Welcome to Straywind.com!

Welcome to my Cosplay home on the net. My name is Rebecca (aka Stray Wind online). I've been Cosplaying since late 2001. I love the fellowship, challenges and creativity involved in making costumes. My forte is Cosplaying from survival horror video games as well as characters from Anime and games that I grew up enjoying. Since I began Cosplaying, I have worn over 90 costumes and I've attended over 100 conventions and major events. In 2018, I was lucky enough to work with Henchmen Studios on behalf of Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm and I was the official Cosplay model for Orphea when she was announced at BlizzCon 2018. Cosplaying is an exciting journey and I look forward to future projects and events as my journey in the world of Cosplay continues.

-+- Updates -+-

July 17th, 2024
Another quick update as I finally got a chance to edit the images I have so far of my new Pumpkin Pie Cookie costume from Cookie Run: Kingdom. The photos are from a private shoot that I did with Stillvisions back in April. The costume is very Halloween themed, but I was eager to get some photos of the outfit in case it doesn't fit very well come the fall. The costume was purchased and the Cosplay shop used a very flimsy zipper on it and it's already pretty tight on me, so getting it zipped up is a real challenge. I'm not very confident that come October, I'll still be able to squeeze into it. Given that, I figured way not get some photos in spring just in case. It was kind of funny to drag out Halloween props for the shoot right when other Cosplayers were planning cherry blossom photoshoots. XD Anyway, the shoot was fun and you can find the costume page and photos here.

Next week is Pretty Heroes. I'll probably be going on the Sunday of the con and my plan is still to re-wear my Card Captor Sakura Clear Card Arc battle costume that I previously wore to AN and YetiCon so I can get a few more final photos of it with Stillvisions. Then I'll be retiring the costume. I did get preview photos from the shoot that I did of the same costume with Elemental during YetiCon and I picked out my 3 favourites to get back from her when she gets a chance to edit them. When that's done, I'll post them here. Hopefully I'll get some nice final photos of the costume in and around the JCCC. I'm looking forward to Pretty Heroes. It's a pretty chill con to check out for a few hours. I really enjoy the Artist Alley and it's close to home so it's a quick trip to check out. Hopefully the event will be a fun experience.

-+- Past Updates -+-

July 4th, 2024
Just a quick update to share that I've finished editing and resizing the photos Stillvisions took of my Super Sailor Chibi Moon costume (that my awesome friend Ammie made for me) and I've added the photos to the costume gallery. You can find the gallery here. The costume was made a decade ago and I only finally wore it for the first time at the Blue Mountain resort the day before YetiCon officially started last year. We got some great photos from around the village so it was a wonderful location to the costume. I'm glad I did finally get some photos of it as it's pretty tight to wear again at this point.

I have a few more costume photos to edit for my Pumpkin Pie Cookie costume that I bought. I need to make a costume page for it so I'll try to work on that and get that posted in the next couple of weeks. I'll also check in with Stillvisions and see if he has any more photos of Dilandau from last year as well as any photos from YetiCon this year. Hopefully I'll have a few more photos to add to this site of different costumes before the end of the summer.

June 26th, 2024
I was finally able to finish resizing and editing some photos Stillvisions sent me a few months ago from a shoot we did of my Ashley RE4 Remake costume last fall. The photos were from a few days before Halloween when we went to a small museum in Port Perry. The museum was hosting a Halloween event and they had old-timey buildings so the vibe was awesome for RE4 village photos. I'm so happy with how the photos turned out! If they host the Halloween event again, I might try to go back in Ashley with the new upgrades I've made to my costume. I'll probably try to at least get some other photos of Ashley in the fall. We did also shoot at Guildwood Park that same day. Stillvisions already sent me a few photos from Guildwood, but I'll check with him to make sure there aren't any more choice photos. I'm really happy with the photos. It was such a fun place to shoot! You can find the photos here in my Ashley RE4 Remake costume page.

Next up I'll try to work my way through photos of my Super Sailor Chibi Moon costume from YetiCon last year. Hopefully I'll get those done and posted in the next week or two.

June 20th, 2024
I'm back from YetiCon and it was another fun year. It's hard to write a report when I didn't really participate in a lot of con events, but it was a great trip. I stayed from Thursday to Monday. The trip home on Monday was pretty leisurely except for Monday being the start of a heat wave. Thank goodness it wasn't 30+ degrees all weekend. We arrived the day of a bad storm with the potential for a tornado, but thankfully the weather stayed fairly nice up until the evening. We got a chance to explore a bit and get groceries before the weather turned. It didn't start raining until I was strolling around the village with Stillvisions and we were prepared with umbrellas and got back to the hotel just in time to avoid the worst of it. I was staying at the Mosaic again. Thankfully, the pool was still open at the hotel and besides the hot tub being broken for half the trip, the amenities were great. Didn't get the presidential suite this time, but our regular hotel room was still pretty nice and we had a good view of the pool.

I had some great food during the trip. I always enjoy poutine from the Mile High Poutine takeout place and for dinners over the weekend, I went to Northwinds Pub and Rusty's. The beef brisket at Rusty's was really nice and I liked the beer pretzels at Northwinds. The new summer berry lemonade drink at Starbucks was particularly refreshing as well. YetiCon is more of a vacation trip for me versus a convention, so it was nice to have great food options in the village.

On Friday evening, I attended the glow walk event that my friend Stillvisions organized. I wore a Mimikyuu onesie outfit that I bought from Miccostumes. I have some friends that organized an Eevee Evolutions onesie group for the walk. Since most of the evolutions were taken, I decided to buy Mimikyuu instead and surprise the group. Didn't really get a chance to see them too much. I found the group just before the walk, but we split up during the walk. I did get a couple of photos of the costume after the walk from Stillvisions. It was pretty late when we were shooting and dark so not sure how those photos will turn out. I purchased a light up crinoline skirt for the costume to give the costume a bit of glow for the glow parade. It was not a very full light string so I don't think the effect was too amazing, but I got lots of compliments on the outfit and I had a great time at the walk. It was pretty comfy so I might wear it again. It's a pretty thin costume and not incredibly made, but the hood looked great. If I get some photos back of the costume, I'll post them here. Otherwise I'll try to wear it again at some point. The walk was really nice. We went around the village and around the small lake before stopping for a group photo. There were quite a few participants and the atmosphere was quite lively.

Saturday was the first official day of the con. I debuted another new costume. This time it was a M3gan costume of the creepy robot girl from the horror movie of the same name. I bought the costume a few months ago also from Miccostumes. I bought it mostly to fill an order and make the shipping cost more worth it. It's a pretty simple outfit (just a dress with a bow tie and undershirt) so it's pretty comfy. I figured since it had simple shoes and wasn't very heavy, it would be breezy and comfy to wear around the village and con centre. It was overall, but the wig that I bought (also from Miccostumes) tangled really easily and was a bit frustrating. Otherwise, I had a great time Cosplaying M3gan. The costume got a decent amount of recognition too. It was fun for people to recognize the outfit as being from a horror movie and then getting excited to share a passion for horror media.

I didn't really participate in a lot of con events, but I did go to the charity tea in the early afternoon on Saturday. I attended the charity tea back in 2022 when they ran a cat themed event and it was a fun experience. This time it was dragon themed. The layout was mostly the same. You got a free "treasure" item from a treasure box, which was costume jewelry. It was neat. The tea, though, was disappointing. I was looking forward to having a caffeinated tea like earl grey or another black tea, but the only tea option was butterfly pea flower herbal tea. No caffeine and it was pretty bland flavour wise (although it was a neat blue colour to match the fantasy dragon theme). It was nice to socialize and get a bit of a rest stop at the con, but I'll definitely ask about the tea before buying a ticket next time. Happy to support a charity, but I m hoping the tea selection will have more options if the event returns.

After the tea party, I helped Kevin out with getting ready for the bridal run photoshoot. Since con attendees often run into bachelorette and bachelor parties, a bunch of Cosplayers thought it would be funny to dress up as brides and meet up for a massive shoot. Kevin decided to wear an inflatable Godzilla costume and be "Bridezilla". The group was quite huge with joke bridal costumes like a raptor in a bridal dress and another Bridezilla, but there were also quite a few beautiful bridal costumes from series like Sailor Moon, Evangelion and original designs. It was pretty chaotic and the tourists really loved it. I got into the fun with a silly sash that Kevin bought that said Maid of Dishonour and I filmed the whole thing for Kevin. It was lots of fun.

After the bridal run, I got out of costume and went and walked around the vendor area of the con by myself. I did a bit of shopping. There were a few tables selling Resident Evil and Silent Hill goods, which was cool to see. I bought some original prints and stickers that were fall/Halloween themed as well as a print and keychain of Heather from Silent Hill 3. My favourite purchases were a Vulpix plush, a Miku print and a neat Princess Peach acrylic standee with room for writing a message. It was a neat design. My other purchase from the weekend was a hat from one of the village stores. I always love picking up new hats in the summer. My friends Kira and Tyler came up for Saturday so I hung out with them for a bit and got dinner with them before relaxing in the evening.

On Sunday I wore my Card Captor Sakura Clear Card Arc battle costume again. This time I had my staff out so the costume definitely got more recognition than at Anime North. I did a shoot with Elemental and then I did a shoot with Stillvisions so I should have plenty of photos of the costume in the coming weeks. I did, however, forget to get photos of the back of the costume where I have some nice detailing on the shirt, so I might try to wear it one more time for a few more photos. We'll see how the YetiCon photos turn out. I did get a surprise bag of candy and some small Mario figurines as a thank you from a YetiCon staff member while I was walking around the vendor room wearing Sakura on Sunday afternoon. She thanked me for wearing a costume and adding to the atmosphere of the event. It was a really kind gesture. Wish I could have found the staff member giving out Cosplay awards. It would have been great to get a little Yeti statue as a momento. Maybe one year I'll luck out in a handmade costume that's nice enough for an award, but people were so nice to costumers. The con has an excellent vibe for that.

I got one more swim and hot tub visit in on Sunday night after eating at Rusty's. After that was a chill evening watching a marathon of What We Do in the Shadows episodes on FX while there was a thunderstorm outside. The trip home was pretty uneventful. We had planned to walk around the village for a little while on Monday morning and to do a bit of last minute shopping, but it was so hot that once we checked out, we grabbed some cold drinks from Starbucks, said goodbye to any remaining friends that we could find, and we headed home. It was nice to finally get home. I was a bit sore from not getting much sleep on the hotel bed. The con was a lot of fun and if it does happen again next year, I'll definitely go back. It was nice to see the con running with more events this year and I do hope the con continues to add more events next year if Blue Mountain lets the con return.

Next up, I'll be adding more photos to this site. I'll finally dedicate some time to editing costume photos so I should be updating here in the next couple of weeks with a few new costume pictures. The next event isn't until the end of July. I'll probably attend Pretty Heroes for a day since it's pretty close to me. I might wear a costume and if I do, I might wear my Card Captor Sakura costume for the final time. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to enjoying the beautiful summer weather!

June 4th, 2024
Anime North this year went fairly well. My con experience is always a bit complicated because the Nominoichi takes up so much time on Friday that I don't get to do or see any other part of the con that day. It's also such an exhausting experience that I don't return again until Sunday. So for the two days that I did attend AN, I had a great time.

The Nomi went pretty seamlessly this year. I was really stressed about it in the weeks leading up to the event, even though I was pretty much fully packed and ready by the Monday beforehand. It's always nerve wracking to deal with driving out the airport, finding parking, waiting in the seller line and setting up. It's stressful too, hoping all the people that reserved items actually show up. This year, I only had three no shows and none of the no shows were for pricier items so that was nice. Finding parking was pretty painless this year and Adrien and I were the second people in line for sellers so although we were lined up for about 3 hours in total, it wasn't a bad experience. We could sit down on the curb and we were out of the sun and a few friends found us in line. Once we could set up, thing went really smoothly this year (unlike last year where our table was shrouded by a curtain).

I did really well at the Nomi. I don't know if it's because I was willing to make deals, but I sold more than half of what I brought and did pretty much as well as I've done in the past. Based on pre-sales, I honestly expected to not sell that much at all. I wasn't expecting to do as well as I'm starting to run low on goods to sell as my days of excessively ordering figures and capsule toys from Japan are behind me. It was quite a lot of work to run the table, but I had a great time chatting with people as they browsed and complimenting interesting Cosplayers as they passed the table. If I don't get a table next year, I'll definitely miss the experience. It's a nice stationary place where people can find you. As an introvert, selling makes it easier to converse with people at the table and it doesn't hurt that it covers the costs for the rest of the con. To be fair, of the 3 times I've applied for a table through the lottery, I've only been lucky enough to be picked once. It's been nice that other friends that applied for tables were kind enough to let me share space with them. With it being so competitive, getting a table really isn't guaranteed, so maybe next year, even if I apply, I won't get picked again.

We stayed until close and didn't get fully packed up until 11:30, so I wasn't home until after midnight. I had trouble sleeping on Friday night so I stayed up late counting the money and packing up some remaining items for storage. Needless to say, I was pretty worn out on the Saturday. On the Sunday, I did manage to wear a costume. I'm always a bit torn on Cosplaying on the Sunday of a con. The best day to Cosplay is Saturday and Friday is second best. Sunday is always a bit more of a chill day and most people head out early or are a little more casual. I've found the reaction to Cosplaying on the Sunday of a con to be a bit lackluster, but since I couldn't go Saturday, I figured I would wear a costume or I would miss out for the event. I re-wore my Card Captor Sakura Clear Card Arc magical girl costume. It's a design that's only Manga cover art. Thankfully, getting into the costume didn't take too long, but at the con, I didn't get a chance to go to weapon's check so I didn't bring out my Dream wand. My costume went pretty unrecognized for most of the event, although I did get a few compliments. It's a very different landscape at cons from Cosplaying before the pandemic. Cosplay feels so expected and generic these days. It's hard to put it into words, but it's almost like wallpaper. You just expect to see it and it takes a lot to find it special or impressive. I don't think it was worth the hassle to get up early to wear a costume. If I only go to the con again for Friday and Sunday next year, I would probably skip Cosplaying all together unless the costume was simple and comfy. I thought Sakura was a pretty light and airy costume for the hot weather, but the boots murdered my already tired feet. I was still recovering from Friday and was on a sleep deficit so probably should have just worn regular clothes. Oh well. You learn something every year. I did enjoy wearing the costume. It's a really cute outfit and I'm really proud of the skirt and how the blouse turned out. Making the hat was a pain in the butt too. Probably one of my best engineered costumes even if it is too obscure for most people to recognize.

I did like the fact the con is now using both the north and south buildings of the Congress Centre. Everything felt a bit more roomy. My big complaint for the south building, though, is that since they took the gaming stuff out, they didn't leave any areas for sitting. My feet were killing me after walking through vendors and most of artists, but there was nowhere in the building to sit down. If you sat on the floor out of desperation, you got yelled at for blocking a rather massively open pathway. Seemed unnecessary to be that stingy. It's not like there are areas to sit outside on the pavement as it's not a very friendly area for finding places to sit and take a break. Really wish they would add some break areas. Of course, probably shouldn't wear uncomfortable shoes so I guess it's my own problem?

Sunday of the con was mostly just exploring the south building with my friends Adrien and Stillvisions. I bought quite a few art and craft pieces. My only merch purchases for the weekend were a Madoka kimono figure and Bubble Egg opened blind box figure from the Nominoichi and a Sailor Saturn prize figure from vendors. I bought several art prints from series like Sailor Moon, CCS and Madoka and cute craft pieces like a macaron necklace. It was nice getting a chance to see so many creative products. I had Swiss Chalet for lunch and a cherry lemonade from the classic lemonade vendor and after about 3:30, we left the con. I was dead tired so my feet appreciated the break. My big lesson from the con was maybe just don't Cosplay unless the costume is super comfy. Anime North is pretty much paint by numbers at this point, but I'm glad the con went fairly smoothly and I still had a great time. I do miss staying at the con hotel and having a more relaxed time with scheduling and Cosplaying, but the con is still a great experience even for day trips. Only concern as a daytripper, is fighting for parking.

Next up is YetiCon. I do still have a backlog of Cosplay photos to post here (photos of Ashley, Pumpkin Pie Cookie and Super Sailor Chibi Moon). I'll try to get working on that and start sharing photos over the next few weeks. As I didn't get any photos of Sakura at AN, I'm thinking about bringing Sakura to YetiCon and getting some photos around the resort. I did bring it to YetiCon previously, but the weather wasn't great that year so I couldn't really get nice photos of it. If the weather is nice, it would be great to get some photos by the water or by flowers. I'll see about booking a shoot. I have a couple of other costumes I'm thinking about bringing including Ashley from the RE4 Remake as I now have the accessories and a nicer turtleneck to wear the costume without the jacket. The other costumes are a bit of a surprise so if I wear them, I'll post photos here after the con. I'm just so excited to take a break from work and enjoy the summer weather. I can't wait to go swimming, take some relaxing walks and eat great food. I'm counting down the days until my YetiCon vacation!

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