Category Archives: Costumes
a newfound and unexpected love…
Every time I’ve ever used a sewing machine, I’ve hated it. Although in my mind being able to sew sounded very nice, my fear of the sewing machine kept me from pursuing the hobby.
After buying tickets for Dragon*Con and deciding to make costumes, I resolved to learn how to sew so that I could make some well-made costumes. I signed up for Sewing 101 at JoAnn and brought along my crappy little portable machine. Although the class was informative and helped to lessen my fear of sewing machines, I still wasn’t too terribly keen about using one. The machine I had, which couldn’t have cost more than $30, had no fancy features, only two stitches, and sounded like a lawnmower (much to my chagrin during the class—the whole store could probably hear it!).
I asked for a sewing machine for my birthday, because I knew I’d never be serious about it or be able to really do anything too fancy with the piece of shit I had. Chris ended up buying me a Brother CS-6000i, which has 60 stitch patterns, speed control (!), and some other nice fancy features.
I finally took it out of the box last week and tried a couple of practice runs. Very nice, but I spent about 10 minutes using it, so I didn’t really get a feel for it.
On Monday I pulled it back out of the box and sat down to get some real work down. Much to my surprise, I totally love it.
I’ve come to realize that if you have a good machine, then sewing can be fantastic. The three machines I’ve used in the past were all horrible. The portable one is just not sophisticated enough to do any serious sewing, and the two others were old and clunky, not to mention missing all the extra parts and instructions. The lack of speed control was probably the worst part, so I absolutely love the speed control on my new machine.
I thought I’d get frustrated with sewing, but I actually felt very relaxed for the five hours or so I used the machine on Monday. It’s a bit of a challenge, figuring out how to put the pieces together and planning out what I need to do, but it’s a challenge I really enjoy.
I do feel pressured to get these costumes done, since I’ve got less than two months and am still learning how to sew, but I’m feeling a lot more optimistic about it now.
I’m also pretty excited about the prospect of Chris moving his stuff into the guest bedroom and me getting this room all to myself. A crafting room/office all to myself! I definitely need my own space, and can’t wait to get things moved.
Here’s the first step toward making this room mine—the (finally) completed door desk!
This room is a total mess right now, and I hate how bare the walls are, but hopefully that will be rectified soon!
blargh!
I am so horrible at this blogging thing. But I think the bigger problem is that I’m even worse at doing creative things. Or maybe that’s because I have absolutely no time to do those creative things…
I had really hoped I could stick with the 30 Days of Creativity, but unfortunately I just haven’t been able to. I really hate that I couldn’t commit to this. I want so badly to be more creative, to make things and feel proud of them, but the hours I work really don’t allow me to. It’s one of the most frustrating things in the world.
Anyway, here’s the rest of what I did manage to do…
A pixel maneki neko!
This is my very first attempt at pixel art. I think it turned out pretty well. Only took me like three hours, haha.
A drawing of Tom Kitten:
And a Cylon:
Day 10′s theme was “Toaster,” so I couldn’t resist! I didn’t know until pretty late, so I cracked this out in about an hour.
I also made another mini maneki neko:
I’ve sold a few of these, and they’re fairly quick to make, so I really ought to make some more of them. I’m just so damn busy!
On the upside, part of why I’ve been so busy is that I’m working on getting our costumes together for Dragon*Con. I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on the Battlestar costumes, especially the dress blues which I’m making from scratch for Chris. Considering I don’t really know how to sew, this is going to be quite an undertaking. I’m very nervous about it and not too confident that I’ll be able to do it. I’m trying to be optimistic, but it’s quite intimidating.
The other thing that’s been taking up a lot of my time is research for opening up an online store. I am super excited about this, but it’s going to be pretty expensive to start up. Buying everything wholesale is pricey…
And speaking of expensive, I am craving some new ink so bad. I have several ideas but need to figure out exactly what I want and who I want to do them. I’ve got plenty of money saved up, which definitely doesn’t help curb the cravings.
To add more to my plate, I’m seriously considering moving this blog to Blogger. I’d considered Tumblr, but it’s down so much and customizing the layout kind of confuses me. Though I love WordPress, the social aspect of Blogger really appeals to me. Sometimes I feel like WordPress is just too much for this little ol’ blog.
ziggy stardust
One of my friends decided to give her birthday party a rock star/musician theme, and so of course I had to be David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. I had some doubts, mostly in the weight department, but I think the costume turned out pretty well and I’ve gotten a lot of praise for it. Which pleases me, because I put a lot of effort into my costumes, despite having no sewing ability whatsoever.
The costume consisted of this hideous sparkly black strapless jumper thing that I found whilst thrifting; a sparkly black long-sleeve shirt to which I attached some big ol’ space-age shoulder pads (made with fabric sewn around foam board); my awesome knee-high red hooker boots; and the mullet wig. The wig I found on eBay (called the Judith wig), and I thought it was going to be perfect but I had to end up modifying it by trimming it down a bit and then I colored it with an orange Sharpie to make it redder.
I try to be as accurate as possible when it comes to costumes, but I wasn’t about to shave my eyebrows for this one. So, I turned to the internet for help, because I was sure that there had to be some way to conceal eyebrows. And sure enough, I found some helpful tutorials on YouTube. There are products you can buy to do a really good job, but if you’re short on time or money, you can use a gluestick and some regular powder, concealer, and foundation. My results weren’t terrific, even though I did exactly what the videos said to. I guess I’d be a really bad drag queen with my subpar makeup skills, haha. But it got the point across for the party, in any case.
costume: leeloo from the fifth element
Took me a while to get this entry up. I just wanted to make it as detailed as possible and with pictures included.
The Fifth Element is one of my favorite movies, and I got the idea to be Leeloo for Halloween (orange suspender outfit, not the white bandage one, obviously). The costume seemed doable. I figured I could lose weight and look good in it. Well, the costume was doable, though frustrating. Didn’t do too well with the weight loss, but I suppose I could’ve looked worse…
I put a lot of effort into what looked like should be a relatively easy costume. Cropped white shirt, beige-gold pants, belt, boots, orange hair, weird suspender things. Other than the suspenders, everything else was rather basic. Still took a lot of time and money, though.
For the shirt, I found a stretchy white ribbed t-shirt at a thrift store, cut it short (a bit too short by accident) and brought in the seams to make it fit better. It was a horrible sewing job, all done by hand and quite crappily, but it worked.
Like others, I looked for a pair of gold leggings for her pants. Initially I found a pair of shiny metallic gold leggings at Spencer Gifts on sale for $5. Then I found a pair of leggings in a more subdued metallic gold at Target for $13. I was going to use these, but wasn’t sure how to attach the stripes. While out thrifting, I found some beige pants with no pockets that I thought would be easier to work with than the leggings. They were quite wide-legged so I brought them in around the calves to make them tighter. Then I glued on piping-type ribbon for the stripes. (The ones around the knees were too tight and I had to rip them off when I later took off the pants. I bought some elastic ribbon for the next time I wear the costume.)
The black belt was harder to find than I would have expected, but apparently simple, wide black belts with a plain buckle aren’t all that common. I ended up finding one at Kohls that worked. The boots are combat boots that I got at an army surplus store.
The hair was definitely a pain in the ass, mostly because I used a synthetic wig and they’re hard to work with. I took a blonde page boy wig (used for my Kelly costume a couple of years ago) and dyed it orange with acrylic ink+rubbing alcohol (regular hair dye won’t work with synthetic hair). It looked great while wet, but once it dried, the orange faded to a gross dull pink, and I didn’t feel like try to dye it again. So, I ended up recoloring it with an orange highlighter, haha. Then I trimmed it, and tried to dread it with gel, which does not work, so I used fabric glue. It turned out pretty decently, I suppose.
And then there were the suspenders. These bastards were the trickiest part. You can buy them online for $100-300, or you can try to make fairly accurate ones with silicone rubber–both expensive, and the latter time-consuming and probably easy to screw up. I turned to the internet for help. Others had had luck with duct tape; I did not. Too sticky, not the right look, and the tape was too bright. Then I tried foam sheets, which looked better but ended up ripping in a few places. I was going to retry the foam by reinforcing it with a double layer of foam, but then, while out thrifting, I found this ugly beige rubbery material. I have no idea what it’s purpose is, but it ended up working pretty well. Cut it with scissors, painted it with orange acrylic craft paint, and sewed the ends together. It ended up looking good, aside from me accidentally make it too wide and the circles too big. I have some of the material leftover so I may try to remake them if I ever decide to use the costume again (which I hopefully will). Also, to keep them attached to me (since they weren’t very elasticy), I used sticky-backed velcro.
I also Sharpie’d the four elements tattoo on my wrist, and I was going to make a multipass but I ran out of time. I’ll definitely make one when and if I use the costume again.
costume parties = love
Okay, I know. I never update. But that’s what happens when you work 40 hours a week and have little time to do anything interesting. And if I have nothing interesting to write about, what’s the point of writing? Guess I’ll just have to start looking for things to post about.
But oh! I did do something interesting this weekend. I went to a party, yes!, I went out and socialized, and made an ass out of myself, as I tend to do at parties. I suppose I’m normally a fairly reserved person, but when I go out to social events, I kind of let myself go. Anyway, it was a toga party at my former roommate’s house, and because people were dressing up as actual Greek and Roman personae, I had to do the same. And so I was Medusa.
I decided to be Medusa only because my sister had been Medusa for Halloween a couple of years ago and I figured I could borrow her wig. Well, the wig kind of sucked; but I was already set on Medusa, so I went out, bought a new one, and attached a variety of snakes to it (with thread and wire). For the costume, I used this old snake-skin-patterned dress that I’ve been trying to get rid of for years. Glued some fancy-looking metallic gold ribbon along the top, then used the leftover bit for a tie-around belt. I attached some gold tulle fabric from one of my sister’s old dance costumes to the straps of the dress, as a sort of cape. Covered my face in makeup, put in some hoop earrings, wore a pair of strappy sandals, and ta da!–Medusa. Not the best costume ever, but it served its purpose, and a lot of people seemed to like it.
I’ve got two more costumes in the works (one for Halloween and one for a rock star party). I’ll write up some entries for those once they’re closer to being completed.