“I started by utilizing We Love Color’s shoulder gloves to avoid painting arms. I then found making arm socks out of the solid color tights looked more realistic. My first few pairs were a struggle to make, but after 2 years and about 200 pairs of arm socks, I like to believe I’ve perfected them.”

Chloe, age 19, owns her own Etsy. She markets, creates online promotions, models and sells cosplay (want to know more about cosplay? Check out this blog post with Geeky Gamer Girl) and costume accessories. She was introduced to cosplay in 2012 at SacAnime Winter where she was “blown away by the culture and all the colorful characters”. This kick-started her love for cosplay.

“My first big fandom was Homestuck and, as many may know, there’s a lot of grey paint involved in those costumes. After organizing a 12 person, fully greyed up group cosplay for SacAnime Winter 2014, I determined that the hours and hours of paint in the morning were way too much to handle (it took upwards of 7 hours to paint just a portion of my group that morning.)”

After this experience she decided to try a different approach and purchased our shoulder gloves to avoid painting arms; but they were not the right effect for true skin tone coverage. So instead she made arm socks out of solid color tights. “2 years and about 200 pairs of arm socks, I like to believe I’ve perfected them”.

Features solid color tights in light grey worn as arm socks.

When asked what cosplay meant to her Chloe told us:

“I tend to like the craftsmanship side of cosplay the most. Once I get into my zone, I feel like I’m unstoppable. They say that the more often people get into their creative flow doing something they enjoy, the happier they are overall. For me, prop making, sewing and styling are my main creative outlets and combining all these mediums brings me a lot of satisfaction and joy.”

She discovered We Love Colors after cosplaying characters that showed legs in unusual colors, such as grey. After having painted herself many times she found it got old and wanted to purchase tights instead.

“I found product suggestions on Homestuck cosplay forums. Unfortunately, I found that most of these items were sold out, discontinued, or didn’t come in the right shade or colors I needed. After some Internet research, I found “We Love Colors”, and I was happily shocked by the product and color options available. All the items I ordered showed to be very high quality and were very easy to match my paint to. I knew from then on I’d be ordering from this source very often.”

She has used our products in Homestuck, Steven Universe, Young Justice and several other cosplays.

Features solid color tights in aqua worn as arm socks and toe socks.

“Lapis (Steven Universe) was the first character I really went out of the box for when it came to arm socks. For my first version of her, I made toe socks to match my arm socks, so as to go completely canon and to avoid painting as much skin as possible. For the next version, I was able to sew arm-socks around hand-made, transparent PETG wings. For the most recent version, I cut a larger pair of solid color tights to go around my waist to avoid painting my stomach.”

“For M’gann (Young Justice) I experimented with dyeing tights, as I wanted a color in-between lime and kelly green; I managed to get them to my preferred shade of wasabi-green.” Features solid color tights in white, dyed green, as arm socks and tights. Her future plans include expanding her skill set and Etsy shop. “I absolutely love sewing and crafting and I’m very interested in working on more complex costumes and perhaps designing some of my own. I’m currently working on adding new costumes and accessories to my store. I hope to train more people and therefore have a larger product selection.” Chloe's arm socks have been selling well and she plans to add more variation to her Etsy store. She is currently working on prototypes for adding air brushed designs of muscle contouring, tattoos, freckles and more. Her advice for people interested in using We Love Colors products is: “We Love Colors is a great site to find base items, or even large components of your costumes without the effort, and as the name suggests, there’s a huge selection of colors and patterns, so once you find the style of the item you need, color matching is a breeze.” Want more? Check out her Etsy store. We Love Colors imperfect tights can be bought in bulk here. Check out Chloe's other social media, tumblr and Instagram. Featured photo features 4 pairs of solid color tights, 2 in light grey, 2 in grey, none are worn as arm socks. Photos by: Thegiolon (Tumblr) jacknimball (Tumblr) dmeisenhart (Instagram) jonahf (Instagram)