This year for Dragon*Con I've planned out and (nearly) completed five costumes! It may seem like a lot, but once I get to Dragon*Con there will definitely be a costume I wear more than the others.

I've spent this year working on a Lee Meriwether style Catwoman costume, a Phoenix (from X-Men) costume, a self designed Poison Ivy costume, a Lady Gaga costume, and a Black Canary costume. I think I already know which will be my favourites to wear!

I chose the 60s era Catwoman costume because it's not something I've not seen done very often (just once in fact, at MegaCon in Orlando). It's a relatively simple design, yet definitely sexy. The hardest part for me has been getting my wig to stay in the right style. This will be a fun one because two of my friends are cosplaying the Burgess Meredith Penguin and Frank Gorshin Riddler.

Phoenix was a character I cosplayed two years ago, and really never thought I would do again. A friend of mine is cosplaying Scott Summers and asked me if I would bring Phoenix along, so we could have some fun photo ops. I've lost some weight, so a friend of mine altered the bodysuit and now it's ready to go!

I really love cosplaying Poison Ivy; this is the third year I will be wearing some imagining of her. This costume is probably the most labour intensive that I do, as I hand stitch every leaf to whatever article of clothing I've decided to use. It gets tricky when trying to stitch through elastic, there is definitely a trick to stitching through elastic while still allowing it to retain it's stretchy properties. This is actually another character I thought I was done with (seriously, it is no fun spending hours hunched over while hand stitching), but the same friend asked me to cosplay her, so that they would have a Poison Ivy for their Gotham group. She's definitely a character I enjoy and who receives a lot of attention, so I obliged. It's also a character you can experiment using different makeup/body paint techniques on, which is also fun!

I cosplay a different Lady Gaga costume every year because she is an inspiration to me, and to a ton of other people. Her music is brilliant, and she's really a very intelligent woman. She's easily recognizable and people just love to see a Lady Gaga cosplayer at Dragon*Con. I actually lead a group of people (we call ourselves Gaggle of Gagas) at Dragon*Con, we meet up and all just hang out in our Lady Gaga costumes.

Last but not least, I chose Black Canary because she's a badass, sexy, intelligent, just plain cool comic book heroine. She wears fishnets in most of her renderings, and I can never pass up an opportunity to wear fishnets. I think this costume, along with Lady Gaga, are going to be my favourites to wear this year.

Aside from Poison Ivy, nothing I've chosen this year has been extremely labour intensive. A lot of the work involved has just been spending hours surfing the internet for wigs (I just bought a third one for Black Canary), bodysuits (bought two for Catwoman), shoes, and other accessories. It's definitely an investment but to me, well worth it in the end.

I started working on costumes for this year back in January, slacked off for while, then got back into it full force at the beginning of July. At this point I am almost done, which is wild! Usually I still have work to do the first day of the convention. Last year I was still putting the finishing touches on my parade costume an hour before the parade! Glad I got an earlier start this year.