Halloween - Graveyard Cabaret

This year I was lucky enough to be asked to co-produce a Tim Burton inspired cabaret show for Halloween. I did a couple numbers last year in the Halloween show put on by the local Cabaret group the Kit Kat Club. While I was discussing ideas with them I mentioned that I had always wanted to do a Tim Burton inspired show for Halloween. Well the idea stuck and that's what we did.

And it was most excellent. Easily one of the best Halloween variety shows I've seen.

My favorite Tim Burton movies are Beetlejuice, Corpse Bride, Big Fish, and Nightmare Before Christmas (not that I don't love all of the others as well) so I started re-watching movies for inspiration. Here's what I came up with:

From Beetlejuice: 

There's the scene where Beetlejuice is in the miniature model of the town harassing the Maitland's and their caseworker Juno distracts him with a devil themed strip club: Dante's Inferno Room. Since we were doing a cabaret show I thought it would be awesome to do a dance like he might see in Dante's Inferno Room.

I found some awesome music - Take Your Skin off and Dance by Martin Martini and the Bone Palace Orchestra - and three of us put together a sexy devilette number.

Here are some pictures (most photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

You can see some of our awesome graveyard set in some of those.

From Corpse Bride: There was an awesome number by Bonejangles and the Bone Boys where the tell the story of how the corpse bride came to be. The song is called Remains of the Day.

I decided that I wanted to do a black light skeleton tap dance to this song. Unfortunately tap dance isn't my specialty and I wasn't able to do all the choreography myself, so I enlisted the expertise of my talented friend Aly Cardinalli for some help with the choreography. It also took awhile to find tap dancers - they are a dying breed.

Since it was black light we also had a ninja come in with some props here and there.

Pictures (photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

There's some ghosts in the background of the first picture and a veil, "the family jewels" and a "satchel of gold" in the second.

I had never done a black light number before and it was very interesting to do. I wish we had had more time to work on how we looked in the black light since the skeleton was only on the front part of the costume. There's a couple places where it was hard to see some of what we were doing.

Inspired by Big Fish: Since I had decided last year that there would be no Thriller this year I decided to do a group circus number to make up for it.

I found the most fabulous song by Vermillion Lies called Circus Apocalypse. It was awesome and creepy and the words were all about joining the circus, but you have to die first. Just perfect for a Tim Burton Cabaret.

So I put together a group and did a creepy circus dance with acrobats, clowns, a bearded lady, a strong man, lion and lion tamer, a knife thrower, a tightrope walker (me!) and of course, a ring master.

I made my tightrope walker costume - it's the only costume I made for this show which is very weird for me.

Pictures (photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

 

 

From Nightmare Before Christmas: As a group we sang a portion of This is Halloween to open the show. We were onstage with just flashlights so I don't have any pictures of that.

Our finale was to Jump in the Line by Harry Belafonte - which of course you remember from Beetlejuice.  I made some skull maracas for the finale:

We had a lot of fun decorating the stage and coming up with a set for the show. Not only did we have the lovely graveyard, but we also had a tree, a coffin filled with a skeleton orchestra (you can see them in the photo of the ringmaster and the strong man above), and a coffin entrance:

That's the tree next to the coffin entrance - it had a false back so you could through the coffin.

I also decorated some bottles to use a vases, and a vase:

 

 

The bottles were painted with spray paint then decorated with puff paint. The vase was just lined with puff paint - I had originally planned on making the lines straight, but that didn't work out, and I think it looks even better with the squiggly lines.

I also made what I am now referring to as "noddle plants" since they were made from pool noodles:

 

I cut out spirals from the noodles and shoved them into cross-sections of the noodles for the base. Then I spray painted them. On some I added some puff paint for extra color. I hot glued them together and had to hot glue the whole thing on a small piece of plywood because they were too light and didn't want to stay standing.

Apparently I didn't take any close up pictures of them completed. Here's some cropped out of other photos from the show - oops:

They were stuck in among all the tombstones in the graveyard:

It really was an awesome show.

Sewing Room

I've had a sewing room for almost 4 years now. It's very exciting because in my old apartment I did all of my sewing in my living room and it was very cramped. But my new apartment is a 2-bedroom so I now have a room dedicated entirely* to sewing and crafting.

Earlier this year I got an awesome desk from my work when we moved offices. It's a nice large corner desk (it was actually my old desk at work). I had to take one side apart to even get it into the room - which I did entirely by hand because I didn't know where my boyfriend kept his power tools.

It's in a pretty useful configuration right now, so I thought I'd share some pictures/hints/etc.

Note: unlike some bloggers I only did minimal cleaning before taking the pictures - crafty is messy and I'm not going to hide that (entirely).

First off here's the desk:

I can fit both my sewing machine and my serger on one desk! I can reach them both without even having to get out of my chair! I can't even begin to tell you how awesome that is.

The hat boxes in the corner of the desk have all kinds of fun crafty things stored in them: lace, flowers, yarn, pens, etc. etc. etc.

The drawers are especially handy. I've got bins that balance perfectly on the top of the bottom drawer with room left to store other things underneath:

 And this keeps my thread contained (it's always trying to escape):

Next up are my patterns:

They are all in those manilla envelopes in those drawers. My friend Tidy Tina did this for me and it's pretty spectacular. The 2 binders at the bottom have the commercial pattern envelopes in them sorted by women, men, kids, costumes, vintage, lingerie, etc. etc. etc.

So when I need a pattern I just look in the binders to see what I have. Then I go to the drawers for the actual patterns - which are organized by brand then pattern number. I used to keep them in boxes and I'd have to go through all the boxes whenever I was looking for a pattern.

And here's my bookshelf full of crap:

Scripts, sewing books, costume history books, a zombie cross-stitch kit, my balsam head in it's case, boxes of photos/receipts/etc., fireworks, magazines, hats, a laminater, photo paper, my gemagic (bedazzler), and even some crayons.

Here's a wider view of the first side of the room:

So, earlier I had an * on my claim that the room is entirely dedicated to sewing and crafting. Well, since my boyfriend moved in last year that's no longer true. He built those shelves to hold some of his stuff. Fortunately I'm pretty short and really can't reach them so it's hardly in my way.

Here's my ironing corner:

 And my favorite piece of art in the room:

 

Then there's my desk with my computer, printer, important papers, yada yada:

 

Above my desk is my inspiration board:

 

I haven't added much to it recently.

And my closet full of fabric, ribbons, and other frou-frous:

The other half of that close is scuba gear, golf clubs, tools, Christmas stuff, and clothes neither of us wear much.

So, it's not very pretty, but it is very practical. Though I still do most of my cutting on the living room floor - it just really helps to have lots of floor space...and a TV. =)

Mia's First Birthday

A couple weeks ago was my sister-in-law's niece's first birthday (it took me a while to figure out a succinct relationship rather than calling her my sister's wife's sister's daughter). First birthday luaus are a big tradition in Hawaii and people tend to go all out for them. This one was no exception. Lots of people and some really awesome Hawaiian food. 

My sister-in-law's sister asked me to help her out with some decorations. The theme was cupcakes and she asked me to make a cupcake shaped box for people to put cards in. 

She also asked for help with something for entertaining the kids at the party and asked if I could make one of those funny picture things where they have holes in the faces and you put your face in the hole and take a picture. There's got to be a better name than that. Anyone know? Does anyone even understand what I'm talking about?

Anyway...here's the cupcake I made for the cards:

The base is a plastic planter pot from Walmart. I made the top out of paper mâché. I used a beach ball as the form - worked really well and I can still reuse the beach ball!

The final layer of paper mâché was done with white printer paper and then I did a tissue paper decoupage over that. 

The sprinkles are felt. 

For the face-hole-picture thing (there has to be a better name!) I took inspiration from an inflatable monkey deco that they were using for the party (since I couldn't really put faces on cupcakes): 

 

It took a while to figure out how to make it, but I ended up with what I call the "pop-up card" design. Two large foamcore boards at an angle in back and a small one board in front. 

I'm not describing it well at all so here's a picture:

The two boards in back kind of supported each other - it also helped that the kind of curved when we painted them. 

Since the Mia portion is a separate piece the background can be used again for other events. 

Swarovski Eye Patch

Between working on shows I have quite a lot more free time and get to do some small craft projects...hence, two posts in two days! It seems to happen a lot.

Yesterday my sister had some minor outpatient eye surgery. The whole family is supposed to come see me in Legally Blonde tonight and she needs an eye patch for the event. So I decided to decorate one for her because I have absolutely nothing to do on a Saturday.

Last month I went to the Hawaii Burlesque Festival in Honolulu. There were shows and workshops - I went to both. Tons of fun! One of the workshops was on rhinestones. Kitten Minx la Femme is an expert in Swarovski crystals and had all kinds of wonderful tips and tricks for adding crystals to things.

She sells supplies and decorated items and has all kinds of tutorials.

It was a lot of fun and I feel very confident after taking her workshop. Also, as part of the workshop we got all kinds of helpful supplies and some Swarovski crystals - so that is what I chose to decorate my sisters eye patch with.

She likes stars - she doesn't really like pink, but that's what I had in preparation for Legally Blonde costumes, so that's what she got. I hope she likes it.

Wonder Woman

Every year on the Saturday closest to my birthday in mid-May is the Maui Brewers Festival - the best day of the year! I have been to every single one since the first one 6 years ago. It's usually my bday pressie from my sisters.

We've gone VIP the last 3 years because it's gotten almost too popular and that is the best way to avoid lines. You also get extra pours, access to rare beers and a T-shirt.

Three years ago a friend decided we would wear hats and mustaches. Which kinda started something - every year since we've seen people wearing mustaches. Last year we decided to be fancy with fascinators, top hats, ties, etc.

This year we kicked things up a notch. Like really kicked it up. A lot.

We dressed up a superheroes. I chose Wonder Woman. My boyfriend went as Batman.

Rather than buying a pre-made Wonder Woman costume I assembled mine from pieces found in various places - some are specifically meant for Wonder Woman some are not.

Here was my basic costume:

I bought a red corset and blue shorts. The chest piece I bought but had to slice down the middle because of my corset. I added the stars to the shorts.

The belt I made out of upholstery vinyl. The vinyl was gold but not quite the right gold, so I spray painted it.

I bought the boots - actually I had to buy 2 pairs. The first went up way to high and cut me off at the knee. So I let our female Captain America wear them.

I bought a tiara and cuffs as well, but ended up spray painting those too because they were not quite the right gold. I also bought the lasso.

I ended up making a little belt purse so I had a place to put my phone and ID. Unfortunately the straps holding it on didn't last through all of Brew Fest.

Here's me and my boyfriend drinking our rare beers - his was called Tart of Darkness and while it suited Batman perfectly it was one of the most bitter awful beers I've ever tasted.

 

Here's the group of us, though we are missing our Capt America. In case you can't tell we have Lara Croft, Zorro, Batman, Wonder Woman, Mr. Incredible, Lady Punisher, Hit Girl, Wolverine, Supergirl, She-Ra, and Cat Woman.

And here's Wonder Woman and Batman making out because that's just frickin' awesome: