Worn at: Project: A-Kon 13, AnimeFEST! 2003

Cost: $40

Time to Complete: Around 6 hours

Inspiration: A-Kon 13! It was coming up, and I had to make something cool (aka non-crappy and more than just a school uniform), so I decided to tackle the third opening outfit, which I'd been in love with for awhile. The third anime OP animation is beautiful, and Sakura's dress for it is one of the best! ^_^

Description of Costume: This is a very beautiful, but also a bit complicated, costume. It's a white dress with puffy sleeves, a square neck, and a short ruffly skirt, but underneath that skirt are two more, each one a bit longer than the one before, one white and one pink, so it's a tri-layered skirt. On her left leg is a white knee-high sock that ends in a whitish-pink lace garter tied with a pink ribbon that trails down to her feet. On her right leg is an ankle-length white sock that ends with a whitish-pink lace garter identical to the one on her other leg, except that its ribbon doesn't trail down. Then she has white ballet-type shoes with a big yellow star on the front. Around her neck is another white garter lined with pink ribbon, and this one has a yellow star dangling from it. Her hair is tied with two pink ruffly cloth things. She also has big pink-white wings, but those aren't in all the pictures, and I decided not to make them.

How It Was Made: My mom and I bought white, pink, and shimmery-transparent material for the dress, along with thin lace for the garters and pink ribbon of different widths for my legs and hair. We also got yellow star appliques and regular white shoes, and I glued two of the yellow stars onto the shoes and another onto the neck garter, once it was made. The lace was probably my favorite part, since we found the perfect kind. It's all shimmery and pretty, and was the last the store had, and it only took me an hour of searching through tons of other lace to find x_x. Anyway, for the neck garter and the ankle garter, the pink ribbon was sewed right onto the lace, which I cut into the right lengths. When I wore the costume, I pinned the garters onto my legs and neck. For the knee-length garter, no ribbon was sewed on, I just pinned it onto my leg and then tied the ribbon on so it could trail properly. As for the dress, my mom sewed it from a pattern. We didn't actually make two skirts to go under the dress--what we did was, we made the white dress, and used that skirt as the middle layer. Underneath it, my mom sewed about five inches of pink fabric all around the edge of the skirt, so it LOOKED like there was another layer under there. To make the top layer (which is also supposed to be white) stand out more, we made it out of the shimmery transparent material, and sewed it right on top along the waist of the dress. (We got the idea from my third-opening-dress Sakura doll, where the top layer isn't white, but sparkly material instead.) For the hair things, I tied thick pink ribbon in my hair. They're not done properly, but oh well, everything else is. Including my hair, which I cut a few days before the con just to cosplay as Sakura XD (But don't think I'm *too* crazy.. I'd been planning to do it anyway, and I was happy to have short hair again, so yay!). The final aspect was the Sakura Wand, which wasn't necessary, but since I do have my life-size wand, it was the perfect opportunity to carry it around as part of the outfit. ^_^