Mad Moxxi
(Borderlands)
Heyya Everyone!
This page will be walking through the various stages of how I went about creating my Mad Moxxi costume, from the original Borderlands game.
Coat:-
Moxxi wears a coat that's a similar style to a ringleaders jacket. I looked around online for base pattern I could use, but I couldn't find anything remotely close to this, that wouldn't require massive changes.
I decided to make my own pattern on my tailors dummy, by draping spare fabric over it and sketching out what pieces and panel shapes I would need. It would have been possible to put the outfit together by combining parts from lots of different patterns, but this would have cost more, as I would need to buy patterns I didn't have, and I find it quicker to make my own pattern.
After draping the fabric and sketching my pattern out, I ended up with;
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A sleeve piece
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A cuff piece
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A collar piece
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2 back panels
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2 front panels
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A front flap
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2 back coat tails
I stitched all these pieces together
Wig:-
For Moxxi's wig, I decided to make two different versions; one made by styling a wig as normal, and one made entierly from foam.
For the normal version, I used a medium brown, shoulder length wig from eBay as my base.
The foam wig took a lot of work to put together, but I feel it worked better in fitting with the Borderlands style. It was a lot of fun to paint, and photographs really well!
My tutorial video of how I made my foam Moxxi wig is view-able here, exclusively for my Patrons.
If you prefer to watch my tutorials, rather than just read how I put everything together, here are the links to my Moxxi tutorial videos. Some of the tutorials are on YouTube, but all are available on my Patreon.
- Moxxi's coat tutorial.
- Moxxi's accessories tutorial.
- Moxxi's make-up walk-through.
- Moxxi's wig tutorial (hair).
- Moxxi's wig tutorial (foam).
I hope this walk-through was of use to some of you, and if you go on to make your own Moxxi cosplays, feel free to tag me in them, I love seeing Borderlands cosplays!
Prints from this shoot will available in my Store soon, and NSFW Moxxi shots will be available for Patrons next month!
Much Love,
Sabrina
xXx
Once I had all pieces of the costume finished, it was time for a location shoot!
I asked the owners of my local pub if I could use the bar for a photo shoot, and they were more than happy to help. If any of you are ever in Maidstone and fancy a drink, head on down to The Thirsty Pig, down Knightrider Street. Great music, great prices, great people! I can't thank the team enough for allowing me to do my shoot in there.
Not only was it the perfect set to shoot my Moxxi cosplay, it also took a huge amount of time off of the editing process, as we didn't need to add in the background afterwards.
Accessories:-
Hat:
I bought a basic felt top hat off of Amazon, as it was much easier to build around an existing base, than to make one from scratch. The top hat I bought was a deep red colour, but this didn't matter as the first thing I did to the hat was to cover it in the same fabric I used for the coat.
If you don't have enough fabric, or just don't want to cover the whole hat in fabric, you can use fabric spray paint to colour the hat the same colour as your coat. This can take a few coats, and may not give as clean a finish, but it is possible.
She has a trim around the base of her hat, which is the same fabric that is on her coat collar and cuffs. I had a lot of this fabric left over, so I cut a long strip about 3 inches wide, hemmed in the edges, then wrapped it round the hat. I secured the edges of the fabric together with fabric glue, and also added a few dots of the glue just under the trim, to secure it in place against the hat.
The final details on Moxxi's hat, are a queen of hearts card, and 3 thin feathers. I didn't want to use actual feathers, as they start to look a bit old and worn after a while, so I made 3 thin feathers from craft foam. After they were primed and painted, I glued both the card and the foam feathers into the band on the hat.
Now all the pieces were added, all that was left to do was cell shade everything with my black fabric paint.
Choker:-
Moxxi has a plain black choker on, this is something I already had at home for a previous costume that I got rid of, so i had no issues with painting it and re-using it for Moxxi. I used black and white acrylics to cell shade the choker, making sure not to apply them too thick, otherwise it would crack when worn.
Belts and Rubi holster:
Moxxi wears two belts around her hips; one is plain and black, which wraps around itself with the length hanging down, the other is a brown belt with a rectangular buckle, and her gun holster for Rubi hanging from it.
I made the black belt with a strip of black faux leather fabric, which I heavily cell shaded.
The brown belt was made from an old belt I had in my room, the buckle I made myself from foam. I used 10mm foam for the base, carved the design into it with my rotary sander. I covered the whole thing in worbla, primed and painted it, and attached it to the existing buckle of my belt with contact adhesive.
I made the holster from 5mm foam, and glued together with contact adhesive. I sanded all the edges to make them smooth, then coated it in Plasti-Dip. Once this was all primed, I gave it two coats of light brown acrylic paint, so it matched the colour of my belt, then added on the cell shading and text to it. When it was all dry, I glued it onto the side of the belt with contact adhesive.
Stockings:-
This was the easiest part as I already owned them! I used one thigh high fishnet stocking, and just cut a few small holes into them, finishing off the edges with clear nail polish to stop them fraying (it's great for when you cut holes in tights! You're welcome!).
I had an old pair of black and white striped tights from one Halloween, and I cut off one of the legs, folded over the top edge and very gently hemmed the edges, don't do this too tight or when you put them on it will cause the tights to pull and fray around the holes. I put them on to add the the cell shading, as if I just painted the tights, it would crack and fade when I put them on due to the fabric stretching. Once that was all done, I gave it a VERY gentle go over with my iron, with the tights protected under a tea towel, just to set the paint and ensure it wouldn't come off in the wash, as I wash my costumes after every shoot/convention.
Boots:-
As I seem to have cell shading down to a T, creating the look of her boots was very easy. I simply painted the spats she wears, directly onto my boots, using various colours of acrylic paints; you'll need white, black and yellow, and intermix them to create the perfect shades, tones and highlights.
If you are new to cell shading, or don't feel comfortable going at your boots with paints, I'd recommend buying some costume spats like these, and cell shading them. Then simply slip them on over your boots! This is a fantastic idea, and looks exactly the same as what I did overall, but with less effort.