Posts tagged costume

This year’s Halloween costume: The Gunstringer

I found myself seriously charmed by The Gunstringer right around the time I was deciding what my Halloween costume would be this year, and it immediately became the forerunner, handily beating the competitors: Oompa Loompa, She-Hulk, and Sexy Phlegm Ball.

I made the poncho, gloves, hat bullets, holsters, and horse prop, as well as painting bones onto a leotard so I could pretend my body was skeletal and painting some plastic guns to look more realistic. I’m wearing it now, stuffing my face with mini-twix, and justifying the whole thing by telling myself I’m nothing but skin and bones. Out of all of it, the gloves gave me the most trouble. So much, in fact, that I may never make a pair of gloves ever again. Or at least not until sometime next year.

The makeup took about two hours to apply, from covering my eyebrows until finishing touches. It took nearly as long to remove, and I’m still finding occasional blue spots along my hairline or in a hidden cranny in my ears. If I was going to wear the costume again, I’d consider making prosthetics for the cheekbones, jawline, and forehead to make the skull more pronounced.

This year marks my first time doing something I thought I’d never, ever do: wear a couple’s costume, which on the scale of Big Deals is somewhere right around acquiring a mortgage. We might as well buy burial plots together now or get his and hers face tattoos.

Jason attended as my power-up: El Taco Diablo.

Our costumes were a hit even with people who hadn’t seen the source material, and they didn’t much impede us when it came to eating, drinking, or getting busy…dancing.

Catchin’ up!

Yesterday, I made my first latex prosthetic appliances for my halloween costume. I am not thrilled with how they turned out, but I get why they turned out the way they did, so at least there’s that. I’m not quite sure how to make new ones to get the effect I’m looking for–this is something that would’ve been better created with GM foam if only I had the oven and tolerance for sulfurous fumes Just figured it out. Reverse mold, not positive mold. Either I will make new molds tonight or I will fudge the makeup with some other technique on Saturday–the important thing is that I finish the actual costume first and focus on the less-important things later because right now, y’all, I need sleeves. I am anti-sleeveless. I will probably be working like mad on Friday/Saturday, but that’s really nothing new. This month has been insanely busy, even moreso than usual, but I’ll get everything done. I always do.

Tonight and tomorrow are my last nights at the haunt, I can’t believe how soon it’ll be over/how much fun I’ve had! One of the guys there gave me his card and maybe we’ll work togther on future projects, which is pretty exciting. His gore work is AMAZING and there’s a lot I could learn from him.

I’ll pile high to the sky, the bodies of my ex-lovers’ lovers, dye dye dye dye dye dye

I spent most of Sunday dyeing fabric for my Halloween costume–I started out with one box of dye for ~5 yards of fabric, which isn’t enough for solid, dark color, but I was looking to try and get a more mottled, aged effect. Dyeing turned out to be easy enough and relatively mess-free when one is careful, and while the fabric mostly turned out with the effect I’d hoped for, it was not nearly as dank and gross-looking as I wanted, so I ended up buying four more different-colored boxes of dye and putting it through two more dyebath processes. The result is fabric with a wonderful amount of color depth and variation and it should go nicely with the other fabrics I purchased.

I’m starting to get things pinned to my life size Mellzah voodoo doll, and while I don’t want to get my hopes up too high this early in the game when so very many things can go wrong, I’m thinking that this year’s costume should turn out to be pretty cool. I’m going for something of my own design instead of a cultural touchstone, which is sort of iffy because costumes tend to resonate more if it’s something that people recognize, but this way I get run wild with my imagination instead of trying to copy what someone ELSE’S imagination already conceived.

Tonight, I go to see The Flaming Lips at the Paramount–I’ve been a fan of theirs since 1997-ish and this will be the first opportunity I’ve had to see them live, so I am quite excited! I would be MORE excited if I hadn’t gotten up at the godawful hour of four-thirty am in order to get my ten hour workday completed in enough time to get to Seattle and hopefully get decent seats as the show is general admission, and also maybe cram a PoDog in my face on the way.