has grown and grown; everything from 3D printing to moulding and cold casting aluminium helmets to just recently mastering leather-work. And he is loving every minute of it; he just loves the challenge of figuring something out and taking it from an idea in his head to a fully fledged and working piece of costuming. Any chance he gets to 'make something' he jumps at and nothing seems to phase him.

As we have trooped with new costuming groups whose ranks include a multitude of Star Wars characters I began to think about the possibility of taking on another costume and this time one where I didn't have to wear a helmet. As much as I love my Mandalorian costume I do miss the ability to interact with people face to face. So between Simon and I we began to muse about what to do.

The choice seemed to come down to either being a specific character or a generic officer type role. The problem with being a specific character though meant that when trooping there can only be one of that particular character, after all you can't have two Princess Leia's trooping together! And in both groups that we now belong to there are very well established members already trooping fantastically as specific characters; so if I was going to do a named character it had to be someone that wasn't already being done....so who could I do...

As it was Simon and I are both great fans of the animated series 'Star Wars Rebels' and in the series there is an Imperial Officer called Governor Arihnda Pryce.

This looked the perfect character for me to have a go at; I could be a specific character that no-one in our costuming groups was currently doing and one that would be recognised by devoted Star Wars fans.

So where to start? Now the great thing about the Star Wars world of costuming is that there are numerous groups out there offering advice and detailed information. One such place is the 501st Garrison who have a data bank of costumes containing detailed information about colours, styles, accessories in fact everything to do with a specific character. By following their data bank guidelines I knew that the costume we created would not only be correct but would 'pass' any costuming group requirements. The ethos of all costuming groups is to ensure that the costumes representing them are made to the highest quality and are as screen accurate as possible. The 501st data bank has a great set of instructions for lots of characters, Governor Pryce included, so we decided to use those as our guide.

The first thing was to source the uniform. Now neither Simon or I are seamstresses, we both dabble with material and the sewing machine but do not have the skills to construct a two-piece uniform from scratch. So off to the internet we went! We used a site called cosplaysky.co.uk who stock a multitude of movie costumes that are of a high quality but that can also be made to measure. So we found the correct Imperial Officer uniform, input my measurements and waited. A couple of weeks later and my uniform arrived, then we could start the serious business of making it resemble Governor Pryce.

First thing we tackled was the belt; we found one online and dutifully ordered it but when it arrived we realised that the buckle was not quite correct. The standard Imperial Officer belt is not the same as the one that Governor Pryce wears. In steps Simon with his 3D printing and crafting skills. He was able to produce the correct detail, attach to the buckle and then adjust the belt to match the characters.

This was how the belt looked originally

And how the belt looks after modifications

Simon was able to 3D print the centre code disk and from that he then made a cold cast aluminium version. This was then cleaned and polished and attached to the buckle which was in turn re-affixed to the belt so that a single rivet was visible to the left of the buckle.

Simon also used his 3D printing skills when it came to the 'code cylinders' that sit in the pockets of the jacket. Once the 3D model had been printed Simon was again able to cold cast in aluminium the two that I needed.

This photo shows freshly cast code cylinder and code disk

The finished code cylinders

I also needed the correct 'rank bar' to attach to my jacket. Now luckily for us we happen to know someone through our Joker Squad family who makes these. So the lovely Chris Smith was able to come up with this for me;

The next piece of the uniform required a little sewing. This was for the collar insignia; cut from some black fabric Simon was then able to create a seam around the edge using the sewing machine which gave them a 'sew-on badge' effect. I was then able to sew them onto the collar by hand (with a little help from 'wonder-web' to keep them in place).

That just left gloves, boots, hair and make-up to sort. Gloves and the wig were an easy on-line purchase.

Boots were a little more tricky as the first pair we tried were not as we hoped and had a seam running up the front which we didn't want. So back to the internet and we purchased a pair of riding boots which look so much better, although they do require a bit of wearing in!!

Wearing them around the house!!

So then it was a case of enlisting help from my good friend Jo who was able to cut the wig to match the character and then it was left to me to have a play around with the make-up!

Make-up test!

So with all this done we can now see the final results! Me as Governor Arihnda Pryce...

...right best get out there and do some trooping!

Working for Disney...well...almost!

OK so that title may not be quite right but this is the closest I've gotten to working for Disney!

So let me explain. From my previous posts you may be aware that Simon and I have ventured into the world of cosplay and have become official members of the Mandalorian Mercs Costuming Club. Now just to bring you up to speed Mandalorian Mercs are based around the Star Wars character of Boba Fett and Simon, over the past 18 months, has created costumes for us both. This culminated with us becoming official members in June of this year closely followed by our first outing at Star Wars Celebration London in July.

Since July we took part in a comic-con at York and then we spotted an event that we just couldn't resist. To mark the launch of the new Star Wars Rogue One toys the Disney Store in the UK were on the look out for costumed characters to help with their promotional events. Disney Store contacted the Mandalorian Mercs and other costuming clubs looking for volunteers and as we are fortunate to live close to the Disney Store in Nottingham we put our names forward.

So on Sunday 2nd October we got our kit together and headed off into Nottingham and the Intu Victoria Centre. I must admit rolling a rather large storage trunk through the centre's car park and into the mall area was a bit strange...especially when bumping into an old work colleague while waiting for the elevator. And I'm not really sure what our teenage daughter and her friend thought to it all as they had taken advantage and joined us so they could go shopping!

Thankfully we hadn't got far to go between the elevator and the Disney Store and at 10.30am on a Sunday morning it wasn't too busy. As this was our first 'troop' like this we really didn't know what to expect but on arrival the staff couldn't have been more welcoming and pleased to see us and completely put any nerves and apprehension to bed.

So going behind the scenes or 'off stage' as I think it's referred to in Disney speak, we were shown to a very small staff room where we could get changed. Abi and the team were very intrigued by our costumes and we explained how we had become involved with the world of cosplay and how Simon had created the costumes, which inevitably led to the trying on of helmets!

Now to change the pair of us into Mandalorians takes about 45 minutes...there are lots of parts to each of our costumes that have to be put on in a certain order, especially when helping each other at the same time! But once in costume we made our way 'on stage' (otherwise known as the shop floor) but not before the store manager changed the video that was playing in store to a Star Wars themed one!

Front of store!

We then spent the next four hours camped out at the front of the store welcoming guests of all ages. We had some great interactions with lots of 'high-5's', 'fist bumps' and photos...lots of photos! The reaction from the public was often that of surprise but always with great humour and a want to get involved from the very young to the not so young! We had lots of photos taken that were accompanied by 'I need a photo for my boyfriend/husband/dad etc', 'he'll be so jealous'. We even had a few 'Snapchat' moments and one guy who filmed us for his vlog! But it was the reactions of the children that were the best and we had some very special interactions that obviously meant the world to some of the younger guests.

One of many, many photos taken

And I even got to have a photo with a little girl who used to attend my pre-school. Thanks Imogen for stopping by to see me :)

It was lovely to see you Imogen!

Mickey Ears were of course worn - how could I not?!

By the end of our day we were exhausted, a bit achy and very aware that despite wearing helmets for the vast majority of the time we hadn't stopped smiling all day.

A big thank you has to go to Abi and the girls at Disney Store, Nottingham for looking after us, making us feel so welcome and their generosity of magic!

Thanks Abi & Maya

Can't wait to do it again!!