Cosplay Costume: Halloween Part II - The Black Cat (from Spiderman)

Halloween part II is dedicated to the costume for my second outing of this years Halloween.

This costume required more work than the last and had been in the pipeline for a few months, it was based on the character of the Black Cat from Spiderman. I chose to wear it for a special Halloween event called 'Subterfuge' and was a mashup of 80s alt anthems and the modern equivalent. Some how the white fur trimmed black catsuit seemed very appropriate.

As I have explained before I previously had the catsuit and have spent the last two weeks sewing the fur trim onto it and to my black gloves.

Once I had the suit made I bought white spray in hair colour by Lee Stafford (http://www.leestafford.com/uk/products/product.php?pi=109) and of course I only could get my hands on one can as it was Halloween... :( £3.99

I then drew the mask on my face in eyelines and added false eyelashes to give them a little more definition, and added red lips just to increase the vamp factor.


Here is the completed look!

Total cost:
Catsuit -already owned (originally £18 from eBay)
White fur fabric £2 for an offcut
Black gloves £5
White Hair Spray £3.99
£10.99

Let me know if yo uhave any comments or opinions!

I expect the next post wil be a retrospective on one of my past costumes...

See you soon!

Cosplay Costume: Halloween Part I - Sally form 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'

So Halloween has now been and gone. Sad times...

But it was good times for the whole weekend from the 29th until the 1st. What I will say for sure is that you're never stuck for things to do, or for an excuse to dress up in Brighton! But being a conservative sort of person I decided to limit myself to just two costumes this year.

This is the story of the first :)

I recently began my third year of work in Brighton and each Halloween my institute has a Halloween party. I made the sad judgement in my first year of not dressing up, and in my second year I could not attend, so this year I decided to go all out!

I needed something Halloween themed and somewhat family/work friendly as to not embarrass myself too much ;) and I have been a fan of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas for a long time now so I thought dressing as Sally the Ragdoll from this film would be a good choice of outfit.

As usual I checked the ol' eBay for costuming possibilities and found what looked like a good costume for £35. "Thats a LOT" I imagine you saying, and I guess for one night of fancy dress perhaps it is.

However...

I have a rolling costume wardrobe, where I place items and costumes I have made, bought, assembled and customised and sell them on eBay. This way I have a 'slush fund' for purchases of new costumes.

One of the latest costumes to be sold in order to add to the slush fund was Jessica Rabbit that I used for my 80s themed birthday party (more on that in another post) I sold that costume for £37!
This way I even has £2 left over to put towards postage of the sally costume. However there are always unforseen extras...

Before I go into the detail, here is the costume! I know you've been dying to see it!

Costume composition:
Dress and wig came as part of the costume £35

My arms and legs were covered by two pairs of tights, one with a hole cut in the legs so my head could fit through (£4) I then drew the seams onto them using a black permanent marker (I know this seems extreme, but I can't reccommend Lush's Sugar Scrubs and cleanser Ultra Bland enough for removing pen and body paint)

Lastly and probably the biggest challenge was the face make up.

I started with a simple base of moisturised skin, then covered my face, ears and neck in a wash of Snazaroo in Turquoise. Snazaroo is great facepaint, and available in many colours for really cheap and one pot lasts a long time.

I then used a blue eyeshadow on my eyes and lined my eyes in thick gel eyeliner by MAC. I find this is great for drawing on your face as you get excellent precision, on a side note, although the MAC brushes are very nice they are quite expensive so I would advise getting a special one just for facepainting if you are going to do this sort of thing a lot.

I topped the face makeup off by defining my eyebrows with a black pencil, applying a very dark red lipstick and drawing the seams again in the liquid liner.

All in all a very effective look to this costume...

Total Cost:
£35 dress/wig
£4 tights
£2.50 face paint
(-£37 from eBay fund ;D )
 = £4.50

Not too bad! Any comments or criticisms would be appreciated :)

Fancy Dresscapades will return in
Halloween Part II

Cosplay Crafting: New gloves and Selene from "Underworld"

Hello again!

I thought I'd mention a little about my progress as I have a week to go now, things are coming along fairly well, I have accumulated lots of pieces and have my Sally outfit now finished but I'll comment on that during my next post.

As for the black cat things are a little more tricky! But are coming along, if slowly...
The basis of this costume is the catsuit, obviously, which is black and PVC- I had this already form Halloween last year and a previous visit to Trailer Trash at Komedia (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=52781126866) for which I had free tickets after winning the "Comic Book Heroes" costume competition dressed as:

HARLEY QUINN!

But that's another story.

The theme this time was Vampire vs. Zombie movies so I chose to go as Selene from Underworld:
The overall effect was messy hair, black catsuit, blue contacts, 'biker' boots, trench coat and a toy gun!

Sadly I'm not as glamourous as Kate Bekinsale in this in this role...

But the overall effect was hopefully okay...

I compiled a  plain black catsuit from eBay (£18) with some boots I already owned, I added a corset over the top to exaggerate my waist a little and to make the suit look a little more like the bodice she wears in the movie.

My coat (not shown) was from eBay (£7).

My hair had been in plaits to give it that messy crimpy look and I painted my face very lightly with white 'Snazeroo' (£2.49 eBay) to make my face paler and added the contact lenses (£20 for 1 month disposable from Brighton North Laines) to make my eyes blue and the irises a little bigger.

Finally the toy gun was from a barrow at a market in County Durham!

All in all this costume was around £40 in new purchases, which I think is about average for a fairly good bought costume. I don't really feel like just buying a costume is the best way of compiling a fancy dress outfit, but i like to think buying good key pieces and mixing them with things you own or can make is the best way of making your outfit as authentic as possible.

On a side note, I have also done more barginous costumes for as little as £10 buy buying a few small additions to my normal wardrobe and some, perhaps creative is the best way to describe it, fashion choices (in addition to my nerves of steel!)

I did however get my picture in the Brighton local culture magazine "You Got Papped" at this event!
www.yougotpapped.com

Fairly menacing I think...
















 
So back to the Black Cat.

In addition to the catsuit she has fur trimmings on her gloves, boots and collar which I have been slowly but steadily sewing in place (bought from a fabric shop in the North Laines for £4).

I have also decided to paint the mask in place as it is impossible to find one that is the right shape!

I still have no idea where to find white hair paint.

Thats all for now folks! And with just over a week to go I hope you're feeling prepared...
I'll post on the Sally progress next time.

Cosplay Inspiration: Halloween Preperation 2010

Has anyone else felt the creeping feeling of Halloween approaching? (And I'm not refering to the ghouls and goblins!) I guess a lot of people don't get this feeling until around the 25th of October when they realise they have a party to go to but no costume. I started to get this feeling towards the end of August...

As you've probably guessed from this blog title, I like fancy dress! This years Halloween I'm attending two events that require a costume and I've managed to get a little bit of a reputation with some of my friends as a bit of an all-outer when it comes to costumes.

The idea of this blog is to chronicle some of the accumulation of items for my ongoing costume adventures (up to Halloween and beyond) and to give some insight into the looks I've sported in the past.

Its not really meant to be a how too guide, I don't really sew or anything, but I want to mention a litle about how I put my costumes together and what sort of places are best for finding handy outfit additions.

Hopefully it may also inspire some people to have a little more fun with costuming!

*******

I thought I'd start by spilling the beans on my plans for Halloween...

My to events are:
1)     Work Halloween Party
         Requires: Something not too radical, but festive
         Choice: Sally from "The Nightmare Before Christmas"

2)      80s Goth/Electro/Alt Night
         Requires: Something black, a bit festive, possibly a little fetish ;)
         Choice: Black Cat from Spiderman

Sally is a new costume and the Black Cat is a modification of an old one that involves sewing white fur to a black catsuit (fun! given that I have no/can't use a sewing machine)

Here are some pictures of what I'm aiming for:

Black Cat

Sally

I'll post on their progress shortly!