First troop of the year: INTREPID

Well this TK here had been a bit lazy!!! It’s kind if like this every year. Things are pretty calm after SMF and the first troop of the year for me has always been in February, on Presidents’ Day! Kids week at the Intrepid, in NYC!

I love this event! So much fun!!!
This was my third year going but first time as a TK.

Again my armor held up pretty well for such a long troop. No pieces falling off along the way, and not one single armor bite!!! I even sat down to eat! 🙂
Oh and went up the stairs. So many stairs.
And thank goodness for people’s help, especially Kirstin and the new girl from Carida. ( sorry I forgot hat name) they helped me all the way up, because besides the fact I couldn’t see the steps, I barely could move my legs.
And do you know how the steps are inside an aircraft carrier????? Well believe me! They are awful, and tight, and definitely not made for stormtroopers!!!

Oh!!! And I even ran in armor!! Lol I have the impression I may have looked a bit like Forrest Gump while I was running, but that’s ok!!!!!!
I got myself made into a small potato and got sorted into the gryffindor house at hogwarts by the talking sorting hat!

And most fun of all got to see friends I don’t see very often!!!

You know! I wonder if the excitement of wearing armor will ever stop because I still get soooo excited!!! All the time!!! IM A STORMTROOPER!!! And I love it!!!!!

And looking at all the other troopers there, I still can’t believe I did make my armor small enough to fit me.

Sooo cool!!!

Celebration VI – Day 1

We arrived here on the first day of the Con, and that means we missed the whole beginning of it.
Gotta have to do it differently next time, and plan to arrive on Wednesday.

Anyways, so much fun to see people I haven’t seen in so long! Even the ones that live so close to me, like all the gang from the ECG and NEG! But I haven’t seen them in forever!!!

The first ones I saw were Brian, Jodi and Monique from the NEG when we just stopped at the hotel and got out of the car!!!
The fun is about to start people!!!

I don’t know guys!!! Celebration is always a blur for me! So much to see and do and damn time goes fast!!!

I wore my TK today! It seemed it was for such a short time!!!
2 friends recognized my shortness!!! Lisa and Kevin!!!!
But there were people that walked right passed me and had no idea the tiny TK was me!!! Hahha

Funny thing is… I haven’t heard much of “Aren’t you too short for a Stormtrooper?”
Unless I take my helmet off and they know its me! Hahah

Btw, I hate taking my helmet off. I look absolutely ridiculous with that balaclava on. I always had the impression my head is too small for my body and with that silly thing it looks even smaller!!!

Hahah

Night time was pool party! As the social butterfly that I am I tried to spend some time with everybody! And kept going around the pool and stopping by every little garrison groups!!! So funny how it ended up beig a bunch if little cluster of groups divided by garrisons, but everybody was still interacting.

I just love my 501st family!

It is kind of sad though that the CTG seems to be the smallest group here! Just me, Neil, Seth and Bill!
Btw, Seth and Bill are just awesome fun!!!!

Some pics of today!

 

Celebrating

My little tiny TK is on the way to Celebration!
Hooray!

See you all there! And don’t forget the challenge: FIND ME!

😊

1st troop

August 18th was my first troop as a stormtrooper, and you wanna know what????
IT WAS AWESOME!

Who knew I would grow up to be a stormtrooper, huh??? Lol

ComiCONN was this past Saturday and it was an amazing event! The Marriott in Trumbull was packed and at one point the line to get in was wrapping around the building outside!
If you never attended you are missing a great fun show, and super good people!!

Anyways, I just can’t tell you how cool it was, from beginning to end! I already felt super cool rolling my bright yellow suitcase in and holding my helmet bag!!

Getting dressed wasn’t as complicated as the first few time, and I had Gino getting his TK on at the same time so i just had to follow his steps when I got confused! Hahah
Yeah sometimes I forget what goes first and end up stuck on something.

I barely needed help!

The troop itself was a breeze! I had no idea I’d be sooo cool and not freaking out with the helmet on for so long.
To tell you the truth I as a bit worried!
But I found out that when I start feeling weird inside of it I just need to walk! Then I’m fine!
But I didn’t even feel weird and ended up trooping for 5 hours and 30 minutes.

Only stopped cause I was hungry (which was a good sign! Haven’t been hungry in weeks)

Oh I also had to pee mid troop! Hahaha had to take everything off and then put everything back on!!!

At the end of the troop I had no armor bites, no soreness, no malfunctions! It was just a perfect first troop! I just couldn’t be happier!

Now… Looking at the pics!
DAMN I look little next to the other guys!
Like keychain little!
Tiny TK is def the perfect name cause I’m not just small. Alone I’m small! With other TKs I’m just freaking tiny!

Another thing was that ppl kept bumping onto me and moving the shoulder bells. I kept trying to fix it but it was hard! 😖
Now I’m absolutely annoyed by the pictures cause my shoulder bells are always looking bad!

Not sure what I can do to stop that from happening…

APPROVED

Sooo crazy busy with stuff lately!
After I finished the TK I wasn’t feeling guilty to work on other stuff so that’s what I have been doing.

And it also got a bit hard to get someone to come over and take pictures for me… I basically went through the same thing with all my other costumes. Have the costume ready but couldn’t take pictures! Such a pain!

By the way… I just realized, this is my 3rd year in the Legion! And this is my 3rd costume!
It will be sort of nice to keep it a tradition! Although I haven’t done it on purpose! Until now I mean! Lol
I think one costume a year is doable!

I will, though, stay away from plastic for my next one!!! Hahaha

Oh plastic how I hate you! 😛

Alright, alright!!! I don’t hate plastic! But the scars on my legs havent gone away yet and that’s annoying! Or cool! Hahah I can compare scars with other troopers! I bet we all have them, right?

Ok, no more blah blah blahs!
Sunday Neil came over to take pictures.
I tried to dress myself up! Still getting the hang of it! I got confused on the order of things a few times and then just had to take everything off, cause the other piece would go on… So confusing!
The top part is not the easiest to put on! But I do like how everything is attached and stay in place so I guess I’ll suffer on the dressing up part!

The shins kind of chipped the paint ony boots!
😦
But…. You can’t even see it because it covers it completely! So I guess I’ll leave it like this while I research other alternatives to keep the paint on it or something.

So… The first round of pictures… Dumb me… Flipped the belt upside down so the holster was on the right side.
I’m still not used to this and didn’t even realized until I posted the picture on Facebook and someone pointed that out!
First reaction was complete terror! I thought I had done everything backwards! Then realized it was just upside down!! Uff! What a relief!

Then we took more pictures!
Second time around it was easier to get dress!

I feel soooooo cool in my armor!
Who knew I’d grow up to be a stormtrooper!! Hahaha

So I sent the pictures to my GML, Chris and a few hours later got his answer that IM APPROVED!

I’m officially a TK, a 501st stormtrooper! How awesome is that?????

GML update

My GML is awesome and answered me pretty quickly!

H e said it looked good but the belt should be raised up 2 inches or so. Those buttons on the lower part of the ab plate should not be seen!

I have to add Velcro or snaps to it but I didn’t know exactly where to, so I didn’t do it! Good cause now it’s easy to fix!

And he also said he doesn’t like the drop boxes very much!
Those are easy fix, cause I attached them with Velcro. I should have checked them better when I suited up! And I also should have checked the pictures! 😦

The worse part of it all is depending on people to be free to come take my picture. :S it will probably have to wait until the weekend again!

Oh well…

Updates

Finally got some updates!
Apparently the whole problem with the snaps was not that we set them wrong. The little “stem” (whatever they are called) on the snaps I got are too long. I got from 2 different places: an eBay seller called Leather Worx , and the Tandy leather ones we get at Michael’s. They are pretty much the same! Same size stem thingie.

So they are too long! Even hammering the bejeesus out of them, they won’t work when set on thin things like the webbing.
On the abs snap plate they work fine because the abs is thicker than the webbing. 😦

But there is not much I can do right?
I mean, of course I can go look for some snaps with shorter stems, but that would probably cost me more time and I really want to TK up for an event we have on the 25th.

So for now we used those snaps on the webbing and forced them on each other. Literally.

There is a little trick, not complicated but a bit hard to explain, but it worked.

It’s not something I can snap in and off easily so we put those in areas that I know I won’t need to snap them off all the time: butt to kidney plates, crotch to ab, things like that.
The other areas that I’d need to open to be able to put everything on like the shoulder, the suspenders that snap on the top of the ab, etc we tried to get the ones that work better.

I was able to wear the whole top half. So exciting.

I also closed up the ab and kidney plates. One side with a piece of black elastic and velcro (to be able to open it to get in and out of it) and the other side with strips of black elastic that will be glued. That side we need to add the snaps as well.

I made the garter thing too but have to wait for my friend to come over and do the snaps on it. (for the thighs)

We are definitely going to try to finish it up today.
Besides the snaps on the garter, and the snaps on the sides of the ab and butt plates we need to add the ones on the cod piece (on the crotch), butt plate, and holster.

Yeah, that’s all that’s left!

Kind of exciting to see things move along again.
I hate being stuck and the frustration of not being able to do anything.

By the way, I’m kind of super exciting with some of the panels they are going to have at CVI. Especially Women of the Legion and White Armor.
I hope they have a short girl like me sharing her experience in building a tiny armor out of a normal size kit!

What a pain!
:S

We are on a break

Yep, I’m still on a break from this crazy build. Its been fun and very nice to get home and not have to go crazy working on it.

I know I need to watch cause now with Wizard World Philly behind us, CVI will come Faster than we can say “See ya at Celebration”!!

And if I’m not ready by then I will cry even more than I cried this time!

But to tell you the truth, Philly was soooo cool and awesome I don’t want to send away this nice feeling by stressing over my TK!!!
So just let me enjoy this break ok!?!?!
Mac is definitely enjoying it!!!!

:(

:(

Building day today was a disaster!
Nothing I’ve done worked.
The snaps won’t snap close because I don’t think they were set properly 😦
I had to take them all out, and I tried to make some new ones but it’s such a pain to hammer.

I insisted and ended up hammering my finger so hard I couldn’t move it for a while.

So I put everything away.

I am officially giving up on bringing it to Philly.
After crying like a baby I decided to clean up my apartment.
Everything was so dusty and the top of my dresser on the living room was just sooo full of crap!

All clean now.

My TK is away and resting for now. I need a break!

I didn’t like how the snap plates looked like. I didn’t know exactly why they looked like that, so Monday when Neil came to help, I asked him to put the snaps on the webbing. it would sit a lot nicer and flatter, and besides, some places the plates are just too big, like on the sides of the cod piece. (I know, i know, i could make them smaller)

But i’ve seen someone making those like that. Of course that now when I googled it, I didn’t find it…

But when i talked to Rick he said that the plates didn’t sit flat because of the snaps I was using. that the new ones I got at Michaels were going to be flatter.

So I got home and decided to make more snap plates with the new snaps. I didn’t even make one.

I just can’t put those snaps right!

so… today I started gluing the straps.

Also gave a second coat on the abs paste, and the thighs are ready! i guess I’ll keep the blue tape tho. It gives my tk some character!!! lol

It was time to add the battery pack.

And then I had a whole fight with the rivet gun. First, wasted a lot of time to figure out how to put the battery pack on the right place. Remember that I trimmed almost 2″ off of the thighs so that meant the battery pack was too long. So I had to trim it as well!

then it was not sitting on a nice area that i could drill and put the rivet.

I had to bent it some more with the heat gun… and when i finally, finally figure out where to put it… I broke my rivet gun!

Literally… a piece of the thingie inside broke.

I was off to Karps to get another one and look for a split rivet setting tool… I brought mac with me… and oh boy… it would have been a lot faster if I left him at home!

Basically everyone in the store came to play with mac, and then, a lady that works there just wouldn’t stop talking. Very sweet, but she told me the whole story of her cat, that sheds a lot, her sons huskie, that sheds a lot, and how the dog doesn’t like the cat (duh) and how Mac is beautiful! god bless. what a face! and how she doesn’t like her niece, and how her cat likes to cuddle before she goes to work, and how much hair she vacuums every day….

Oh man!!!!

then after all that time lost, I get home, and try to set the rivet… it comes off of the back part. Get it off, do it again. Same thing happens.

Take it off, do it again.

SAME DAMN THING HAPPENS!

SON OF A GOOD FREAKING BITCH! ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

Ok, then looking closely i was using the wrong rivet. Finally found a longer one and…

DAMN! the rivet gun cut of the tippy top, and now won’t cut the rest. Which is exactly what happened with the other side when the gun broke. So now… i have the sticky thingie from the rivets sticking out on both sides of the battery pack

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

I just put it to the side cause i can’t even look at it!

When I was driving to the hardware store, Mac ate my chap stick. It smelled good so I think it was yummy!!!! =P

The Heat gun! the TinyTK best friend! lol

I sat down and properly added the tabbies to the forearm and it worked!

well… can’t be lazy with this stuff!