BeachStrong & Working On My Twi-lek Headband

Today started with trip to Santa Monica Beach, but this was a special trip because it was the first BeachStrong (meaning a NerdStrong event). We were taking the newly extended Expo line down to the beach for the first time. It's recently opened so we thought we'd give it a go. A group of us meet up at the NoHo Red Line station around noon and took that to downtown Los Angeles where we then transferred to the Expo Line. The Metro was extremely busy and from downtown to Santa Monica took a while (about two hours) but we made it and by the time we got down there we were all starving so we grabbed some lunch on the Santa Monica Pier before heading to the beach. By the time we got to the beach it was around 4pm, most people were only planning on staying until 5pm so we didn't get much beach time in but we did have some fun. Several of us actually swam out into the ocean including myself which I never do. Overall it was a fun time, I think it was more about the adventure of getting down there via public transit rather then actual beach time. I don't know if I'd take the metro again but its nice to have that option.

Once I was back from the beach I worked on my Jedi Twi-lek headband. I want to thank my friend Kimi for letting me use some of her leftover fabric. I couldn't find any cheap leather type material and when I told Kimi that I was considering faux suede she just happen to have some left over pieces that were the perfect color and style that I was looking for. So I cut out the various piece of fabric, hemmed the edges (this was tough), added eyelet holes (again not fun, used a hand machine to do it) and then took thin strips of leather and laced the pieces together. There was alot of trial and error but the end result is pretty cool. The headband itself is finished but I still have stripes of faux suede that I have to cut and sew that will be wrapped around and running down the lekku... so there is still more to do but it's coming along nicely. This is probably my favorite part of my cosplay so far because I created all of this from scratch, no pattern, no plans. I just had an image of what I wanted in my head and then had to figured out how to create it.