About Teea Cosplays
Award-winning cosplay creator, costume designer, fabricator, and fandom storyteller based in Southern California.
I’m Teea, the creator behind @cupof_teea / Teea Cosplays. I design and build original cosplay projects, character-inspired costumes, props, armor pieces, accessories, and fandom content rooted in creativity, craftsmanship, storytelling, and very real behind-the-scenes chaos.
Teea Cosplays is where my love for costumes, characters, fandom, and making things all come together. I care deeply about the details: the design, the foam work, the painting, the styling, the final look, and the story behind it. But I also care about showing the less polished side too: the mistakes, the last-minute fixes, the convention mishaps, and the very human process of figuring things out as I go. The finished costume matters, but so does the story of how it got there.
Where It All Started
I have always been creative. Growing up, I was drawn to anything imaginative: drawing, painting, makeup, outfits, decorating, and Halloween costumes. I loved everything “nerdy,” especially anime, video games, TV shows, and movies with sci-fi, magic, or superhero themes.
I was also the kind of kid who would draw and redesign Disney princesses as mermaids, matching their own color schemes and props, and make up stories around them. Looking back, that explains a lot about the kind of cosplay I love now.
I’m half Finnish and half American, and I’ve lived in different countries and cultures throughout my life. That also shaped the way I see creativity, people, style, and storytelling. My inspiration has never come from one place. It comes from everything I’ve seen, loved, and carried with me.
Looking back, I realized I’ve always been drawn to transformation: taking something familiar and making it feel like my own.
From Halloween Costumes to Cosplay Builds
I started making costumes in 2017, beginning with Halloween looks, themed outfits, and event-specific costumes.
One of my first fully self-made costumes was a Mardi Gras masquerade look for an event. It was far from perfect, but it was the beginning of me realizing how much I loved turning an idea into something wearable. After that, I created a Hedwig-inspired costume for a Harry Potter party, which became one of my first original character-style costume designs.
From there, I started pushing myself into bigger projects. My first armor-style cosplay was an original Rapidash Warrior concept, which I wore to my first convention. Later that year, I also created a Pikachu Warrior Armor design. I think we can all see a pattern here.
I was still learning construction, proportion, and visual balance, but my love of cosplay was still growing. I wanted to keep creating more costumes because the ideas kept coming, and I would constantly get inspired by new characters, concepts, and worlds.
Those early builds were not great, but they are part of my story. They show where I started: curious, self-taught, messy, and willing to figure things out as I went.
The International Detour
In 2018, I moved to Finland to earn my Business Degree with a focus in Marketing. During those years, cosplay became more occasional than constant. I was a student with limited money, limited supplies, and not much space to build the way I wanted to.
I still made a few looks during that time, including Red Jasmine from Aladdin, Wicked Lady from Sailor Moon, and a Hedwig remake, but I was not creating consistently. At the time, it was hard letting cosplay take a back seat, but looking back, that chapter was still shaping what Teea Cosplays would become.
Studying marketing taught me how to think beyond the finished costume. I learned about branding, social media content creation, analytics, graphic design, video editing, websites, audience behavior, and how to turn creative ideas into something people can actually find, understand, and connect with.
In a lot of ways, I am my own one-woman marketing team. I design the costumes, build the props, create the visuals, edit the content, manage the website, study what performs, and keep finding ways to make each project better.
Finding My Way Back Into Cosplay
After moving back to the U.S. in 2023, I had to rebuild a lot of things in my life, including my creative momentum. I was finding work, gathering tools, buying supplies piece by piece, and trying to get back into the kind of creating I had missed.
In 2024, I was gifted a sewing machine and made my first full sewn outfit: Zou Arc Nami's purple dress from One Piece. Sewing is still a newer skill for me, but that costume helped me start creating again.
I also made Nami’s Log Pose, which brought me back into foam work and reminded me how much I missed building props, accessories, and armor pieces. That project helped bring me back into cosplay and pushed me to start going to conventions again.
The Cosplay Build That Changed Everything
In 2025, I created my original Derpy Warrior cosplay, which became one of the first projects that helped people notice my work.
That costume also led to an invitation to attend a taping of The Masked Singer for their KPop Demon Hunters season intro.
The experience was incredible, but very on brand. My headpiece was slipping, Sussie (the bird) was falling off, and because I was trying to keep everything together, I missed my chance to high-five Ken Jeong. That chaos became part of the video I made about the experience, which ended up reaching 10K views!
I was honestly shocked. People were actually enjoying and responding to my content, so I kept posting. I started filming more of the things I was already doing, like going to Universal Fan Nights, and sharing the stories behind those experiences. Those videos kept growing, and some went viral, which pushed me to create even more.
From Rebuild To Award Winning Cosplay
In March of 2026, I decided to improve and rebuild my Derpy Warrior armor. I loved the costume idea, the headdress, and Sussie, but I also knew the armor was rushed and not the quality it could have been. That updated version helped me gain more confidence, and I ended up joining my first cosplay contest.
I almost let my nerves talk me out of entering. I had doubted myself, questioned whether the costume was good enough, and convinced myself more than once that maybe I was not ready. But I entered anyway.
My original Derpy Warrior cosplay won 1st Place in the Journeyman category and placed 3rd Overall at the Anime Riverside 2026 Cosplay Contest.
I had applied as a Novice, so when I won Journeyman, I honestly thought there had been a mistake and checked with the judges after. There was no mistake. The judges recognized the foam work, painting, headdress, originality, and overall craftsmanship of the build to be at a higher tier than Novice.
That award meant more to me than I can fully explain. It was not just about winning. It proved that all the hard work, late nights, problem-solving, and creative choices were actually translating to other people. The creativity I had suppressed for so long was finally becoming something people could see, understand, and connect with.
The Future Of Teea Cosplays
I am building Teea Cosplays into more than a place to post finished costumes. I want it to feel like a creative world people can follow: the builds, the process, the convention stories, the fandom moments, the mistakes, the wins, and the chaos that comes with bringing big ideas to life.
For my followers, I want this to feel like a place where you can connect with the person behind the costumes. I want to build a supportive, creative community that celebrates originality, self-expression, and being brave enough to try.
For brands and creative teams, I want Teea Cosplays to show the full picture of what I bring: original ideas, hands-on build skills, content creation, visual storytelling, and a marketing background that helps me understand why people connect with certain content.
I am here to keep building, learning, competing, making my original ideas real, and turning the chaos into something worth following.