blue shapeshifter - skulltastic

I did not finish the skull belt in time for Halloween (ran out of skulls at the last minute) but I can wear it on another occasion now that it is completed :)! Luckily I live close to a Halloween supplies store so I bought 3 bags of skulls. 2 bags of 3-1/2" tall skulls and 1 bag of 1-1/2" tall skulls. I only needed 1 small skull for the wig, so I just have a bag of skulls casually sitting around in my house. Yeup.




The skulls I bought were on a string, they were basically hot-glue-gunned at the top (there was a hole at the top of each skull), and you could see around the hole, the extra plastic that came out of the mold, which I had to cut off with an x-acto knife. I wanted the skulls to be more white, less yellow, so I sprayed all of them with primer, then touching them up with an airbrush in a dark grey color--then finished with a clear gloss.


 

I knew I wanted the belt to close with a clasp of some sort, so I chose to use a round clasp similar to one you would use for a necklace. I punched using an awl on the sides of each skull and strung a piece of craft wire through.


 Fun times...


For the tiny skull on Mystique's hair, I simply hot-glue-gunned it as close to the lace-front as possible. Tacky glue will NOT work. I wore this in a club for a couple hours and this skull stayed put!




I did curl the wig a bit because it was a little too flat when I bought it.

blue shapeshifter - dressed up

Ah yes. I know I haven't posted in a while but I was also purposely waiting for Halloween to post my own costume! FIRSTLY LET ME JUST SAY THAT I MADE THIS COSTUME IN 2 DAYS SO THERE IS A DIRE LACK OF PHOTOS. SORRY. ANYWAYS--

After seeing Kotobukiya's lovely rendition of Mystique for their Marvel Bishoujo line, my friends thought I was going to do a Mystique cosplay after I posted the illustration to Facebook. I decided why not, I've never dabbled with body paint, and besides, Mystique is a fucking badass. Cosplaying is the only time I get to be a badass, so why not...



I'll start by talking about how I made her dress. I wanted the boots, gloves and dress to all match, so I set out to find the boots first. I got very lucky and found exactly what I was looking for. Yes I went to a fetish shoe shop. Leave a comment if you're interested in what style these boots are, they're from Pleaser. These boots are made from PVC. Luckily I'll be wearing these mostly at night so I won't be a sweaty Mystique, at least. I ordered 4-way stretch PVC online for the dress and gloves.




The PVC has a decent amount of stretch, and was thinner than I thought. I drafted the pattern and cut a sample in muslin to check the fit and proportions. If I had more time I would have cut the sample in the same PVC but I did not have that luxury (ok, when do I ever, anyway). The dress zips up along the back.



(excuse crappy mobile phone picture, I forgot my camera the day I hauled my fabric to my friends' apartment, they have wooden floors = perfect for cutting stretch fabrics)

You can see that the dress has extremely deep cut armholes. I got one of those weird adhesive bras that girls wear for backless dresses. When I did my fit I had this bra on to make sure the chest area did not look funky and/or deflated (mostly the latter). I also tried it with the boots to make sure I wouldn't drag the train when I walk around. I used a zigzag stitch on my regular sewing machine since this is a stretch fabric. This sample was especially important for checking the proportions of this dress--am I showing enough side boob, enough thigh, etc, etc. I clearly took this photo after I had worn it, anyway I have to remake it for Anime Expo next year, I don't like that my zigzag stitches were spaced so far apart (that's why you can see the stitching in the seams), I literally made this dress in 2 days but I'd like to remake a better version for Anime Expo 2012 for our X-Men group.




The challenge in this particular design is that the neck piece is not a separate neck band. I wanted to keep this based on the illustration, so I used 2  seams to build up the neckline. The dress isn't exactly a halter dress either, so I thought it would end up looking like a mock turtleneck if I created a separate neck band. I neatly zig-zag-stitched all the edges. Curved edges were clipped, then stitched carefully. You need to get a walking foot for your machine or just sew with a piece of thin paper (don't use tissue paper, it's too thin. I used pattern paper but you can use vellum or tracing paper) over your shiny PVC surface in order to move the fabric efficiently through the machine. I used a size 11 needle to minimize the appearance of holes created by the needle, as well.



(how I sewed the zipper)

Here's a quick photo we snapped before heading out for Halloween festivities, I'll have to write up the gloves and belt (was not finished on time for Halloween) at a later time!

(yeah I'm wearing contacts!)