Playing Dress-Up

Anything that includes costumes has always thrown my brain into overdrive on how I can come up with something festive. Last year for Halloween I began to create my costume 6 months prior and through some blood, sweat, and a few tears, finally Deadmau5 came to life.

This year for Halloween I waited until the last minute, but luckily with the help of two dear friends and some sparkly fabric we created another original masterpiece. 

American Gladiators 2012

 Buck, Tini, Dixie and Taj -- making their debut

It was a blast making these costumes.

The boys wore wrestling singlets, and Christine and I invested in some shiny shorts. I made the belts with some shiny fabric. We found Prateek's wrestling helmet and matching gloves at goodwill, along with the wigs and shoes. I pinned on an American Gladiator logo to the front.

 The gladiator sticks were the most fun to make. We got old curtain rods and taped a pillow to each end, wrapped it in a white towel, and held it all together with colored duct tape. 

ready for action

Usually after Halloween I get sad, because dressing up is over for a while.

But not this year!!!

Not long after Halloween we had the Tap N Run 4K.

This is not your everyday race, y'all. 

Everyone dresses up either individually or in teams. At every kilometer, there is a beer chug station (instead of water station). At the end there are costume contests, and yes....more beer.

Instead of the gladiators, we decided to do something a little less politically correct.

Meet our team: Cowboys and Indian.

We were the cowboys, and Prateek was the Indian.

Duh.

 A 4 K is a little over 2 1/2 miles, which we walked. 

I made sure not to wear a timing chip. I don't want a 12 minute mile on record!

P and I on the course 

Don't let the picture fool you. We ran jogged for about 10 yards at the end to get the photo op. Also, Brian was in a different photo so I added him in here :)

Some people didn't understand our costume until we explained it, and then we were a huge hit. We decided we HAD to enter the costume contest for "Most Original Team Concept". 

Out of 20+ teams in that category, we ended up winning.

We are ridiculous.

But it doesn't stop there.

I got the opportunity to dress up a THIRD time! 

EDC was in Orlando again this year. You know how I love letting out my inner rave child with feathers and neon while fist pumping into the night. 

Crop Tops, feathers, and leg fuzzies -- oh my!

This may be my favorite photo ever taken at a festival - front and center at Afrojack, loving the confetti (and life in general).

Unfortunately the end-of-the-year dressing up is over, with the exception of any ugly sweater parties or Santa pub crawls I may attend. 

Come to think of it though, when I was younger, I dressed like a Pilgrim on Thanksgiving.....hmmmm....I already have my Indian......

Measure Twice, Cut Once part 2- My Halloween DIY projects

Back in August I posted (here) about my adventures into the do-it-yourself world of Halloween costume making. 

To recap, 

Joel Zimmerman, AKA Deadmau5 (pronounced "dead mouse") is one of my favorite house music producers. He is characterized by wearing a giant mouse head at all of his shows.

My vision finally came to life this past weekend after countless hours of preparation.

I found an instructable that actually walked you step by step on how to make one of these bad boys. (Read it here to give you a detailed description of what I went through!)

The author of the instructable, Intrica, was quick to answer questions of fellow Mau5-makers, and her detailed instructions helped make life 10x easier. 

THANK YOU INTRICA!

I will say that I underestimated the amount of time, effort, and pre-planning that needed to be put in. 

It was hard, y'all.

Here are some abbreviated step-by-step photos of beginning to end.

Step 1:  I measured and cut the globe to make the mouth, and cut the small globe to make the eyes.

I used a dremel and was covered in tiny acrylic bits by the time I was finished. And kinda smelled like burnt plastic.

Step 2: I used high-density construction foam and cut out strips to make the lip, and cut out 4 ear shapes. I glued the lip to the mouth opening, and glued two of those foam ear pieces together in between a threaded rod. 

I had to cut out channels in the foam for the rods, and was covered with little bits of foam by the end of this step.

After the ears dried I drilled two holes in the head and attached the ears with a wing nut and fender washer. Now we're starting to look like a mouse!! 

Step 3: I covered the ears with a four-way stretch fabric and used Stitch Witchery to steam the sides together to make it nice and smooth. To hold stretched in place while steaming, I used sewing pins and then cut off the extra after it was secured. 

For the hat, you have to make holes in the sides so that you can attach/adjust the ears inside the helmet. Otherwise you can't get to the wing nut. So, I busted out the dremel again. I must say that hard hats are challenging to cut! 

After it was cut I used a mixture of hot glue and gorilla glue to secure it in place inside the globe. It wouldn't stick initially, so I ended up gluing the helmet to a small piece of the foam, then securing the foam into the globe. 

By the end of this process I was covered with small strings of hot glue. I looked like a spiderweb. 

Step 5: Covering the head in fabric was the most challenging part of this entire process. I used a four-way stretch fabric so it would stretch in all directions, but keeping it smooth with no creases was a pain in the $%&. It took a good 4-5 hours of stretching, holding, gluing, taking off and redoing. If you don't have patience, you may want to call someone to come over and keep you calm. Because it's maddening. 

I don't have any photos of this portion of the process because quite frankly the last thing on my mind at 2AM after scuffling with this fabric for 5 hours was taking a photo.

Step 6: The mouth was cut out from a mesh food cover dome and covered in a chiffon/nylon fabric. You can get the dome at Chinese markets. I cut out the shape of the mouth with wire cutters,spray painted it black, then covered the edges with electrical tape. Then I covered the mouth with the fabric trying to keep it as smooth as possible. 

I stuck the mesh into the mouth opening by attaching a few small screws into the foam lip.

Step 7: The eyes were the fun part, because I bought battery-powered neon to go inside them so that they'd glow. I also used small purple rhinestones to make the eyes with, instead of just black stripes. 

I stuck the neon through a previously-drilled eye hole and wrapped it around some aluminum foil to make the light reflect brightly. I glued the white eyes on top, and secured the battery pack inside the globe with double-sided velcro.

I added a rhinestone crown to the top to give my head a little feminine touch. 

This is Intrica's photo, giving you an idea to show how it looked pre-eye placement since I forgot to take a photo

Finished product

We went to a Halloween party and I felt like a complete celebrity. I was surprised at how many people knew who Deadmau5 was, and I was bombarded with people wanting to take pictures with me all night!

Prateek's costume was also a DIY - he went as the MetroPCS Indian guy from Tech&Talk commercials.

After I finished my Deadmau5 I felt like I had so much extra time on my hands! So, I finally broke down and joined Pinterest where I found inspiration for a few other DIY Halloween projects.

Arrrgh!

Owl Cupcakes

Fabric Wreath

I doubt that I will ever top this year's costume. But, at this rate, who knows WHAT I'll have up my sleeve by the time Christmas comes around!

Measure Twice, Cut Once - The Beginnings of a DIY Adventure

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. When I was younger, my mom would herd us through the fabric section of Wal-Mart to look at patterns with possible ideas and let us pick our favorites. Then she'd slave over the sewing machine, often going above and beyond what the pattern suggests she do, so that our costumes were amazing.

The do-it-yourself costumes in our household consisted of anything from the Chiquita Banana lady to the Statue of Liberty (of which I proudly won first place at the costume contest of West Elementary School's Fall Festival in the 4th grade!)

Now, as an "adult", I find it difficult to purchase a poorly made costume at a ridiculous price that barely even covers my fanny. Halloween has turned into an excuse for women to let out their inner scandalousness...and here I am just wanting to be creative and original, and have my derriere covered. 

This little diddy goes for around $45, and doesn't even include the socks!

Thus, my annual DIY Halloween costume projects began. 

Three years ago, my friend Amelia and I rocked out handmade Mario and Luigi costumes. Now you see them everywhere, but back then not so much. Maybe I started the trend?!

 Prateek and I won a costume contest with our handmade costumes - 

The One Night Stand.

Why yes, that is a lampshade on his head.

Another year, I went as Tim Tebow Crying. 

For those of you who may not remember this vision from a few years ago when the Gators lost the SEC Championship Game to Alabama, let me replay the touching moment:

One of my best friend's Kate is a Gator....Kate please shield your eyes....

It was the butt of all SEC jokes for a few years. So I went with it. 

Sadly, I live in Gator-land down here in Tampa, so people didn't think it was QUITE as funny as I did. Although I did get a few high-fives from some Florida State fans.

The sparkly blue teardrops and scriptured eye-black was my fave.

This year, I've already decided what I want to be.

Deadmau5.

Joel Zimmerman, AKA Deadmau5 (pronounced "dead mouse") is one of my favorite house music producers. He is characterized by wearing a giant mouse head at all of his shows. 

I saw Deadmau5 perform at Ultra Music Festival this past March, and every so often in the crowd I would see someone that had made their own Deadmau5 head.

Some were good, some were epic fails.

This one was pretty legit

My Halloween idea had been born, but needed to be taken to another level......

a GIRL Deadmau5.

So I google how to make one of these things, not expecting much to pop up - low and behold, a step by step guide appears! I swear you can find anything online these days. 

I'm frightened by what lies ahead for me and my Girl Deadmau5. All the reviews talk about how hard it is to make and how time consuming it is.

And let me also just tell you, this Deadmau5 head building is NO JOKE. When the materials list consists of a 14 inch acylic lamp post globe, jigsaw, dremel, wing nuts, and a professional grade hard hat, just to name a few, you know the project is intense.

The 14 inch globe came in the mail yesterday, so my DIY Halloween adventure of 2011 has officially begun.

Hopefully this project I'm throwing myself into won't deviate into complete disaster. I have almost 3 months to accomplish my task, but between marathon training and work I really don't have much time left at all. 

I'll try to post every so often on how the whole sawing/cutting/drilling thing works out. Unless I lose a finger. Then you may not hear from me for a while.