There is no such thing as a Sexy Costume when...

Your child has the opportunity to choose your character. Such is this year's costume. Which is not only, NOT Sexy, but also NOT even female......

After last year's triumphant successes in the world of costume making (at least in my world), I was pretty excited to make the kids' costumes this year and was slightly disappointed when the told me they wanted to repeat last year's costumes (Eli is Link, from the Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, a video game and Chey is Yoshi, from various Mario games). Not to be deterred from my newfound love of homemade costumes, I asked Eli to choose my costume for this year, with the only stipulation that it be scary.

He chose Herobrine.

Herobrine, so I am told, is a character in the computer game "Minecraft" that currently all the rage. I looked at the picture and said:

"That is SO not scary."

To which he replied:

"Trust me. If you played Minecraft, Herobrine would scare the crap out of you."


I decided to trust him and planned my costume strategy.






My plan was simple. I found a box that was big enough for my head, purchased various brown spray paints, a couple of dot lights (the battery kind that you press and they light), some tissue paper and a teal T-shirt.


First, I painted the box with the lightest coloured paint (which was the same colour as the box, not sure why I didn't just skip that step). I then placed random square patches of 2" painters tape over the "face" of the box and painted a darker brown. I repeated this process (leaving the old tape in place until the end), until I had three colours of light brown for the face and a dark brown for the hair.






Once the tape was removed, I cut out a mouth (through which I can sort of see, maybe, kinda.... although I did walk into a wall when I was walking around the house, so it could be a rather comedy filled evening with the ice and snow and lack of peripheral vision and all) and two eyes. I then taped several layers of white tissue to the inside of the box where the eyes are and duct taped the lights behind the tissue.

Voila!

I AM bringing sexy back to Hallowe'en......

Mini Bathroom Reno

The linoleum in Chey's bathroom has been peeling up at the bathtub edge since we moved in. I kept "meaning" to fix it, but like so many other things, I never seemed to actually get around to it (nor did Dale). A couple of weeks ago, I turned to Dale and told him that it was ridiculous that we couldn't seem to fix something so minor (but that could save us thousands of dollars if we fixed it BEFORE the bathtub ended up in the Living Room due to rotten floors). It's our most expensive investment, shouldn't we take better care of it?? That did it for both of us. We decided to replace the linoleum with tile and while we were at it, we decided to paint and do some other minor fixes.

And we rock.....

Before: This picture is from when we first bought the house. You can barely see the yellow walls and lino

After: The walls are a nice mint/sage green

We geeked it up and  hit the Calgary Comic Expo this weekend (It was Crazy Busy! Fire Marshals shut it down on Saturday and they stopped selling tickets shortly after we arrived on Sunday Morning). I even made (yes, made... as in forced, although they were quite happy about it) the kids don their Hallowe'en costumes. I wanted to show them off in a place where people would appreciate the work.... and I was right. Several attendees asked if they could take the kids' pictures (Chey was Yoshi and Eli was Link). Eli's, in particular, was a hit. Probably because he looks like Link in or out of costume...... The cosplay costumes were amazing! Everything from several other Links (Eli's was the best, of course), pikachu, Freddy Krueger, Dr. Who, Zelda, Midna, ghostbusters, Dr. Arliss Loveless (the dude with the wheelchair from Wild West (his was one of the BEST)), various super heroes, barbarians and knights and many other characters that I am not familiar with. 

We even came across Midna (Link's Helper in Twilight Princess). 

 Even though it was uber busy, I thought it was fun (stressful, but fun) and we will go back next year.

My Son has the coolest, most awesome-est Mother EVER!

I.AM.DONE!

Both kids costumes are now complete and if you thought Chey's was cool...... you are going to absolutely love Eli's.... OK, maybe that's just me (my nerd side runs strong this time of year), but I am so stinkin' proud of this costume I could, literally, run up and down the street yelling about it at the top of my lungs (I'll just bash you guys over the head with it instead). On the surface, it's probably not all that impressive....... but once you notice the details..... this costume is MADE from details.......

My inspiration for this costume were these pictures of Link (from the Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess)

I started with a base (and the only items that were not made by me) of a white mock-neck top, camel coloured pants and a couple of belts.

I then thought about the items that would require knitting. Eli had asked me for a Link hat this summer, so that was already done, but I decided to knit fingerless gloves for the gauntlets and a garter stitch shirt for the chain-mail shirt (garter stitch looks a lot like the chain mail in the pictures and it has the added bonus of being a LOT warmer than chain-mail).

Once that was complete, I started thinking about the shield, sword, scabbard, bracer and boots. I found a website called cosplay that had a lot of ideas for making these items (some made from metal, others from wood, but I chose foam core and was inspired by this one) and started with the shield. The shield turned out fabulously and the series of pictures here showed the process I used to complete it.

I first painted the two foam core sheets, One Blue (with Silver back and one Silver (just the front)	I cut both pieces into shield shapes and then cut the centre out of the silver sheet
I glued the two pieces together and clamped them to dry over night	I then cut and glued on fun foam shapes for the Tri-Force
I used fabric paint to add rivets and raised details on the shield	Close up of rivets (I used brown fabric paint and then had to over paint it silver). I then sponged metallic silver and black paint all over the silver parts of the shield for depth of colour
	I then used puzzle saver to protect the soft foam before spraying the whole she-bang with clear varnish and hot gluing straps onto the backs.

Once the shield was complete, I cut the tunic out of dark green fleece and used dark ribbon to lace the sides and add a bit of embroidery detail.


I then used some suede that I had originally purchased for something else (10 years ago and never used... I can't even remember what it was intended for) and sewed, very carefully on my machine, some boot covers. I also cut a bracer out of fun foam and used the fabric paint to add the detail.

Once all of that was completed, I focused on the problem of a sword and scabbard. I wasn't sure what I was going to do there (I spent yesterday driving around looking for something, ANYTHING that would work, but alas.... found nothing), and ultimately decided to make a sword out of foam core using inspiration from a tutorial I found on YouTube (Here is his website). I couldn't use the tutorial as that sword was made for a grown man and would have been way to large (ask me when I thought about that.... yes, it would have been AFTER I cut out all the pieces and started gluing them together and realized that the sword was about 1.5 times taller than Eli). I was feeling rather done with the whole thing at this point so I don't have a good photo selection of the process of either sword or scabbard. The scabbard was the head scratcher for me.... how to make a scabbard that would actually stay open to hold the sword.... In the end, I cut the foam core a bit more than twice the width of the sword and then scored 3 two inch lines down the length. I then, carefully, folded the scabbard into shape and cut the points.... The points were a bit tricky, but with some brain help from Dale, I was able to cut slices into the triangles that  helped me to shape the end of the scabbard into a three dimensional point. Once that was all hot-glued together, I spray painted and added the details...... 

And here he is.... Link, from the Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess......

Do I RAWK or what?!!!

Yoshi is ready for Hallowe'en!

For some reason that I still cannot comprehend, I've decided to make BOTH kid's costumes this year. The kids were very decisive about their costume choices and neither chose a costume that is readily available this year (Chey's choice was available a few years ago, but I couldn't stomach the Ebay costs for a cheap Yoshi costume that is now collectible because it is no longer available).  I do a have little experience in costume making (I am not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination, but I mostly know which part of the machine the thread goes through). I made an Eeyore Costume (from a pattern) for both Eli and Devin when they were babies (which Chey also wore when she was old enough).

Eli on Left and Chey on Right at around 1yr old

And two years ago, I made Eli and Devin both Pikachu costumes without a pattern. It didn't seem like it could be all that complicated.... and they turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

The success of the Pikachu costume gave me the confidence for this year's challenge.... Yoshi (From various Mario video games by Nintendo). As you probably know by now, my daughter may look like a sweet, pretty angel, but girly she ain't..... She has always disliked dolls, barbies and princesses. Sharks (because they can kill you), Dinosaurs (because they can kill you) and Bugs of all sorts are much more her style. Our last Hallowe'en (we missed last year because we were in Egypt...I cannot believe that was a year ago already!) she wanted to be a Dragon (in the above picture) and required me to be a princess so she would have something to Kill (I'm trying not to worry about her obsession with killing. Really, I'm not... much)

Here's a little mini-tutorial on how I did the body. I used this same method for the boys' Pikachu Costumes and it can be used for any costume with a blob-like body.

My Inspiration was this picture

First I folded the fabric (I use fleece for two main reasons.... One is obvious. I live in Calgary. It might be warm(ish), but it might be -20C... I need something that is warm and can be layered underneath. The second reason is probably also rather obvious.... I'm not a great seamstress and fleece hides a multitude of cutting, sewing and other unnamed sins, plus it doesn't fray.... perfect!) and laid it out so that the open fold was in the middle and enough of the folded fabric was on either side to go out past arms and legs.

Then I had my victim lay spread eagle on the fleece and literally, cut her shape out of the fleece (I'll admit my first attempt was too small, I forgot to compensate for the cold weather argument mentioned above).

I sewed on his front patch (with extra white to wrap between the legs and continue the white up through the bottom of the tail) and then sewed up the seams of the body, added elastic for the arms and legs and wrangled a tail stuffed with quilt batting onto the body. I then sewed up a circle for his saddle and stuffed it with batting and edged it with white fleece. I decided to attach the saddle to the costume by sewing on straps so that it can be worn as a backpack. I felt the weight of the tail and saddle combined would drag down the back of the costume and cause an endless stream of complaints stemming from strangulation issues from the drag..... it worked like a dream!

It's not perfect, the hat was more of a challenge than I had planned for.... and I didn't really plan for it... I just kind of sewed stuff on and then plopped it on Chey's head and tucked and sewed until it fit..... I still have a tiny bit of tweaking (the tail is bugging me), but


I think Yoshi turned out alright......

One down... one to go.... and Eli's is going to be AWESOME! You just wait!

Hallowe'en and knitting.

Happy Hallowe'en (sort of, it was last night after all). I hope everyone had fun with the ghouls and ghosts and princesses last night!

Hallowe'en was great at our house. We were all a bit sad that my friend Christina and her boys couldn't come as her oldest was very, very ill.... We've made it a bit of a tradition to go together and have only missed a couple of years since we moved to Calgary. This year was particularly sad because they are moving to Egypt and we may not be able to go again...... sigh.

On a more upbeat note, our decorations were a hit! Dale went all out and blacked in our front porch with black plastic. I told him it couldn't be too scary (there are a lot of tiny children in our neighbourhood), but wanted it to be a bit nerve-wracking. That worked. Particularly with the older kids. They would stop at the end of the garage and we could hear them discussing who would go first ("I'm not going first! You go first! I KNOW someone is going to jump out at us!")... then would then creep towards the porch, giggling nervously..... and then... nothing. We didn't have anything too scary, just some fog, a strobe light and a few decorations... it was all about the approach. Not knowing whether it was scary or not seemed to be the best part. The funniest event was a brief moment when Dale came in the house to re-load the candy (we're guessing 100-150 kids again) and a 8 or 9 year old boy came to the door.... we heard an enormous scream and a huge crash and then a burst of hysterical laughter. Apparently the storm trooper I had hanging in the window scared the begeezus out of him (I thought of a scary mask, but I wanted startled, not reduced to nightmares)... he was so scared he even dropped his huge bag of candy.... the laughter was his mother..... I thought later, that I should have asked her for her number.... I liked her sense of humour.




Chey decided to be a Dragon this year and told me I needed to be a princess ('cause Dragons eat princesses...... I tried not to take it personally) and Eli chose Pikachu. I don't normally make costumes for the kids... I'm a good mom, but not "Super-Mom", but we couldn't find a Pikachu his size (that was a price I was willing to pay) and so, I sighed and said I'd try.... Turns out, I'm not bad at making costumes...... No pattern, just a stuffed PIkachu (a Pokemon character, for those readers who don't have small-ish children, or who are lucky enough to have children too small to know what Pokemon are) to go from...... The costume went so well, I even offered to make one for Devin (the boy who ended up being to sick to Trick-or-Treat)... his also turned out exceptionally well, all things considered.

Here we all are. Dale was originally going to be the tooth fairy, but we couldn't find the fairy wings in the kids costumes, I must have thrown them out at some point, tattered and ripped as they were.

The weather was great and the kids had fun (as did we)..... I love Hallowe'en.


I also finished my test knit this weekend. It's absolutely lovely. I've written down my mods on my Ravelry project page, and so don't feel the need to repeat them here. But here is a picture.....