Throwback to our first hasty Avengers 'cosplay'

When Avengers: Age of Ultron started showing in cinemas, we were only focused on getting to the first possible screening. But a few days before we went to see it, we decided that we had to dress for the occasion.

Slightly broke and out of time, we devised the easiest 'costumes' we could come up with - Marius went as Nick Fury, and Annalene as Thor. Of course, we would have loved to do Iron Man and Hulk, but those outfits are quite tricky, and take more planning.

Marius had recently shaved his hair, so all he needed was an eyepatch and a pistol. For Annalene's Thor outfit, we (okay, mostly Marius) built Mjolnir out of cardboard, plastic pipe and tinfoil, and turned an old sarong into a royal cape.

We got some stares and compliments in the mall, and a few people even stopped for photos. None were deemed worthy to lift the mighty hammer of Odin. At the movies, the Ster Kinekor manager also asked for a photo, and we were happy to oblige. It's fun when others also get excited about something we are excited about!

We only got around to taking photos in the mall's parking lot, so unfortunately the quality is not that great.  And when we get around to posting some of our later dress-ups, it will become clear that we've come a long way from turning sarongs into capes. But hey, you have to start somewhere.

Enjoy!

Lord of the Rings collection

Today, we'd like to share our Lord of the Rings gear with you. We've made our love for Star Wars and superheroes pretty clear by now, but both of us are also huge Tolkien fans! And as an added bonus, we happen to live in JRR Tolkien's birth town - Bloemfontein, South Africa.

When we moved in together, we actually had doubles of the Lord of the Rings books and DVDs, so we gave away the extras and combined our collections.

We actually bought Andúril (Aragorn's sword) for our wedding - perhaps one day we'll have a blog post on that - so that was our first combined Lord of the Rings purchase. Unfortunately, Middle Earth craze seems to be subsiding a bit, so epic Lord of the Rings gear is in short supply in most places. We found the sword in a very random Chinese toy shop in Bloemfontein - someone else had ordered it, but never came to pay for it / pick it up, so the owners let us have it. Score!

There are different opinions on the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie adaptations, but both of us have agreed never to speak of the Hobbit movies.

In addition to the collection pictured below, we also have a bunch of Lord of the Rings games (most of them digitally purchased, borrowed or sold, so not pictured): Shadow of Mordor (PS4), Lord of the Rings War in the North (PS3), Lego Lord of the Rings (PS Vita), Battle for Middle Earth (PC), and Lord of the Rings Conquest (PC).

So without any further ado, here are the pictures:

The full collection

The trilogy

The Hobbit and The Silmarillion (both great reads)

A nice coffee table book

Inside the Tolkien Illustrated Encyclopedia

Really nice art book

Inside the Illustrated Atlas

Gollum with his favourite snack

This came with Marius' copy of the Extended DVD version of The Two Towers

More Gollum

No collection is complete without the One Ring

My Precious... This came with a Lego Lord of the Rings pre-order (BT Games)

Extended DVD collection - a must for any true fan

This shows why the Extended DVDs are worth it

Andúril

Blade, sheath and knife

The knife fits into the sheath

Andúril can also be used for cake cutting :)

Viking and Valkyrie

Halloween is an excellent excuse to dress up/cosplay without being looked at too strangely. For Halloween 2015, we decided on a Viking and Valkyrie theme. We raided local toy and party shops and Googled Viking war paint.

To take things to the next level, we even decided to experiment with some liquid latex, giving the Viking warrior some battle wounds.  This was surprisingly easy (though rather time-consuming) – YouTube has lots of awesome quick tutorials on working with latex and fake blood, and we had fun with this. It didn’t come out too badly for a first attempt, and we got quite a few compliments when we went out to show off our costumes.

But let the pictures speak for themselves.