Geekphoria: Some Halloween Goodies!

Hi everybody!

Halloween is pretty much my favorite holiday, and I'm not quite sure why. I think it may just be a nerd thing. I love the decorations, I love dressing up, I love horror movies and shows, and I even love the gimmicky candy. I'm ready for it to be Halloween in the middle of September, and I usually spend the entire month preparing for it. I watch everything Halloween-y I can get to on TV, including those ridiculous real hauntings shows. I just eat it all up.

This year, I spent a lot of time making my Halloween costume. I also made part of my boyfriend's costume (he was supposed to be Splinter, but he didn't bother to get himself a mask or cane or anything, so he ended up just being a dude in a robe). I made the shirt for my brother's Ash Ketchum costume, too.

Nerdy people in my nerdy bedroom.

I made my armor out of craft foam, and connected the straps with round velcro stickers. I made my helmet with an adjusted version of this cardboard helmet tutorial. I used cardboard and craft foam, then filled it with papier mache and wood filler. Using the craft foam may have been a mistake--I think the weight of the other products made it deform a bit as I was building it--but I included it because I thought it would be more comfortable. I will probably go back and re-do all the armor with something like sintra if I choose to ever wear it to a con, since I don't really like how the craft foam turned out.

Here are a few in-progress pictures:

This is the original helmet base, which didn't have any cardboard.

And here are some of the armor pieces, in their flat foam form.

Here's the helmet base I ended up using (it had some added cardboard to help it keep the shape and a full ...flap?) with the papier mache built up. I filled in all those spaces with food filler and sanded it down when I was done.

Here are all my armor pieces before they were spray painted. I painted them with 3 layers of acrylic gesso so that the paint would stick correctly. I think I might just do two layers next time, though, since the armor got a little crunchy...

And here they are after 2-3 layers of paint

For the fabric pieces, I sewed my cape and sash myself. I bought the tights and leotard from We Love Fine, since I don't have the skill set for those type of pieces yet, but I added velcro to the shoulders of the leotard in order to secure the cape and the shoulder armor.

And here are some pictures of the final product! They were taken by my boyfriend's sister, and you can see her awesome photography pages here and here.

Overall, I was pleased with it as a Halloween costume, but I'd want to fix a LOT of it before I wore it to a con. A lot of people seem to like it, though, which makes me feel like I'm being a little to critical of myself. But that's how you grow, right?

Crafty Little Monster's Vanessa did a blog post on homemade Halloween costumes, with an interview with me! You should seriously check it out! You can also see Brook from Adventure is Afoot's adorable Wall*E costume! I really should see that movie sometime...

I was going to show you some more stuff on my brother's Ash Ketchum costume, but then I realized I took a bunch of in-progress pictures--so I will just make that a post of its own! For now, though, you can see the awesome pumpkins I made. Unfortunately, I didn't get a lit picture of the jack-o-lantern, but you'll easily get the idea.