This past weekend at Dallas Comic Con, you couldn’t throw Mjolnir without hitting someone dressed as Thor. Or Black Widow. Or in one case, the wendigo from Hannibal.

For some people, half the fun of going to conventions is looking at cosplay. It’s like bird-watching, only instead of collecting rare bird sightings it becomes a game of who can correctly identify the most obscure anime character. For others–me included–the fun comes from costuming. For all that I’ve been costuming on and off since 2002, I’ve usually fallen on the “quick” and “cheap” side of the phrase “quick, cheap, or good: pick two.” But in the past few years I’ve taken some inspiration from the dedicated costumers I’ve seen and spent some time actually learning a bit more beyond secondhand store scavenging skills.

First and foremost: do not underestimate the time it will take you to build something. The item I’m most proud of this year is a replica Malcom Reynolds (of Firefly fame) pistol that I built out of craft foam and wood glue. From beginning to end, it took about a month.

Secondly, and probably just as importantly: plan for all the things that could go wrong. Bring a fix kit. You’d think I would have remembered this after an incident where a friend had to staple me back into my costume, but I still found myself having to beg hot glue and packing tape from a friend after my holster tore. Which brings me to my third point:

Test everything out beforehand. This includes makeup, wigs, clothing, armor, whatever. Walk around in it. Make sure that it fits and does what you want it to do. My cleverly painted craft foam holster looked beautiful and fit perfectly while I was standing in front of a mirror, but began cracking and tearing as soon as I’d started walking.

Most importantly: have fun! Yes, you should enjoy the fruits of your labor. But with any luck you’ll also enjoy the process of making something you find joy in. You put work into showing how much you love your fandom and your character of choice. You’re already awesome.