Ramona Flowers Work Log

I never had a thing for western comics until I stumbled across the Scott Pilgrim comic book series by Bryan Lee O’Malley. I saw the movie and loved it so much that I bought the comics and practically devoured them. So German Comic Con was my chance to cosplay Ramona Flowers, my favorite character of the comic books! The outfit was inspired by the cover of the fifth comic book. Thankfully, her outfit is really simple, so most of it is either bought or directly out of my closet. That way I could concentrate on styling her wig, making her hammer and sewing her subspace bag.

For my Ramona wig, I used a Hana in Royal Blue from MyCostumes. First thing I did was cut the bangs. Then I curled the wig using rollers and hot water. The curls were a little bit too curly, so I blowed them out using the hottest setting on my blowdryer. Then I simply cut it shorter in the back and added some silver steampunk goggles.

My subspace bag is made of blue and pink canvas and some white and blue polka dotted cotton fabric as lining. First I cut out the individual parts of the bag out of my canvas and reinforced them with some sturdy interfacing. The star is satin-stitched onto the front part of the bag.

I sewed the outer ring of the bag, adding a zipper to the top and some metal rings for the straps to the sides. Then I turned the whole thing inside out to pin and sew the circles onto the outer ring. Finally I turned the bag inside out again, added the strap and it was finished!

Theoretically you can leave it like that, but I decided to add some lining fabric to the inside of the bag. I repeated the whole process with my lining fabric (minus the metal rings and the zipper), adding some pockets to the inside. Then I sewed the lining to the inside of the bag.

As a cosplay prop lover, I could not resist making Ramona's giant hammer. First I drew my pattern, then I cut out the individual pieces of the hammer, using styrofoam as the material.

I glued the bottom of the hammerhead to my PVC pipe and then I glued the other parts to the bottom piece. Afterwards I carved some notches into the top and the bottom part of the PVC pipe with the help of a file.

After that I tapered the edges of the hammerhead using a box cutter, added a round piece of foam to the base of the hammerhead and covered all uneven areas with a filling paste. Then I used some sandpaper to get an extra smooth surface.

To make the hammer more sturdy, I covered all the styrofoam parts with some layers of paper maché. I also used some of that to cover the hole at the bottom of the PVC pipe.

This is what the hammer looked like after painting and weathering. For the hammerhead, I used some silver and black acrylic varnish and for the handle I used brown acrylic paint. At the end I glued a cap to the top of the hammer which I made of worbla and added a string with a large jingle bell to the end of the hammer.

Photo credit: Szwarc Photography