Like many others on Craftster, I'm a bit nuts about Halloween. I've *almost* finished my costumes for this year, but in the meantime, I'd thought I'd upload some costumes from earlier years!
And so...


Halloween 2009

My husband and I decided to dress as a couple; we decided to go as d'Artagnan and Milady de Winter, inspired by our casual RPG The Three Musketeers: The Game (based on, of course, The Three Musketeers by Dumas), which we were working on at the time. We went all out...let me say, finding the right shade of blue in the right material was not easy!


I present, d'Artagnan! The hubby's outfit consisted of a linen (under)shirt, slashed doublet, breeches, leather bucket boots, leather gauntlets, linen cuffs and collar with lace, wool musketeer tabard (or cassock/casaque or mandilion) with embroidered cross and pewter buttons and wool felt hat with 5 ostrich plumes.


The feathers were hand-dyed (smelly, but fun!), the hat was hand-blocked (sort of!), the cross was embroidered (I thought it was pretty good, not having embroidered anything before) and the buttons...there were 113 buttons on that dang tabard.  :'(Thankfully my wonderful husband came to my rescue and offered to help me with the costumes *right* before Halloween. So I had him sewing buttons for two days. And then there were all the buttons on the doublet. Oy.


He also (for months!) grew out a mustache and goatee - alas, everyone assumed it was fake. But it was real. And twirllable.


My Milady costume consisted of a shift (undershirt), bumroll (to give me that early 17th century silhouette), three petticotes (aka skirts), reed-boned bodice with stomacher, organza cuffs, collar and sash, fleur-de-lis necklace and earrings, poison ring, wig, black gloves, black fan, black mask and black shoes with gold rosette bows. The cuffs, collar, sash, third petticote, bodice and mask had a gold lace trim.

It wasn't all period-accurate (but hey, the 'real' musketeers didn't wear tabards, so whatcanyoudo) but it was fun, people got a kick out of it, everyone was impressed we made them, and I felt proud; it was the first clothing/costume I had truly made completely by myself (save for some of the buttons!).


Halloween 2008
Mr. Husband and I were to attend a game concert around Halloween, that also featured a costume contest, so we decided to make game-themed costumes that year. We actually ended up reusing an older costume for my husband, as mine took up so much time and energy (don't feel too bad for him; when we started dating I ended up making all his costumes and put mine on the back burner).

My partner in crime went as Link from the Zelda series (mainly based on the "Twilight-Princess" Link). It was a costume made a couple years prior, but we added the chainmaille hauberk (made by me, for him, for our medieval wedding), and... removed my poorly-made boot-covers. Oh how I hate boot covers.

Everybody loves Link!...well, all the gamers love Link. Eh, most of the gamers liked Link.

I decided to go as Liara from Mass Effect

I made the blue headpiece, shirt/dress, shorts and fingerless-gloves, and bought long latex stockings and gloves, and black shoes (which I added green to). It was my very first attempt at working with latex (and ultra-cal, and doing a whole bunch of prosthetic/mask work for that matter) and for a first time, I think it came out pretty well! I also took my first jab at sewing jersey (ack!) and working with some not-so-friendly materials (that black shiny stuff...grr). I had my mom-in-law helping me with the top, thankfully! We had to piece together a pattern to get the colour blocking and side shapes.

...I also had a bit of a problem with the latex stockings; they were too big for my skinny legs (but I can't order the next-size down, otherwise they'd be too short) so I kind of had to wobble around whenever we went out, to keep them up. But people loved it (despite not knowing who I was - ME was not as known then as it is now) and I ended up winning the costume contest. 


Halloween 2007

Just married, my hubby and I were on a backpacking honeymoon in Europe when Halloween came around; we were due to arrive in La Rochelle in France for Halloween, so we frantically put together some costumes the night before. You can't get more last-minute and patchy than this. We were in Carcassonne and there just so happened to be a costume store in the town (despite Halloween not being a big thing in France). There wasn't much to choose from, we didn't want to spend a lot of money, and we couldn't be burdened by our costumes, so we bought some crepe-paper, a Zorro hat, feather, plastic sword, mask, tape and glue. When we arrived in La Rochelle, I think most people thought we were crazy...but we did get a few people coming up to us saying they liked that we were dressed up for Halloween costumes.


The husband was a musketeer (1.0). The tabard is all made out of paper, he's wearing my coat, and he drew a little squiggly mustache on his finger. We were reading The Three Musketeers at the time, and we were in La Rochelle...so it was appropriate!


I was a little more abstract; I went as "The Night." Mine was quick and easy - it took a ridiculous amount of time to reshape the hat, cut and glue the tabard and collar pieces for the musketeer! It was an interesting Halloween.

I hope I'll finish our costumes this week! To see more pics/close-ups of the costumes above (well, not the ones from La Rochelle) check out my cosplay page. I also did a tutorial on how I made the latex headpiece - it talks about doing a life-cast of your head, sculpting a master out of clay, making an ultra-cal mold, and a final latex cast. It's applicable if you're making a full-head mask (or just a face mask, or a headpiece, like I did). You can find that tutorial on my site (under Blue Girl comics). Any questions, just ask! Hope you enjoyed
 
Happy early Halloween!!

Like many other ladies who have seen the movie Atonement, I fell in love with the green dress Cecilia (Keira Knightley) wore. Unfortunately, I had no prom, wedding or other formal social events planned on my calendar, so I put off making the dress. Until now! My friend is getting married in August, and I needed a dress; I needed *this* dress.
(in case you're not familiar with it, here's the dress http://www.costumersguide.com/cr_atonement.shtml)

After reading through the various posts of other crafters' creations of the dress and checking out multiple reference sites, I sewed up my interpretation of the dress. The dress in the movie was EMERALD green - I wanted something subtler, and really liked the colour-tweak of the dress in a magazine photoshoot, so I looked for a moss-green fabric in a matte material. I found this great fine jersey fabric - the fact that it doesn't wrinkle sold me on it, as I was taking a red-eye to a wedding across the country and would have no time to go out and steam and iron it. The sash is bulkier, because of the fabric choice, but the dress still drapes and flows nicely, and I think it make the dress a bit more modern. It's definitely less fragile than the fabric they were working with in the movie!

I used (the out-of-print) Vogue 7387 as a base (going with skirt B, and after checking out the tops for the dress, made my own to fit my body). I decided to go with the 'B' skirt, that has a star-burst pattern at the top, so if I wear the dress without the sash there would still be a bit of skirt pizzaz. The top was finalized after several attempts (it was tricky balance between too loose and too tight). There are two wraps/sashes (one around the waits, and a really really long one around the hips) that button to the dress and can be removed; the additional 'false-sash-looped' piece was sewn to the skirt. I also made a shawl to go with it, which I'll wear at the wedding.

My friend, with a shiny new camera, came to visit, so just decided to be silly and go take photos. And I can't model. So please excuse the weird-lipped bored-dryad-poses and just admire the dress The hip-sash should be lower in the back, so I'll make sure to wrap it lower it for the wedding (I couldn't see where it was during the shoot, and it's a little too high, should hug the rump really). The waist sash end also should tuck in a bit better, to hide its starting point (if only there were mirrors in the forest!)









I'll also be taping the top along the sides, just in case (it is a bit gappy in one photo, please excuse that, let me know if it needs to be flagged) Please also excuse my freakishly long toes :S

I "needed" some new stylish totes (as my branded grocery bags just weren't cutting it when I went out shopping). I did a search online for 'viking bags,' as I'm a fan of history, (notably the viking era), and was hoping to find a nifty norse bag. I came across this:
http://www.starsandinfinitedarkness.com/hakiemall.html
While beautiful, it was a little too expensive for me. But I became inspired to make my own tote, viking style!

I wanted bigger, bolder, more vikingesque striped material - it took me a while to find the material (there was lots of thin red striped fabric available, but no thick ones). I ended up getting everything from the discount bin!

Both totes were lined with a canvassy material. The appliques were sewn on by hand, then I stitched black embroidered details onto the helmets and weapons.

The red fabric was a pain to work with - though it matched the red striped material perfectly, it frayed badly A poor fabric choice, I know, but it matched and was cheap (probably for a reason!). I ModPodged the fabric sides, so it shouldn't unravel (any more than it has) but, er, at least it gives it a bit of rustic charm?

I think I'm ready to go pillage.

A little plushie for my sister-in-law (to pass along to her baby when he's a little bit older) who loves dragonflies. It was my first crack at making a pattern - there's still a few kinks to work out, but not bad for a first try!



I'll have to "rework" the pattern and post it later (by rework, I guess I mean completely redo and improve, as I looked for the pattern to upload to craftster but couldn't find it!)

I had seen several tricorder bags in the past (such as http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=326116.0 and http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&global=1&q=tricorder#/d1kg0hj ) and when I found out there was a Star Trek convention in town, I knew I had to make a costume - and a tricorder bag/purse of my own! It was quite function and doesn't look too shabby either!



The bag was basically made of scraps - it was made from leftover canvass-plastic-y fabric from another bag project, parts of a t-shirt, part of a lieutenants' braid, and some silver screen-printing paint (which did not like the main bag material at all!). Between the lining and outer-layer I sewed in a small cardboard box, to help keep its shape. A functional top flap held everything together (and gave you a glimpse of the 'screen area' of the tricorder') and there was a middle flap you could flip down to see more detail.



I was able to jam our keys, id, money, hand sanitizer, cellphone, (stupid dumb) camera, granola bars, cookies, con programs and pamphlets, makeup and bobby-pins and a comb into the tricorder purse!



I have to apologize for the weird image cropping and quality - sadly, after returning from the con, we discover that our camera went haywire and corrupted all the images we had  We were able to save 'parts' of a few (bad) pictures, so that's why I have fuzzy, out-of-focus, oddly-cropped images When we get a new camera, I'll have to take some proper photos!

Hope it inspires others (being trekkies, con-attenders, or just crafters) to make their own!