Shout! The Mod Musical

OMG! Another post already?? I know! I'm just as surprised as you are.

Earlier this year (waaaay earlier) I did the costumes for Shout! The Mod Musical. And they were fabulous if I must say. It's a wonderful show if you ever get the chance to see it. Hilarious - with awesome, groovy music.
 
It takes place throughout the 60's and it's about 5 women in London. The women are mostly anonymous as the story is told through letters to an advice columnist and each woman is represented by a color.

I was pretty excited about this show and decided I wanted to make as many of the costumes as I could, so I decided to actually draw up draft designs - I love doing that, but never get to.

So here are my designs:

And here are pictures of the costumes:

First 60's look

Second 60's look

70's Look

Finale

Doll Costume

This year for Halloween, along with Thriller as usual, I got to do a solo ballet piece about a creepy doll. It was fun to be something other than a zombie for once. Here's the costume:

I made it using a pattern based on a costume from Mirror Mirror - which I thought was an ok movie, with absolutely fabulous costumes. Totally worth watching just for the costumes.

Here's the pattern:

Heads up if you plan to use this costume - there's a couple issues with the printed instructions so read them well before you start. The back of the pattern is also not very clear on which fabrics/notions are needed for which version of the costume you're doing. Also it says you need am 18" lightweight separating zipper for the bodice - totally not true. I ended up needing a 16" separating zipper.

Here's some in process pictures:

I used spiral steel boning on the bodice. It was my first time working with spiral steel boning and I loved it! I'd recommend taking the Sew Retro Perfect Bombshell Dress on Craftsy if you want to learn how to use it.

I changed the pattern a little. I shortened the sleeves and the skirt to make it more doll like.

Since I was supposed to be a little creepy and kind of old I distressed the dress a little. Usually I like to do discoloration with dye, but I made a poor fabric choice for that. My taffeta was synthetic and didn't dye so I used spray paint instead. It's best to use spray paint sparingly on fabric because it stiffens the fabric a little. If you are I'd recommend finding a floral spray at a craft store instead of regular old spray paint from the hardware store.

The fabric for the bow was a cotton begaline so it dyed marvelously. Have I ever mentioned that I love Giant Ass Bows? Well I do. I think they're hilarious.

Here's my makeup - there's lots of people who've done better doll makeup than me online, so look elsewhere for makeup instructions.

And once again here's the final look.

Tin Man - A Year Late

This post is a year late. It's about the Tin Man costume I made last year for Wizard of Oz. I figured it would be one of the hardest costumes to make look good - like it was solid/metal-like without actually being metal so as not to cause any injuries to the actor (or other actors). So I looked online to see how others had made them and didn't find anything helpful. You can buy some pretty awesome Tin Man costumes out of molded plastic for several thousand dollars (higher than my entire budget - for the show.

So I had to find my own way. After thinking about it and looking online for possibilities, I came across some good websites about making armor. One option was leather armor, which inspired me to look into fake leathers (since I can't afford the real stuff). I found some good upholstery vinyl at my local fabric store that was the right color. It was kind of thin - wouldn't pull off the "solid" look I needed so I decided to back it with craft foam and really thick interfacing - it took a lot of hot glue. Then I bound it with some strips of the vinyl to cover the ends.

Here's my prototype: 

 

Prototype

So I took a whole lot of measurements of the actor and came up with a plan.

I'd have him wear a unitard underneath to hid the skin. I made a hood and sewed on the funnel hat. His arms and legs would kind of look like a knight's armor with a forearm piece and an upper arm piece connected by an elbow piece, and similar for the legs. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that part of the process - I got crunched for time. Needless to say it took a lot of fitting and adjusting to get it just right. The pants especially - I'll talk about those later.

The other big thing to figure out was how to do the body. My initial ideas involved a beer keg costume and some chicken wire, but that didn't pan out. So I went to Walmart and got a laundry hamper that was the perfect size for my Tin Man.

I had my assistant cut arm holes and a neck hole, and take off some of the bottom - I don't do power tools. I covered the sharp edges with duct tape - though duct tape doesn't stick to plastic well.

Here are some pictures:

Arm Hole Placing

After Cutting

Then I covered it with vinyl - again using lots of hot glue:

Covering

From the inside

Then I added shoulder phalanges and a collar.

Here's the complete torso:

Tin Man Body

After the parts were make I used black paint and a fan brush to grunge it up a bit, and added buttons for the rivets up the front of his body.

The "arms" connected to the body by a snap on a elastic strip sewn to the top of the arm.

The legs proved to be rather tricky. I started him off with some vinyl "panties" but they didn't quite work. So we ended up with part vinyl part spandex "bike shorts" that were held up by suspenders. The legs went over that and connected to a belt kind of like garters.

Here's the finished costume.:

Completed Costume

Boob Pinata

I've done a terrible job of blogging this year. Sorry about that, I've been busy.

To make up for it here's what I did this week for my lesbian sister's bachelorette party: a boob pinata. It was by request.

It's been a long time since I've done Paper Mache, but it's not exactly a tricky skill. I followed this instructable. It had a lot of good tips - especially the jar lid thing, genius - and though I strayed from a few of them (I let it dry for way less than 24 hours between sets of layers - I didn't have a lot of time) it turned out great.

When designing my boob pinata I did a little google image research and found that most boob pinatas ended up looking like bulging pink eyeballs. So I decided it would need some context so I planned on doing more of a bust (lol) sans head.

My first attempt at making the inner frame didn't work out. I tried a cereal box for the shoulders/chest and paper to make a neck, with two balloons for the boobs. It didn't work out and I accidentally popped the balloons while trying to adjust things. So I decided to use just (well majority) balloons like she did in the very helpful instructable.

I had bought several bags of balloons since I didn't know what I'd need. I had 12" balloons, 8-9" balloons and a bag of a random assortment of other shaped balloons. I used two 12" balloons for the boobs, and 3 long skinny balloons from the assortment for the chest, and two small balloons from the assortment for the shoulders.

Then I just followed the instructable. I did two layers of newspaper at a time over a day and a half (Thursday night, Friday morning, Friday night).

I did figure out a good trick. While doing multiple layers at a time it was often hard to tell where I'd already gone. Especially on the second layer when everything was wet. So I started alternating layers with ads - that are very colorful - and articles - that are only black and white. That way I could tell where I still needed to go on the layer I was working on.

I added nipples during the second set of paper mache-ing. I just bunched up some newspaper and used some strips to hold them in place.

I did a last layer (Saturday morning) with just white paper since I would be covering it with tissue paper a la decoupage and didn't want the newsprint to show through. (I didn't take a picture of that).

I couldn't find tissue paper in a skin tone, so I did two layers of peach (sorry, no picture of that either). I did the peach layers right after the white layer. Since I was doing decoupage I just put the dry tissue paper right on the wet white layer, then went over it after with a 1/3 Elmer's glue, 2/3 water mixture that I applied with a large paint brush.

After the peach layer dried (Saturday afternoon) I added two layers of a kinda off-white tissue paper, then added nipples (they are a bit brighter than I wanted them to be, but oh well.

When adding the white layer it looked like she had a weird skin disease, but it turned out pretty awesome.

The party was Saturday night. I used a fan to speed up the drying process, and occasionally a hair dryer for wetter spots.

I cut a door in her back between the peach layers and the off white layers and taped it up and added some extra white strips for support.

We filled her with little plastic bottles of booze and Hershey's kisses.

I was worried that since we had sped up the process so much - and only done 7 rather than the recommended 8 layers - that she would break immediately, but she held up pretty well. It took 6 of us to finally break it, and the winning hit was done without a blindfold since we were pretty much done.

The boobs themselves only dented and the final break happened in the chest, so they get to keep the boobs:

It was pretty awesome all around.

I also make a pin the piercing on the nipple game, but that's just a little too risque to post a picture of. Sorry, lol.

Wizard of Oz

I wrote this post once already and somehow managed to delete it shortly after posting it. Oops. So here's my second stab at this.

It's a little late coming since the Wizard of Oz closed weeks ago, but after working my ass off making the costumes I took a month off of lots of things including crafting and blogging. So, happy New Year!

At first I wasn't too thrilled about costuming this show. In general the shows that everyone knows are dull to do because everyone already knows what it's supposed to look like and that's what they are expecting. But I did manage to challenge myself with this show and I had a whole lot of fun. I did, however, take on a bit much and it was a lot more work than I was expecting. Especially since I had some huge shipping issues with some of the fabric I ordered and ended up having to make 10 Ozian costumes in a few days.

So here's the costumes and some anecdotes:

I made the four main characters' costumes (I did have a sewing assistant who assembled the Lion and a few others). The tin man was tricky and I'll probably write a whole separate post about that one since I didn't find much when I looked up ideas for how to do it.

I spent a lot of time on Glinda's dress and if I'd had more time and money I'd have spent more of each on this dress. It didn't turn out quite like what I wanted. The Wicked Witch costume was outsourced when a retired designer on the island volunteered his services (he did the Wizard's costume too). The Wicked Witch costume is amazing and sadly I can't take any credit for it.

Here munchkins, specifically the Lullaby League (or Tots as they are referred to in the script). I pulled most of the munchkin costumes, but I made the Lullabies elf hats and shoes (I'll post the hat pattern if I ever figure out where I put it).

The crows were pretty simple, but I think they look great. I borrowed the hats and just made them feathery bibs. I wanted them to have yellow rainboots too, but alas they didn't fit in the budget.

The monkeys were mostly my design (assembled by my assistant). I used an animal jumpsuit pattern and combined it with a fairly plain bodice pattern that would be the vest. They were pretty adorable

The Ozians are some of my favorites. Especially the green tunics and the dirndl dresses. If I'd had more time I'd have made them hats too. The Oz Guard is my absolute favorite costume of the show, and sadly I don't have a good picture of him alone. He's standing next to the Wizard in the picture with the balloon. I took an Uncle Sam costume pattern and altered it.

These are the Winkies (the Witch's guards). I enjoyed making these as well since I had to kind of figure it out on my own.

I don't have a picture of the Jitterbugs and they were also really cool - if I find one I'll add it. It's a scene that was cut from the movie so most people don't know it. The costumes were simple - black shirts and pants for the men, black leotards and skirts for the women. They had novelty antenna and maskes from Amazon. But the wings were what made the costume. It was black nylon with different colored organza spots on it. They only had color on the part facing the audience so the color would flash during the dancing, but they were mostly black.

The next show I'll be working on is Shout! The Mod Musical so next I'll post lots of cute 60's mod dresses.