Halloween Approaches

What to wear?!? As October begins the inevitable concern over this seemingly simple question begins to set in. For me, it’s more a case of too many ideas than none.

So after much contemplation, I had pretty much decided to go with either a fem version of Sherlock Holmes or Marie Antoinette.

But then my fiancé decided he felt in the Halloween spirit. So a couples costume was in order! I decided on something I thought would not only be fairly easy, pretty inexpensive, and would also be appropriate for us since we are soon to be married.

The Corpse Bride couple!

So here is a breakdown of what I need.

For Him:

• Black Jacket
• Silver Cravat
• White and black face makeup

I found a black tux jacket at a Goodwill for $6. Score! It fits him pretty well, but needs to be taken in on the sides to give the more skinny effect of the character.

For Me:

• Wedding Dress
• Long Blue Wig
• Blue Liquid Latex body paint
• Veil with dried flowers

First, I immediately began scouring local thrift stores in the hopes of finding a wedding dress that would work for under $50. After a internet search, I discovered a place called Value Village. Major Score!! I’m not sure if they have these nationwide, but this place turned out to have several vintage wedding dresses, all for less than $50 and in surprisingly excellent condition. If you are ever in the market for a wedding dress to buy on the cheap, or an older dress for a costume, make sure to check this place out.

Anyway, here is the dress I purchased, which came with the original veil with flower crown! How perfect! I’m super excited to start the deconstruction process. Pictures on that to follow soon.

Here is what I hope it will look like when complete.

    

 

I also researched body paints and I decided to use liquid latex to make my skin the blue grey color of the character. Water based paints (like they use at carnivals for face painting) tends to rub off more easily, especially if they get wet from sweat. Oil based paints are available but require more skin prep work before applying, are toxic, and can be more difficult to remove. But liquid latex is non-toxic, doesn’t smudge, and should just peel right off. Before using, make sure you read all the info and make sure you are NOT allergic to latex.

So that’s it for now, very excited about this costume and looking forward to sharing the progress and results!

~The Girl

It’s October!

My favorite month is finally here! Finally some nice chilly Fall weather, plus warm soups, scarves, leather boots, chilli festivals, and my favorite…..No, not the opportunity make my own costume again silly.

Oh no wait, you’re right!

Because it’s almost HALLOWEEN! By far my favorite holiday. So in honor of the approaching All Hallows Eve, I thought I would share with you my costumes from last year.

First, the kid friendly one! Everyone’s favorite teacher…Mrs. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus!

                 

For Mrs Frizzle Costume:

• Purple Dress (found mine at Ross)
• White collar shirt
• Felt fabric sheets in primary colors (use to cut out all kinds planets- these were mainly circles of diff sizes layered on top of each other, stars, and letters)
• Fabric glue (used to glue felt pieces together and to dress)
• Lizard beanie baby (found mine at a children’s book store)

Then for Adult Only night, I went as a Dia de los Muertos Girl, the skeleton faced character from the Spanish Halloween celebration.

The make-up seemed intimidating but it actually turned out to be very easy to do!

     

A few you tube videos later, plus one black leotard (American Apparel), a black tulle crinoline (vintage store),and a red flower in my hair, and I was done!

Dia de los Muertos costume!

                     

I used these  Dia de los Muertos make-up how to videos:

How To Hide Eyebrows with Glue Stick

Dia de los Muertos Make-Up Tutorial

Dia de los Muertos Hair & Make-up How To

In a few days I’ll be sharing my costume for this year and my progress on creating it!For more costume idea, take a look at my Geekery/Cosplay board on Pinterest.

So what will you be going as for Halloween??

~The Girl

The Piggy Apron

So I have been taking a bit of a break since DragonCon. All the costumes were great and I got tons of ideas for new projects, but after three straight days of Con my creative brain cells were burnt out and I was seriously overloaded.

I was just starting to feel guilty the other day, and starting to itch for a new project, when a good friend of mine contacted me for a sewing lesson. A few months ago she mentioned to me that she wanted to learn to sew and I volunteered to help her learn. Our previous sewing lesson consisted of me teaching her the basics on the sewing machine and making a basic square pillow.

This time around, she wanted to make an apron- a pig apron. I guess I should mention that she is a huge fan of pigs. In fact, she has her own website, My Pig Me Up, dedicated to all things piggy. So I grabbed my favorite vintage apron to use as inspiration and we headed to the fabric store.

The resulting apron came out super cute and she did a great job. I was super impressed with her ability to pick up the basics of sewing so fast.

The Piggy Apron

We started by cutting out the black band and apron and pinning it with pleats to give it a girly look.

    

After sewing the pleats in and hemming all the way around, we cut the pocket out of a contrasting fabric. She decided to put a pig nose on the pocket, so we used the same light pink as the apron.

  

Finally, we sewed buttons onto the nose to create the snout and two smaller buttons above to create eyes.

So Cute!!

Well, I hope she enjoys wearing it because I think it turned out super cute! Finally feels like Fall out, about you know what that means….did someone say Halloween? :D

~The Girl

Dragon*Con 2012

TARDIS dress complete! I wore it at Dragon*Con 2012 and really enjoyed it. Post to come this week on how I created my TARDIS headpiece that actually lit up!

 

 

 

 

Here are a few more, on left with my friend as a weeping angel and on right, me with a actual TARDIS.

 

 

Conquering the Hidden Zipper

So, I don’t know about you but I have always been afraid of putting in zippers. They just seem difficult and I have heard horror stories, so I basically avoided them like the plague. However, unless we want all our clothes to have a massive amount of buttons or all be made from some kind of stretch fabric, it seems we need to conquer our fear of the zipper. So, with no little trepidation, I undertook my first hidden zipper.

I am currently making a TARDIS dress, which I talk about in my first post here. This dress finally reached the point where it was time to put in the zipper. Many, many searches on the internet of videos and tutorials proved to be somewhat fruitless, especially since I do not have a zipper foot for my sewing machine. At long last, I called my mother- the woman who taught me to sew and is pretty much my go-to for anything crafty when I get in a pinch or need a little creative boost.

So here it is.

The Easy Hidden Zipper Tutorial (no zipper foot required!)

Step 1:  Make your garment and sew it up completely, leaving at least a half inch fabric on the inside seam where you want to place your zipper. **Use large enough stitches for your seam where the zipper will be so that you can easily cut this seam out later by hand.

Step 2:  Turn you garment inside-out and iron open your seam where you are adding your zipper.

Open back seam of dress

Step 3:  Place the zipper face-down on the seam and pin the zipper in place. This step is very important! You want to make sure your zipper lines up as closely as possible with your seam. Also, use the smallest pins you have and place them horizontal (laying across the zipper)- not vertical! This is because you will NOT be removing the pins when you sew, so you want them horizontal so the machine will jump the pin. Don’t over-do the pins, one every inch and alternating sides should be enough.

Zipper pinned face-down to seam

Step 4: Sewing! Once your pins are in place, put your garment into the machine. Starting at the top of the zipper, sew down one side. When you get to the bottom of the zipper, stop with your needle IN the fabric, lift your foot, rotate the fabric, and then sew the small part at the bottom of the zipper. Then again, stop at the corner with your needle IN your fabric, lift your foot, rotate your garment, and sew back up the other side of your zipper.

**Note: It may be difficult to get the zipper into the machine when sewing the very top of the zipper- that is ok. I had to sew the first little bit with my foot still up. Just make sure to GO SLOW!! If you go slow, it will be easier on your machine to hop the pins and you are less likely to make a mistake or break your needle.

CONGRATS! You finished! Now turn you garment right-side out and check to make sure you didn’t sew any extra fabric into your zipper.

Oops! I accidentally sewed some of my skirt fabric into my zipper the first time, but that’s ok! Just flip it inside out again and snip the stitches loose, then sew again.

If everything looks good, carefully snip the seam open on your garment.

CAREFULLY cut seam open on outside of garment

Viola! You now have a hidden zipper which should look like this.

I am now over my fear of zippers! My zipper still wasn’t perfect, I had a lot of puckering, but I know you can do better! Have fun and if you mess up, just remember practice makes perfect!

~The Girl

DIY Friday: The BIG Clutch

So I decided to do a DIY Friday post each week. I figured a Friday post would be best because I hate when I get inspired in the middle of the week but have no time and then by the weekend I forget all about it!

I see a lot of fun DIY on the internet. Many of these have really cute ideas but the details and process are not super informative. So I’ll hopefully be sorting through the bad to bring you only the best DIY I can find. And eventually, I will hopefully create some of my own. But let’s take this one step at a time, shall we?

So today is DIY: The BIG Clutch!

I have been craving one of these giant clutches all summer. They seem so useful and cute! After some scouring the internet, I found a great tutorial that is also REALLY easy!! The tutorial is from Style Scrapbook, and can be found here.

Materials Needed:

• Fabric of your choice- she uses leather and I probably will too. But a stiff fabric is going to work best.
• Zipper- have some fun and use a contrasting color or do the matchy-matchy thing, up to you.
• Basic sewing supplies (machine, thread, scissors, etc)

I suggest adding stiff interfacing or some kind of liner to the inside of the bag. This should help the bag hold its shape and will make it a bit nicer on the inside. Here is another very similar tutorial from Say Yes to Hoboken that shows how to add the interfacing. She actually makes a fold-over clutch, which is basically the exact same but just a taller rectangle shape to give the extra at the top to fold-over.

I will post photos of my finished bag when done.

Have fun!

~The Girl

Getting Started with a Costume

So, for my first post I thought I would share my current project. I am working on a TARDIS Dress fro Dragon*Con, the Atlanta SciFi/Fantasy, Anime, Comic….Geekery Galore Convention. This will be my third year at the convention and my first year creating a Dr. Who costume.

I debated what to make, a Dalek, Doctor Costume, possibly go as Amy Pond. But in the end I decided that a TARDIS would be both instantly recognizable and held the most inspiration for me. After scouring the internet for examples and inspirational pictures on which to base my design, I found this picture and the dress in the middle was perfect for me.

So this also happens to be my first time sewing a dress without a pattern. I am lucky enough to have a mannequin that is pretty much exactly my measurements. This is not a actual sewing dress form, but a mannequin I snagged from a high-end retail store where I used to work. They were going to throw it out (can you imagine!).

The Process

So I used a basic circle skirt for the bottom. I read and followed this great Circle Skirt How To from MADE. I found it necessary to alter the process slightly as my fabric was not wide enough to cut out the entire circle at once. Then I started  designing and cutting out the bodice for the dress, using a well fitting dress I already own as a sort of base for my pattern.

Of course, you are bound to run into problems. I actually found that my skirt ended up being WAY too big. Not really sure how that happened, but I just took out one of the four panels and ended up with a three panel circle skirt that fit.

My fiance set up a camera for me to make a time lapse video the whole process of making my dress. Here is what I have so far, we will be adding the finished video when I complete the dress.

Looking forward to sharing the finished product with you!

~The Girl