COSTUME IDEAS FOR THE COMING YEAR

 Today, just a week past attending Costume College, my mind is planning my costumes for the coming year. I had already been putting together a Regency dress for a Bridgerton Ball, so I’ve been gathering ideas for it, especially after coming across a beautiful embroidered sheer net fabric on etsy for a great, one-time-wear dress, at a cheap price. Since I normally make more historical looking dresses, and this is more fantasy, finding a cheap fabric made it easier to let loose. I collected photos from the Bridgerton series as my inspiration, and am thinking maybe adding purple florals around the neckline. Then I did some shopping on AliExpress online, our favorite place for inexpensive bling, and found a purple amethyst color collet necklace and bracelet, for $6.95. I plan to make earrings from the bracelet.

This time of year, I’m all about planning for Fall and Halloween, and while looking around Pinterest for ideas, I suddenly I saw another dress that started my brain pinging off the walls for a fun costume to wear for Halloween and next year: a Disney Haunted Mansion maid’s dress that I could make into an 1870s version. Yes, you could buy that first one pictured, but where’s the fun in that?  Then while searching on etsy for a possible fabric for it, I saw a bunch of Disney Haunted Mansion fabrics. One was a black and green stripe with bats on it! Perfect! However, all the Disney fabrics I was seeing were going for $20 yd. Joann Fabrics also has some Disney Haunted Mansion fabrics but with general designs on it, not specifically the green & black stripes I wanted, and theirs are normally $12.99, on sale for $7.49. The one on etsy I really liked only had 4 yds left, and the polonaise takes 5 1/4 yds, but then I saw it was 58” wide, so 4 yds would work. I knew I couldn’t wait because this fabric was going fast and that’s all there was.  Yes, I did search elsewhere for it, with no luck. So WTH, I bought it.

I have a couple options for patterns to use, either Truly Victorian’s #410 polonaise, the Black Snail #0116, which I recently made a dress from, or better yet, McCall’s #8189 polonaise, which I like the neckline on. 

My dress style will be different, but it would still have the same look as the original worn by the employees at the Haunted Mansion. These are actual garments that employees wore that were auctioned off a few years ago. 

I decided I wanted to get this made in time for me to wear for Halloween because I’ve been enjoying dressing up for that each year. I’ve already been a ghost bride, a skeleton ghoul, and a witch a few times, using my historical costumes as a base. Now it was time to try something new.

This sent me on a further search (Pinterest can be your best friend, or etsy), looking for accessory ideas. I was first thinking of how I could use an 1870s hat/bonnet and add the white lace and a bat to it. But then I started seeing Haunted Mansion Mickey ears headbands, and thought that would be easy to make. I really think those little bat wings are cute, but I decided to buy that first one in my photos to save myself some time. It may arrive before my fabric does and it will give me the enthusiasm to get going on everything. 

And of course, I need a name badge like they do at the Mansion. And I’m thinking I might make up a bunch of just general tags and give out to any of my friends who decided to join me in a Haunted Mansion costume mini-group at Costume College in honor of the Haunted Mansion movie coming out. You can have a personalized one made for you on etsy for about $10, but I’ll probably just make a bunch that says Foolish Mortal.

                                                    Join me if you dare, Foolish Mortal!

Not My Usual Costuming

November 3, 2013

Each year when Halloween arrives I enjoy decorating our front porch with spiders and bats and big spider webs in hopes of scaring the kids. Occasionally I dress up myself. I’ve recycled a black robe and hood I made about 20 years ago for my hubby to wear as the Grim Reaper into a length I can wear since he’s quite a bit bigger than me. Instead of the usual skeleton mask that went with it, I found a half mask with a long beak of the Plague Doctor, or Dottore De La Peste,  from the 1600s. During the Black or Bubonic Plague of that time, it was believed that the germs were transferred by air and odors, so the doctors would wear clothing to completely cover themselves, and a mask with a long beak was filled with herbs that they breathed through. They believed this would protect them from the disease but sadly it was bites from infected rats and fleas that actually spread it.

I found a really cool looking mask at our local Halloween store that sets up during the holiday, and then a soft vinyl hat at Michael’s to finish it off. I even got to wear this to our Costume Guild meeting a couple nights earlier when many of us dressed up for it.

At the Halloween store I also bought a long sheet of vinyl covering that looked like stone walls and covered my front door with some of it.  And I finally found the big ole hairy spider I’d been looking for that was just the right touch to my decorations. My side window had more spiders hanging inside along with static-cling bats on the glass. Since I was gone most of the day on Halloween I decided not to put up my giant spider web.

I recorded the soundtrack from the movie of The Shining that was played on an organ and it sounded really creepy. So I set up on the front porch, put my ipod speakers on the ground behind me, and held my black bucket of candy in wait for my first victims.              

As people began passing by on the sidewalks I heard a few say I’m not going up there. I even heard that from some teenage boys. Some weren’t sure if I was real or a mannequin. Little kids would turn around and go back to their parents so I started waving and smiling at them to show I wasn’t really that scary. One little girl thought I was a hummingbird. Another boy said I was a bird man. I tried to explain what I was but there wasn’t much interest there except with the adults. Many of the kids were very intimidated by the big spider on my door, and said I had a great looking door.  An hour and a half later I was out of the 400 pieces of candy, and had to close up shop. Until next year.