Lates at Life and a costume inspired by Magenta from Rocky Horror

Howdy everyone!

Waaaaay back around Halloween (where did November go?!) I went to a Late event at the Centre for Life in Newcastle. I used to work there and worked a couple of the late events back in the day so I know how much fun they can be and I really wanted to see the exhibition they have going on right now so it was a double bonus of awesome.

Because it was Halloween it was also a dress up event and as I was travelling light visiting home I decided to work on a variation of my Wednesday Addams dress that I featured in this post.

I changed it up by adding a retro style apron to make it into a sort of retro-chic version of Magenta from Rocky Horror (although Rocky Horror is pretty retro...). I used face paint for paleness and I curled my hair, although it was a bit damp so the fullness fell out pretty quickly :(

 We had a good opportunity to look around some of the exhibits (which had changed since I worked there) and we did get to look at the Body Worlds exhibit which was absolutely amazing! Although we were not allowed to take any pictures so sadly I can't share any images. Mind you the Bodyworlds exhibition has been extended so if you're in the North East it is well worth a look.

Being a Biologist I love getting my hand on a microscope.

And my favourite exhibit that I can share was this giant book showing the DNA sequence of the X chromosome. The idea is that each of those giant books is one piece of human DNA and you have all the books in every cell in you body. It really helps you to see how much information is carried in our bodies!

I also got my hands on a chalk board before the place got busy... heh heh... and since I've been obsessing over Sailor Moon Crystal I had to draw Sailor Moon. Not that she's very spooky.

 We also saw a planetarium show, which I can't show you either, but after that we finished there we got to prance around in a smoke machine while listening to some choice tunes.

Oh and here are a few extra shots of the outfit:

Dress: Vintage

Apron: Home made

Boots: Clarks (borrowed from my mother)

Cosplay Costume: A Ghastly Marie Curie Costume for Halloween

This year Halloween fell on a Wednesday and like many other people I spent the day, and the night, at work. This certainly was no bad thing, well aside from the exhaustion of working until almost 2am (!),  but other than that it was an absolute blast!

Image by Elin Roberts

Since I work in a science centre I had the option to spend the day dressed up. This was an opportunity I took to with gusto - I published earlier about some of my favourite science themed costumes and decided to go with one of these for my costume.

I chose to mix a little vintage, a little spooky and a lot of bad taste and dress as a deceased Marie Curie.  Marie Curie is one of the most well known scientists of all time, in fact, a survey by Science Grrl confirmed that 61% of people knew Curie over all other female scientists. She is most famous for her ground breaking work on radioactivity.

A lot of her work was carried out in the 1890s-1910s (she was awarded a Nobel prize in 1903 AND 1911!) and as such I spent a lot of time hunting down the perfect Victorian/Edwardian black dress with puff sleeves and a good length skirt. The dress ended up being vintage Laura Ashley and unfortunately had short sleeves, so I added a long sleeve top underneath to give it a more Edwardian feel.

My hair was done with a headpiece from that looked like a large knotted hair bun. I liked this immensely but I felt it was a shame I hadn't manage to get hold of some coloured hair spray to cover my blonde but never mind. Sometimes things end up a little rushed.
Finally my 'turn of the century' style boots completed the look.

I don't often do scary make up so this is still a grey area for me. I didn't want to be a zombie so I was stuck somewhere between ghost and ghoul (whatever the difference is there?). I used some white face paint to create a white base and some eyeshadow to create the hollow eyes and cheeks. I used the black lipstick l bought to be a flapper to complete the look. I did try to use the paint around my neck but the lanyard made it difficult to get coverage.

Since I couldn't use anything radioactive in my costume, thank goodness, I mimicked the glowing radiation effect using glow sticks. I felt that during the evening these could have been better placed, but never mind, I then added a beauty queen sash displaying the radioactivity hazmat symbol just to secure the joke although I'm not sure this was in the best taste... but I'll leave that up to you.

Madame Curie in the lab, of course...

Finally I added some ghostly cobwebs.

All photos are taken at least 6 hours after applying the make up so I have to say I think it lasted pretty well. Luckily I did have time to give it a top up on the night for the Late Event.

View from the Foley Studio - Image by Elin Roberts

During the late event I was manning the Foley Studio where guests were able to record their own soundtrack to clips from classic hammer horror flicks. It was really great fun but it meant I didn't get to see a lot of the other events - luckily for me Life's head of public engagement, and regular event photographer, Elin Roberts was on hand to capture the spooky science (you can see more photos here)!

Costumes, Cocktails and Glowing Brains - Image by Elin Roberts

Zombies! Image by Elin Roberts

Skull Carnival Games - Image by Elin Roberts

So Many Costumes! - Image by Elin Roberts

Next door to the Foley Studio was the Peppers Ghost photo booth. This was based on a classic theatre illusion that makes it appear as if a ghost is in the room with you. Luckily for me - I got to try this out before any of the guests arrived!

Me as a human and Emma as a ghost - Images from Science at Life Flickr

Now I'm the ghost and Emma is the person - Images from Science at Life Flickr

All in all I had a really fun night and laughed my way through the Foley studio but after nearly 14 hours on my feet I virtually needed to crawl home!

How was your Halloween? Did anyone do anything fun?

Where I Work and What I Wear

Just a little post today, as I've been busy writing my thesis, but I wanted to say a little about the other thing I've been doing lately.

While I've been writing I have another job.

I am a Science Explainer at the Centre for Life in Newcastle.

The Centre is a great place for kids and families and while some of it is traditional hands on museum fodder the rest is a brand new completely open ended interactive experience called Curiosity.

There are also science workshops where participants can get hands on with experiments, a 4D motion ride (opening soon hopefully) a planetarium and a science show.

All in all its pretty cool, especially if you're interested in science at all.

However it is a job with something I am not used to... a uniform...

Said uniform involves a red polo-shirt which I can cope with, but also a pair of cargo pants. The cargo pants are not only not my style, but they are also unisex so fit really badly around the hips - but never mind, it can be a dirty job so better those trousers than a pair of my nice ones!

Here's a picture of me from a few weekends ago with one of my favourite animals of all time - a meerkat!

I was lucky to get to give this guy a hug thanks to our visitors Jay's Animal Encounters who came to visit the centre.

Anywho...

I do appreciate that this is the kind of job that where I can roll my hair and no-one minds, in fact, I need to put my hair up in the labs so I am attempting to experiment with some variations on the norm. I'll post a gallery when I get enough pictures of different styles!

That's it for now!