Posts with the label Costumes
Showing posts with label Costumes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Costumes. Show all posts
Jul 26, 2016
Star Wars: the costume awakens
So. Costumes. I like making them. The trick is finding a time and place to wear them, which I'm guessing is the reason people get so excited about Comic-Con. We are all just looking for an excuse to dress up.
The most recent excuse was the premier of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. (I am only 8 months late posting this). Me and my sisters all decided to dress up in different outfits of Princess Leia's. You can do fun things like that when you have roughly a million sisters.
Just to clarify, one of the people in that picture is my brother, and a few are nieces. Not everyone conformed to our Leia Manifesto. Demi even went so far as to dress up as Rey. She is such a rebel.
In case you are a giant nerd I should tell you that, Yes, I know I am wearing it on the wrong shoulder. I looked at the picture and figured out what shoulder to put it on and carefully set it up so it would go on the correct shoulder, but maybe I am a little dyslexic because I clearly got it wrong. Tragic!
I made it by cutting some squares out of craft foam and then I went digging in the junk drawer. I used hot glue to attach beads, wire, legos, brads, and more pieces of craft foam. Then I spray painted it black and then brushed on some silver craft paint. Those little dowels were made out of one long dowel, cut into pieces and painted silver. Real technical like.
Richard's costume came to me one night just as I was drifting off to sleep. Or, at least the basic idea did. Since I was dressing as Leia in her Boushh disguise, it only made sense for Richard to dress as Chewie. But how to do it? We considered him wearing a Chewie robe, Chewie pajamas, or a Chewie hoodie, but that night, in the hazy realm between sleep and wakfulness, it suddenly struck me that he should dress the way Chewbacca would dress if he were Human. But it wasn't till I told Richard my epiphany in the morning that he said, "If Chewie were human, he would be a trucker." And the costume just fell into place.
I apologize if you are here to look at pictures and attempt to exactly replicate the 70's Chewie Trucker costume, because these are the best pictures I have. Richard was nice enough to wear this for me once but I don't know if I can get him to put it on again. You might be able to see the lack of enthusiasm in the above picture. But it was a pretty simple costume. I made a vest out of the only fur material I could find at Joann's. He got a kicky little bag made out of the leftover faux leather from my vest, and more craft foam spray painted silver. His awesome mustache is more of the same fur, just trimmed a bit, and glued to his face with some cosmetic adhesive.
The hat, however, was a bit of a disappointment. I spent a ridiculously long time making this stencil to paint on the blank hat I had bought online.
But then the vinyl wouldn't stick to the hat long enough for me to paint anything on it. I eventually painted the stencil on some cotton fabric I had and then used spray adhesive to stick the cotton onto the hat, but that wouldn't stick either, and it fell off after a couple of hours. What I needed to do was some sort of embroidery, but that was outside of my wheelhouse. Maybe next year. Maybe without the mustache I MIGHT be able to convince him to wear it again. Maybe even just the bag and hat. (In the following picture, the rebel pilot is my brother in law with his son, Little Han.)
The secret to cosplay, I think, is to act like you DON'T feel at all foolish, when in reality, you probably do. But you don't show it. You strut your stuff like it makes you feel awesome. And it is just possible that half of the people who see you sorta wish that they had gotten dressed up too. You're an inspiration. And you look fantastic!
The most recent excuse was the premier of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. (I am only 8 months late posting this). Me and my sisters all decided to dress up in different outfits of Princess Leia's. You can do fun things like that when you have roughly a million sisters.
I wanted to go as Leia when she is wearing her Boushh disguise. Here is a shot from the movie for reference:
It is awesome. But I didn't feel the need to be totally authentic. I think the fun is seeing what I can change to make it work for me, and what I can put together based on stuff I already have. She is wearing a waist band and those shoulder things, but instead I just made a vest. I made a tunic type shirt and some gauntlet sort of arm bands and then I just had to make her bandoleer. That was my favorite part.
Richard's costume came to me one night just as I was drifting off to sleep. Or, at least the basic idea did. Since I was dressing as Leia in her Boushh disguise, it only made sense for Richard to dress as Chewie. But how to do it? We considered him wearing a Chewie robe, Chewie pajamas, or a Chewie hoodie, but that night, in the hazy realm between sleep and wakfulness, it suddenly struck me that he should dress the way Chewbacca would dress if he were Human. But it wasn't till I told Richard my epiphany in the morning that he said, "If Chewie were human, he would be a trucker." And the costume just fell into place.
I apologize if you are here to look at pictures and attempt to exactly replicate the 70's Chewie Trucker costume, because these are the best pictures I have. Richard was nice enough to wear this for me once but I don't know if I can get him to put it on again. You might be able to see the lack of enthusiasm in the above picture. But it was a pretty simple costume. I made a vest out of the only fur material I could find at Joann's. He got a kicky little bag made out of the leftover faux leather from my vest, and more craft foam spray painted silver. His awesome mustache is more of the same fur, just trimmed a bit, and glued to his face with some cosmetic adhesive.
The hat, however, was a bit of a disappointment. I spent a ridiculously long time making this stencil to paint on the blank hat I had bought online.
The secret to cosplay, I think, is to act like you DON'T feel at all foolish, when in reality, you probably do. But you don't show it. You strut your stuff like it makes you feel awesome. And it is just possible that half of the people who see you sorta wish that they had gotten dressed up too. You're an inspiration. And you look fantastic!
Oct 31, 2015
Halloween (OR: Let Me Show Off My Mad Costume Making Skills)
That is it. It is decided. Halloween is my favorite holiday. I like it best and I'll tell you why:
1) I don't have to give anyone a gift.
2) I am not subjected to the same cheesy music everywhere I go.
3) I get to wear a costume.
4) CANDY.
Also, our Halloween traditions are such fun. Every year we go to a pumpkin patch to kick the month off, then we decorate scary cookie houses, carve pumpkins, and make Halloween decorations. Not to mention that the weather has just turn all autumny and beautiful, the cooking is more delicious and life in general takes a turn for the better.
Halloween as a parent is fun because you can dress your babies as whatever you want.
But eventually they reach an age where they want to pick their own costumes. Sometimes you get lucky and they pick something awesome and so fun to make.
And if what they want to be is Sheriff Woody, you can throw together a pretty great costume if you already happen to have a pair of cowboy boots.
If you have boys, chances are at some point they are going to want to be Batman.
But not to worry! That is when things start to get exciting! And if they BOTH want to be batman, Even Better!
Craft Foam, and Fusible Web are a costume makers greatest friends.
If they've already been Batman, what are they going to want to be next? Why, Superman of course!
But no matter how much you love putting together costumes for your kids, inevitably the year will come that they insist on a STORE BOUGHT Spiderman costume, and you will have to give in.
Does that make anyone besides me sad? I had a hard time letting go, so I had to make SOMETHING, and settled on these:
I ordered their costumes from Amazon this year, thinking they might have some higher quality costumes, but I am pretty sure they are the same ones we could have picked up at Walmart.
Here is the tag from Colin's Costume:
Yes, you read that right.
"Do Not Wash. Do Not Dry. Do Not Dry clean."
That's right. The quality is so poor that even taking the costume within the vicinity of a washing machine may cause it to begin the process of disintegration. This doesn't really matter if the costume is only going to be worn once anyway, but my 5 year old will wear his every single day if I let him. He has worn it 3 days so far and several parts of it are already giving up the ghost. (Ha Ha! Halloween Humor!)
Stay Tuned for future developments of this exciting story. Will his costume last the week?
1) I don't have to give anyone a gift.
2) I am not subjected to the same cheesy music everywhere I go.
3) I get to wear a costume.
4) CANDY.
Also, our Halloween traditions are such fun. Every year we go to a pumpkin patch to kick the month off, then we decorate scary cookie houses, carve pumpkins, and make Halloween decorations. Not to mention that the weather has just turn all autumny and beautiful, the cooking is more delicious and life in general takes a turn for the better.
Halloween as a parent is fun because you can dress your babies as whatever you want.
But eventually they reach an age where they want to pick their own costumes. Sometimes you get lucky and they pick something awesome and so fun to make.
And if what they want to be is Sheriff Woody, you can throw together a pretty great costume if you already happen to have a pair of cowboy boots.
But not to worry! That is when things start to get exciting! And if they BOTH want to be batman, Even Better!
If they've already been Batman, what are they going to want to be next? Why, Superman of course!
Does that make anyone besides me sad? I had a hard time letting go, so I had to make SOMETHING, and settled on these:
I ordered their costumes from Amazon this year, thinking they might have some higher quality costumes, but I am pretty sure they are the same ones we could have picked up at Walmart.
Here is the tag from Colin's Costume:
Yes, you read that right.
"Do Not Wash. Do Not Dry. Do Not Dry clean."
That's right. The quality is so poor that even taking the costume within the vicinity of a washing machine may cause it to begin the process of disintegration. This doesn't really matter if the costume is only going to be worn once anyway, but my 5 year old will wear his every single day if I let him. He has worn it 3 days so far and several parts of it are already giving up the ghost. (Ha Ha! Halloween Humor!)
Stay Tuned for future developments of this exciting story. Will his costume last the week?
Nov 2, 2014
Halloween 2014
Doctor Who and Harry Potter had a great time this Halloween.
Harry was as sassy as ever.
But I think the Doctor was feeling a little under the weather.
Even so, fezzes are cool.
We carved up some pretty nifty pumpkins,
and of course we made our traditional Halloween Cookies Houses.
Ooh, very spooky.
Halloween = Fun!
We carved up some pretty nifty pumpkins,
Ooh, very spooky.
Halloween = Fun!
Nov 7, 2012
Halloween 2012
This year we had 2 Batmen. One just wasn't going to be enough for our crime fighting needs.
Colin has been telling me he was batman for months. Harrison changed his mind about what he wanted to be nearly every day.
Don't listen to what the naysayers tell you. Two Batmen are better than one!
Colin has been telling me he was batman for months. Harrison changed his mind about what he wanted to be nearly every day.
For a while Harrison was pretty determined to be Captain America, but eventually he settled on Batman, which I was glad for, cuz Captain America would have been so much harder to make.
Aug 19, 2012
Beware the Wild Animals
Nov 4, 2011
Fall 2011
In September, school started.
And Colin ate lots of hotdogs.
And he got very good at feeding himself with a fork. He really is amazing at it.
He loves Doctor Who, and was so excited when his backpack came and couldn't wait to wear it to school. He said, "When all my friends see it, they'll say 'Yea!'".
With Harrison's new backpack, that meant that Colin got Harrison's old one. He will wear it for hours.
Harrison likes Doctor Who so much he had me make him a TARDIS out of Legos.
Here is the Doctor, standing on top, just like he always does in the show.
On September 14th I took some pictures for somebody. Harrison and his cousin Sydney wanted in on all the picture taking, so I ended up with several of them. Colin is now my child who won't hold still for a picture, so photos of him are pretty rare these days.
I don't know what he is doing in that picture. I guess he wanted to have his eyebrows raised? And when I told him and Sydney "You're a tiger!" this is what I got:
Then Sydney and Harrison tried to pose nicely together:
Sydney is a pro. She thought maybe putting her arm around Harrison would help.
But it didn't.
Here are Harrison and Colin waiting together for Harrison's school bus to come.
Later that day they had a parade! And then sat down for a jam session.
In October Harrison drew some big 'ol pictures to hang on the windows. He said he wrote his name on this one, but when I told him it said "Ho Ho Ho" he laughed and laughed.
He was so proud of this next one. With good reason:
He pointed out to me him, and the sun and grass and a tree, and see that purple thing over there on the right? He said that is his old head. At least we know where it is now.
As Halloween got closer, we all got excited:
Until finally it was time to dress up! Here is Harrison/Sheriff Woody with some of his cousins
And this year we managed to turn Colin into Captain Kirk.
We went Trick-or-Treating near Grandma's house. Which was Hilarious. Colin would walk up and smack the front door, saying "Uh!" and when they opened the door, Harrison would shout "TRICK OR TREEEEAT!" as loud as he could.
We had a great time, though Colin couldn't figure out why he couldn't just eat his candy already.
All in all, a great Halloween. I wonder what they will decide to be next year?
And he got very good at feeding himself with a fork. He really is amazing at it.
He likes to eat just about anything, but he LOVES vegetables. They are always the first thing gone on his plate. He'll eat all his veggies and ask for more (in sign language) before even touching anything else. Not until ALL the veggies are gone will he finally eat everything else. He can finish almost a whole can of green beans in one sitting, all by himself.
The NEXT big thing to happen was Harrison getting his new Backpack.
With Harrison's new backpack, that meant that Colin got Harrison's old one. He will wear it for hours.
Harrison likes Doctor Who so much he had me make him a TARDIS out of Legos.
Here is the Doctor, standing on top, just like he always does in the show.
On September 14th I took some pictures for somebody. Harrison and his cousin Sydney wanted in on all the picture taking, so I ended up with several of them. Colin is now my child who won't hold still for a picture, so photos of him are pretty rare these days.
I don't know what he is doing in that picture. I guess he wanted to have his eyebrows raised? And when I told him and Sydney "You're a tiger!" this is what I got:
But it didn't.
Here are Harrison and Colin waiting together for Harrison's school bus to come.
Later that day they had a parade! And then sat down for a jam session.
In October Harrison drew some big 'ol pictures to hang on the windows. He said he wrote his name on this one, but when I told him it said "Ho Ho Ho" he laughed and laughed.
He was so proud of this next one. With good reason:
As Halloween got closer, we all got excited:
Until finally it was time to dress up! Here is Harrison/Sheriff Woody with some of his cousins
And this year we managed to turn Colin into Captain Kirk.
We went Trick-or-Treating near Grandma's house. Which was Hilarious. Colin would walk up and smack the front door, saying "Uh!" and when they opened the door, Harrison would shout "TRICK OR TREEEEAT!" as loud as he could.
We had a great time, though Colin couldn't figure out why he couldn't just eat his candy already.
All in all, a great Halloween. I wonder what they will decide to be next year?
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