Cosplaying 101- Step 10: Storing Your Cosplay

Welcome back to the Cosplaying 101 series, a beginner's guide to cosplay (go to the bottom of the page to see the complete list of steps). This is the final step in the cosplaying series, Storing Your Cosplay. Check out the accompanying video below if you would rather watch this information.

A lot of times I skip this step and reap the consequences of doing so. When you don't properly store your cosplay, it makes it difficult to find and wear the costume later. Also you may store it improperly and ruin your costume pieces that you spent so much time creating. So please, learn from my mistakes and follow the suggestions I have below about storing your cosplay. So this step is divided into two many steps: Preparing Your Cosplay for storage and the actual act of Storing Your Cosplay.

Lets's start with Preparing Your Cosplay:

Before you store your cosplay your want to make sure that all pieces of your costume are clean and properly prepared for being put away for a length of time. If you store your costume dirty, you can risk ruining some of the paint on your props, fabric on your costumes, or damaging your wigs. Depending on what piece of your costume you are storing, you will prep it differently. Below I have described how I wash and prep the various pieces of my costumesbefore I store them.

Wigs During cons, and other costume wearing events your wigs can end up getting very tangled and dirty from sweat and con crud. After you wear it, you main goal is to shampoo and detangle that wig so that it will be ready the next time you want to wear it.

Shampoo I do not usually shampoo my wigs because I do not sweat that much, but if you do sweat you definitely want to shampoo your wig so that it does not smell like funk when you pull it out again. In order to clean your wigs, you can fill a small tub or sink with cool water and some moisturizing shampoo. Gently swish the wig back and forth and rinse thoroughly.

Detangling To detangle my straight wigs, I work on them while they are wet. So if you just shampooed your wig, now would be a good time to detangle it. If you did not shampoo your wig, use a spray bottle with a conditioner water mix to moisten the wig hair. I like to place my wig on a styrofoam head so that I can get a better angle on the wig. You can get a stryofoam head from a store that sells wigs for $5-$10. To detangle I comb the hair by starting from the end and working toward the roots. Take your time because you cannot regrow hair if you accidentally rip a clump of it from the wig.

Detangling curly wigs is a little bit harder process. If the wig has barrel curls (the bigger curls that look like they were done with a curling iron), I like to only redo the curls that need it and those are the ones around the back edge of the wig that rubbed against your clothing. I do these curls one at a time. For each curl I comb it out and then re-coil the hair on itself, sandwich the coiled up hair in a piece of foil, and clamp down on it with a flat iron for a few minutes. Allow the foil to cool and remove the hair from the foil. It does not look as perfect as it did when you first bought it, but it looks better than being tangled. You can also comb out each curl and put it on a perm rod and set it in hot water for 15 seconds, but if you do not have the correct size perm rod, the curls you redo will not be the correct diameter.

Clothing After you finish wearing your costume you want to make sure you clean your fabrics so that they do not become stained and/or ruined and so that they are ready to be worn for your next cosplay experience. Be careful how you wash your costume because you could also end up ruining it by washing it incorrectly.

Washable Fabrics Check the care label of the fabric you used and wash it according to what the label says. If it did not have a label (sometimes fabric stores do not put care labels on their bolts and sometimes tags are missing from thrift store items) guess based on the look and feel of the cloth what type of material it is and wash it according to that. If you cannot confidently guess what type of fabric you have, just hand wash it. In most cases that will be fine (except when dealing with suede, wool, and other fabrics that are not supposed o get wet.). When I make my costume I try to stay away from making pants, shirts, and leotards out of non machine washable clothing because those are the main items that need to be washed and I hate hand washing even more than I hate hand sewing. So when making your costume, keep in mind how you plan on cleaning it.

Non Washable Pieces I consider non washable pieces to be fabric that you have glued something onto, so it may be too delicate to wash. For these items I hand wash them. I fill a small tub or sink with lukewarm water and some delicate laundry detergent. Then I allow the costume piece to soak in the tub. Next I use an old toothbrush to scrub the dirtier parts of the costume, such as the crotch, arm pits, and any areas on your costume where you sweat a lot.

Props Cosplaying can be dirty business and sometimes your props get filthy. You want to make sure you clean them so that anything that might have spilled or gotten onto them (i.e.- ketchup from when someone randomly stepped on a ketchup packet that splurted all over your Poison Ivy leg armor) does not attract bugs or ruin the paint.

To clean my props, I first test a small area to make sure whatever cleanser (usually dawn soap mixed with some water in a spray bottle) I am using will not remove the finish and/or the paint. Once I have verified that the cleanser is safe, I spray a dishrag or paper towel with my cleanser and gently rub the dirt and grime off my prop.

Great work! You have prepared your item for storage, now it is time to actually store all those costume pieces. The following is how I store my costume parts, how you store your costume parts completely depends on how much space you have and what materials you have available for storing. This is how we store all of our stuff:

Costumes If we have a costume, that is not regular clothing that we used for a costume, we store all the pieces together. For example, Princess Jasmine, all the pieces for Princess Jasmine were made specifically for that cosplay and cannot be used with other cosplays, so we store all the items together. We put the costume on a hanger and we put all the small accessories in a bag that hangs on the hanger with the costume.

Clothing If there is a costume for which we pulled clothes together to make the costume, we store those clothes in our closet where they belong. For example, Jubilee's costume consists of clothes from my closet that can be worn on other days and with other cosplays, So I store Jubilee's shorts, with my other shorts, her shirt with my other shirts, her jacket with my other jacket, and so on.

Accessories If there are accessories that can be used for multiple cosplays I store them in a basket that hold similar accessories. For example, all of my guns are in a basket that hold weapons; all of my belts and belt buckles are in a basket that holds belts; all of my shoes are under my bed.

Wigs I only own 4 wigs so I keep my wigs on styrofoam heads on the top shelf of my Cosplay Closet. If I owned more, I would store each straight wig in a bag and store all the bags in a box and leave the curled ones out. If I had too many curled ones to do this, I would store the curled wigs in a larger bag and store the bags in such a way that they do not smoosh each other. But my preference would be to leave the curled wigs out so that the curls can remain perfect and beautiful.

Armor I store my armor and oversized costume pieces in boxes that correspond to the character and I keep these boxes on the top shelf of my Cosplay Closet. For example, all of Poison Ivy's armor is in a box labeled Poison Ivy, all of Gambit's armor is in a box labeled Gambit.

Special Made props The props are some of the hardest things to store because they vary in size. If there is a pro that can only be used with one cosplay and is too big to put in a bag that hangs on the hanger with the costume, I usually leave it on display in my apartment. For example, my mallet for Harley Quinn is too large to put in a plastic bag to hang on a hanger, so I leave it out for my guests to admire. Also Aladdin's lamp and Abu are too cool to put in a bag, so I leave those out for our guests to admire as well.

Excellent! You have cleaned and stored your costume. Now the last step is to eliminate costumes that you no longer need. Ask yourself, will you wear this costume again, do you have another just like it, are you proud of this costume, does this costume have some nostaligic value. Your answers to these questions will help you determine if a costume needs to be kept, or if it is time to Elsa it (let it go). The more stuff you hold on to, the harder it is to find and take care of the things that are important to you.

So that is the conclusion of this step and also the conclusion of the Cosplaying 101 series.

What was your favorite step in the series?

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please leave it in the comments box below or head over to my facebook page and leave it on my wall. And thanks for reading!