The Great Thrifted Costume Haul

One of my favorite parts of holiday weekends is that all the local thrift stores have sales. We are very into buying second-hand (almost my entire closet was purchased used), so we usually check out the bargains. Today we got quite the deals on some excellent costumes and costume accessories!

The first two stores we hit had some good fashion items but no costumes. The third was a treasure trove of children's outfits! We got a Monster High Abby Bominable, a Draculara (I'm going on record right now that I don't know Monster High characters and will probably butcher the names), a Batman, Batgirl, Spidergirl, Elsa from Frozen, and Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. All but the Spidergirl were in great shape, and that one really just needs the cuffs repaired. We promised my older niece we would all go as Monster High at some point, so now I suppose that point will have to be before the costumes are too small for the girls. 

Kate also found a fabulous Maleficent costume, including a soft foam head piece with horns. The horns do not stand up well by themselves, but could easily be reinforced to work just fine. 

The best part of all this is that the total cost of costumes, including all seven children's costumes and the Maleficent, was less than $50! Any items we don't use for conventions will be perfect for play time with the girls. Can't beat this steal!

Now if only I could put as much time into actually finishing my costume for Comic Con in two weeks as I spend shopping at the thrift stores...

The happiest little Batgirl

The Elsa costume that is apparently a little scratchy for the little one. We plan to cut off the scratchy material along the top and put simple blue satin straps on.

Abby Bominable! 

Maleficent is the steal of the day! The costume and head piece were under $10!

Poison Ivy Excitement!

As I am sure the title of this post indicates, I am very excited to be cosplaying Poison Ivy this September. Despite some frustration with my skirt (ruching is not a thing I'm going to be doing again any time soon), I am quite pleased with the concepts I have laid down and the work that's been completed thus far.

The top of my outfit is completely done. I was going to use felt leaves initially, due to the plastic ones being rather expensive online, but then I scored an amazing deal on some plastic bouquets of ivy leaves. Since I was unhappy with the flat, two-dimensional look of the felt leaves, I decided to switch them out for the plastic, which were more realistic and had designs and variations in color already present. I had been thinking I was going to have to go back through and paint on details, so this was a pleasant surprise!

I had already started gluing on the felt leaves, but luckily was able to remove them from the strapless swimsuit and not cause too much damage to the fabric. There was quite a bit of glue residue remaining, but that got covered by the new leaves, so who really gives a damn?

The old leaves (are dead, long live the new leaves). I had placed a lot more than this by the time I switched, but this gives an idea what they looked like. 

The new leaves went on like a charm. I have to go back through and place several more to cover places that are exposed when my rather generous figure stretches out the suit, but that should be easy. I didn't go very far down, since I prefer to wear my skirts a bit higher. I have a large measurement on my hips and a rather small one on my natural waist, causing everything I wear to migrate up to my waist regardless of where it starts. I decided to hell with it years ago and just started wearing everything higher.

The new leaves. Much more color variation and texture! 

Also, my natural hair color; not quite red enough!

My wig arrived a few weeks ago and I am beyond thrilled with how it looks! I was correct in thinking that getting all my hair under it is going to be a challenge, but that's a small price to pay for how utterly fantastic it looks on me! It definitely helps that I am a natural redhead, so the coloring is already there. This just takes it to the next level and gives me the length and curls that I can't get with my hair, or rather I could get but have minimal to no desire to work for. I have had hair as long as this wig before (I could sit on it when it was in a braid!) and it is horrible, miserable work to get it there and maintain it. Never again!

New wig, much faster than growing out my hair! Also cheaper, if you take into account my former shampoo and conditioner bills. 

The skirt has given me a little more grief. As previously stated, I was going to try for something ruched that could be turned into an Ariel skirt for January, to make it serve double duty, but it turns out that I am physically incapable of making the skirt I want, and instead was reduced to a quivering pile of tears and forced to come to terms with my own mortality. So instead, I will be doing the only kind of skirt I know how: put a channel along the top and thread elastic through! The good ol' standby.

Green fabric for my skirt

I know some people are probably thinking, "But Poison Ivy doesn't have a skirt!" Well, I for one like to shave as little as possible. I also have no butt, and desire to hide my asslessness under a several folds of fabric. For these reasons, this Poison Ivy will be wearing a skirt!

The only other thing I need to finish is my chest piece. I didn't want to go completely green for several reasons. First, that's a lot of time in application. Painting my arms, legs, face, and chest green could add hours onto the time it takes me to get ready, and I truly enjoy sleeping in. Second, I would be leaving green stains everywhere I went, and third, I don't want to have to scrub all that off in the bathroom of the Marriot. That just doesn't sound like a fun evening. instead I decided to use a green acrylic gem (already purchased) and paint on a series of green veins coming out from it. I want to make a clay piece that the gem fits into that I can glue onto my chest. This way I can paint some red onto it and mimic the look of an inflamed, infected spot, like the green is a disease that's spreading through my body, starting at the point where the gem has embedded itself. I am somewhat leery of my sculpting skills (since I have none), but I always have an artistically talented brother-in-law to help me if things don't go well!

Phew, I think that's pretty much everything! I did buy two ivy vines online to wrap around my legs, again to avoid body paint, and a pair of cheap sandals that will have the extra leaves glued across the top of them. What am I missing? I've been considering if I want a mask, and what form that might take. Thoughts? Suggestions? I want to hear them all!

P.S. One of these days I really will make one of my sisters write a post. I'm sure the internet is getting mighty tired of hearing just my voice here!

Poison Ivy is a Definite GO!

I have for sure, 100%, decided that I am doing Poison Ivy for Rose City Comic Con in September! I have started pinning some costumes for inspiration here. This is the Pinterest board where I leave little tidbits I find that I might want to follow up on. Feel free to check it out; I've been pinning way, so there's lots of cute stuff on there! I also want these boots for my outfit. They are amazing, and I think they would speak to the whole dryad look I am aiming for. I want to do a bit more naturalist of a Poison Ivy with a few of my own twists.

This week I went to the thrift store and purchased a slightly-too-large bathing suit. I am going to sew all of my leaves to it. Yes, I know that the Con isn't until September, but I'm cutting out and sewing hundreds of felt leaves, so I figured getting a jump-start couldn't hurt! I got the suit a bit too large so that it wouldn't stretch and distort too much when I put it on, and so that it would be more comfortable to wear for a whole weekend. Comfort is important! Also, I want to eat nachos, so I can't be too constricted. Just sayin', a girl's gotta get her nacho on.

I will forgo the painted on vines for my arms and legs and just go for some wire stemmed ivy from the floral department. I like the authenticity of having it three-dimensional. I think I'll also have to figure out some interesting eye makeup. In all, very excited for this costume. I will post pictures later this week when I have some of the leaves ready to go!

Wizard World Comic Con 2014

I know it's been a week since the con and I'm a terrible blogger for not posting sooner. That's not to say that a certain miss Kate couldn't have posted for us, but you know! ;-)

The reason for my delay is that the last day of Comic Con I flew out from Portland (I love several hours south of there in Oregon) to beautiful Las Vegas. I have friend who just had a brilliant baby boy and I needed to meet him! Now I'm done in Vegas and am meandering down to Arizona to see my grandparents. So you can see it's been a busy week! I still haven't been home since before the convention.

Now I'm relaxing in a hotel, all packed to leave in the morning for Arizona (where it's supposed to be snowing!!) and I simply cannot sleep. Because of this I figured now would be as good a time as any to start recording the goings-on of last weekend.

First off, let me just say: HO-LY CUH-RAP! It was amazing. I was so stressed going into it. I didn't know if we would be the only ones dressed up, or if everyone else would be professional cosplayers and we would be the only ones in home made gear, or if people would be nice. Turns out there was nothing to worry about! Everyone was so nice. There was a whole mix of levels, from the grandly professional to the "printed T-shirt and accessories," and no one seemed to mind. On the day when I wore Wonder Woman and Kate wore Penguin a lot of people even asked for photos with us! Talk about flattering!

I got to have my nerd moments. Nicholas Brendan was ten feet from me. Yeah, that happened. I am a huge Buffy fan and kind of lost my cool a tiny bit. Maybe more than a tiny bit. Then I turned around and Ivy Doomkitty, one of my favorite cosplayers, was right there. I almost just turned around and walked away but instead I very calmly (read: with hands shaking and probably squeaking like a chipmunk) went over and said hi. The inner fangirl had an amazing day. I even got a picture with Ivy. Yup. Epic.

Costumes came out great. The only problem was not being able to get my hair as curled as I wanted it. Add to that the fact that I have about 34 cubic yards of unruly, heavy, red mop on top of my head, and by the end of the day it was definitely not doing the large Wonder Woman look. But that's OK. I think I'm going to invest in a wig for future costuming, and maybe just maybe cut all my hair off and burn it ceremoniously to rid it of its demon posesor. Still unsure on the second part.

Here are some photos from the weekend. I will add more to this listing when I darn well feel like it. Or maybe I won't. Either way, I'm off to lay in bed and draw up sketches for new costumes. Maybe if everyone promises to not make fun of the fact that I can't draw to save my life I'll even post some later! Good night!

Edit: 2/15/14 Came back through to caption some pictures :-) 

Here I am as Lady Thor

Lady Loki (Kate), Lady Thor (Me), Raven (Maecy) and of course Princess Sophia!

Princess Sophia Digivolve into Storm!

Wonder Woman (Me) and Black Canary (Maecy)

Kate as FemPenguin in what is arguably the cutest corset ever

The tiniest Wonder Girl, ready for action.

Jean-Luc likes to party it up when he goes to Cons

DIY Costume Loki Staff

January 13th, 2014

Kate has decided that if I get a hammer as Thor, she gets a staff for Loki. Since my beautiful Mjolnir arrived in the mail last week that means it's time for her to get her way. That means that this weekend we are sitting down to make her a fantastic, bladed (fake!), regal scepter worthy of the bastard king of Norse polytheism. She found several tutorials online, or so she says. She hasn't shown them to me so I wouldn't know. I get to go into this one blind.

January 15th, 2014

Well, it turns out that Kate is serious and we're actually making a staff this weekend. This should be interesting.

January 18th, 2014

Staff-making has been delayed due to a family emergency.

January 19th, 2014

Very late this evening we got a chance to start on the new project. We got the top screwed off the broom (or what I like to call, The Hard Part). We cut blades out of cardboard. We attempted to tape them to the stick part. They fell off. We taped them again and they fell off again. We had a beer, talked about the fact that this sucked, and set the project aside until after Comic Con. 

Moral of the story: there is no moral. We are tired and have been in family crisis mode all weekend. We are not making a staff right now on account of that trying to do so sucked. In fact, this probably won't even get published until after Comic Con because I'm a terrible, terrible person. Here are some amusing pictures of us failing at trying to make stuff!

DIY Costume Bracers

I have been second guessing myself on my fantastic Wonder Woman bracers I made. I wanted something a little more "armor" and a little less "glamour." On the way home from work I was struck with a sudden inspiration, and I came home and made these beauties:

Aside from the lumps in the paint job, I'm really happy with how they turned out. I decided to include on this blog directions for how I made them. This will guide you, step by step, through the process I used to create these wonderful, easy gauntlets. 

And here we go!

Step 1: Don't Reduce, Don't Recycle, Just Reuse

Take two soda bottles and clean them out really well. I mean really well. You truly don't want to deal with half-dried soda syrup that's been heated by a scalding hot glue gun. That epitomizes unpleasant. I had to use my husband's soda bottles, which can be conveniently found on the kitchen counter. All over the counter. All the time. 

Step 2: Slice

Cut the bottles. This can be accomplished with a sharp pair of scissors. Apparently it can also be accomplished with a dull pair of scissors and lots of swearing. I cut mine right below the textured part on top and right above the bottom texture to maximize the length. You could also cut them shorter if you wanted bracelets instead of full arm bands. Now they should be something like this, the cut one on the right and the full bottle on the left:

Now cut off the portion of the bottle that has adhesive permanently stuck to it. This will open the bracelet up to be able to fit around your arm and also get rid of the adhesive. 

"But Rose," you say, "there isn't any adhesive. I managed to get it all off."

That is a lie. There is ALWAYS adhesive. The adhesive on the side of bottles is the stuff of legend.  It won't come off, so just accept it, cut it off, and move on to...

Step 3: Safety First

Get stabbed in the arm with the sharp corners when you attempt to try them on. React, pull it off your arm, and then get stabbed when you do it again because they just look so cool already. I'm tying to be exact in my directions, so this merely chronicles my own experience with sharp plastic to the forearm. Now take your (dull) scissors and round off the corners so that there can be a better ratio of paint to your blood on the final product. Should be something around like this now:

Step 4: That Drawing Class Finally Comes in Handy

Draw your design on. I used a marker. You could use a dry erase marker if you wanted to be able to make corrections, but the finished product will cover the marks, so it really doesn't matter. If you are a skilled artist, have any confidence in your ability to make designs while burning your fingerprints off, or are suffering from an excess of hubris, then skip this step and move on to applying the hot glue. If not them it will look something like this, but hopefully with much better art:

Step 5: The Step in Which You Will Regret Starting this Project and OH GOD IT BURNS MY FINGERS!!

Here's where the fun starts. Now you are going to draw over the designs you did using a hot glue gun. The purpose of this is to make the designs raised so they stand out once you paint over the whole thing. 

This is also the part where, if you're anything like me, you will incur a series of permanent scars. I am not good with hot glue guns. Oh, I get shit done with them. I can glue things to other things like a pro. But in the process I also glue my hand to the table, my fingers to my other fingers, and a series of expletives runs in steady progression from my mouth. I would recommend using a low temp glue gun, not only because it will save you from certain pain, but also because my high temp gun caused the plastic of the bottle to warp slightly. 

The process goes something like this: Pick up glue gun. Swear because you dripped glue on your other hand. Run glue along the drawn line. Set glue gun down to re-position piece. Swear because you touched the hot glue on the bracelet and smudged it while also burning your hand. React to try and save the design and in the process tangle elbow in cord and knock the glue gun off the table onto lap, burning the sweet holy hell out of your leg. Make an oath to whatever you believe in that next payday you will buy that dual temp cordless hot glue gun you've been eyeballing for the past two years. Know in your heart you really never will. 

I'm sure, though, that you will have much better luck than I did (can't really be worse) and it will soon look like this:

I also did dots around the edge to look like rivets. I was especially happy with how those turned out. I do recommend taking the time to use scissors once it's dry and cut the little strings that are always left hanging off. They will become very annoying once you move onto painting. 

Step 6: Put Some Paint on Some Stuff

This step could also be called "Listen to your sister when she makes suggestions." I started with a gold paint that our little sister used to paint her hair when she was Loki on Halloween. She said it wouldn't give me good coverage, but I didn't listen. This is the piece four coats later:

Clearly she was correct. At this point she removed them from my possession (some force was involved), took them outside, and spray painted them with gold paint. She uses those little Short Cuts paints which I believe are made by Krylon, and they work a charm! Here is the finished product:

You can see where I needed to be a little more precise in my application of hot glue, because there are a few lumps. 

I attempted to put some darker paint along the ridges to make them look a little weathered, but failed and stopped trying, for fear I would mess them up. I think what I need to do is put a gloss coat over the whole thing so I can sponge on some brown and wipe it, leaving it only in the crevices. The gloss should allow me to remove it completely from the parts I want to keep gold. However, at this point it was nine thirty at night and we still had three costumes to sew, making this the end of my time I had to spend on them. 

In all they were not a difficult project (with the exception of my nemesis the hot glue gun). If (when) I make another pair I will probably invest in a low temp hot glue gun so I don't distort the shape of the plastic while I'm decorating them. I have also considered using puffy fabric paint in place of hot glue and eliminating the problem all together, but I'm not sure how will it would adhere to the plastic. 

Now the question is, which bracers do I use for Wonder Woman??

Cosplay Trial Run

We did a dress rehearsal for our costumes last night to work out the kinks and see what we still need to do. Maecy's Black Canary is going to be epic! She even found a canary necklace at Fuego that we painted with black nail polish.

She is also going Raven. I'm not incredibly familiar with the character, so I'm mostly taking get word for it that the costume is both awesome and accurate. She seems trustworthy enough.

I have decided to do double duty on my Thor cape and use it for Wonder Woman. I wasn't going to wear a cape as her, but it looked so good when I tried it on that I was persuaded. Kate is going to help me make a gold eagle for the back and I will just pin it on for the second day. I now have my rope as well, because Wonder Woman would be less wonderful without her Magic Lasso!

Thor got a compete makeover for ComiCon. Instead of pants and a gray shirt I am going to wear a black pencil skirt and black corset over a silver button-up. This will give me a much more feminine look, which is my personal ideal.

Kate's Loki will be much the same as it was for Halloween. The one addition will be a fantastic bracelet I bought her. It is a gold coil that closely resembles a snake, and while it came with blue jewels on the end, they will be painted over to a brilliant shade of Loki green. Loki green should be on the official color spectrum. She is still waiting for two parts of her Penguin costume to arrive in the mail (monocle and umbrella). They'd better hurry. Only two weeks to go!

Speaking of only two weeks to go, I'd probably better finish setting up the side of my Wonder Woman skirt. I'll post when it's finished!

TARDIS Necklace

Phew, it's been a busy weekend for us three nerd sisters! We did a lot of shopping for Maecy's Black Canary and Raven costumes. She found her shirt, tights, and all the jewelry for both outfits. I ordered the ribbon clamps I needed to complete my bracers for Wonder Woman and a new Mjolnir for my Thor, since I wanted something that made a bolder statement than my necklace for future events. Those are shipping domestically, so they should be here by the end of the week. Kate is almost done with her Penguin costume. We have a dry run of all five costumes tonight (so excited!).

While we were at the mall shopping I found this little gem of a necklace. It's a black telephone booth. Of course I immediately thought TARDIS!

Luckily for me Kate has a fantastic shade of blue nail polish that she bought specifically for it's TARDIS-esque properties. A little brush application, some clear coat, and I have a TARDIS necklace. What do you think? Whovian enough? I quite like it!

Of course some of my love from this picture could be because it shows off my belt I got at Fossil the last time I was in Las Vegas, but I think I would love the necklace either way!

Ok, I'm off to go dress up with my sisters and take pictures. Oh darn, what a hard life I live!

Penguin

At the end of January Kate will be going to ComiCon as Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, aka Penguin. I suppose she will have to be Oswin instead of Oswald! She will be donning lace tights, black heels, a fantastic black wiggle skirt, a blue and black brocade under bust corset over a white button down shirt, a tiny black top hat with veil and feathers, and a monocle. She also found an assortment of large, sparkly rings to pay homage to Penguin's career as a fence of all things sparkly. The piece de resisance of the outfit has to be the earrings, though. They are beautiful silver bird skulls that Kate ordered online. Here they are (ironically) pictures with her Batman plugs, though I think it would be something of a social faux pax for Penguin to wear Batman earrings!