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.

Zombie Makeup

So I was thinking I wasn't going to have a zombie post this year, but I just can't let that happen. This post actually serves a specific purpose. Since I'm the one putting on Thriller this year, I also need to teach my newbie zombies how to do their makeup.

After 4 years of Thriller (and a run of CATS to boot) I know a couple things about makeup. I’m by no means an expert, but I get by.  So this will be an intro to basic zombie makeup. I won’t be doing anything fancy like prosthetics, but it’s easy to find instructional videos if you want to build on what I start with here.

A Thriller Zombie is not like a Resident Evil Zombie. The Thriller Zombie has been dead, buried, and decaying for years. Keep that in mind when planning your makeup. Decay happens unevenly so your makeup should be asymmetrical. Also, there should be no blood.

First off, supplies!!

1.       Makeup: I use Mehron makeup. They sell it in the seasonal costume shop on Maui, but it’s also available online.  I have two different kinds, the stick makeup and the tube makeup. I believe the stick makeup is cream-based while the tube makeup is water-based, so they don’t blend well together. If possible stick to just one type or another (I recommend stick over tube).

Mehron is really good stage makeup which is very important if you’re going to be sweating a lot. But it isn’t cheap. If you’re just doing Halloween makeup you could probably go with the cheap stuff at Wal-mart, but there’s always the chance it won’t blend well. If you’re going to be dancing on stage, go with the good stuff.

I usually use the Wal-mart $1 tubes for body coverage since it doesn’t need to be as precise.             

Colors:

Base Color: Green or grey are (in my opinion) the best zombie base colors. Brown could work though you want to make sure you look dead and not just really tan. Blue could also work, but I’d stick to a blue-grey so you don’t look like a smurf. Same with purple and Violet from Willy Wonka. Yellow is a possibility, but might end up being a little too bright. Sometimes I use the Mehron Zombie White as my base, though I usually blend it enough so it turns out looking greyer.

Avoid red. Same with fake blood. Wrong kind of zombie. Also, most red makeup stains your skin.

Red and yellow makeup should not be used near your eyes!!

Highlights and shadows: Black and white are great for highlights and shadows. They also generally blend in really well all colors and work great for mixing. Depending on your makeup design, however, you could use other colors as long as they are darker or lighter than your base color. I’ve used purple as my shadow color before.  Often I’ll use black for shadows and then purple for stippling.

2.       Makeup applicators: For zombie makeup I use my fingers a lot. But makeup sponges are important for blending. Sometimes I’ll also use paintbrushes, but that was more for CATS when there was lots of detail. Another good tool for zombie makeup is a stipple sponge. It creates really great textures.

3.       Translucent Powder: For setting the makeup along with a spray bottle of water. Often I’ll use the set-spray from Mehron or hairspray (basically the same thing) instead of the water.

4.       Baby Oil: To remove the makeup. Makeup remover just isn’t enough; you need baby oil and lots of paper towels.

5.       Astringent: Use it before applying any makeup to close your pores and prevent breakouts.

6.       Dish soap: Best stuff for cleaning brushes and sponges.

7.       Colored Hairspray: What good is Zombie makeup if your hair doesn’t look destroyed too? Plus colored hairspray works really well for body coverage.

8.       Other: For added effect you can always add tooth-black, and a couple drops of red food coloring on your tongue to continue the look in your mouth.

Applying the makeup! Make sure to have paper towels nearby because this can get messy.

·         Start with a clean face and apply astringent to close up your pores. Using your base color you pretty much just cover your whole face. You can use a sponge, a paintbrush or your fingers, whatever. It doesn’t have to look pretty and it really doesn’t need to be perfectly even. Often times I’ll leave the areas with large shadows (eye sockets, cheeks) clear just to save makeup.

Base Color - Cake Grey and Cream Moonlight White

I started using the Cake grey that I had but it was pretty dry so I mixed in some Moonlight White cream to help it out. I think next time I might just use the Moonlight White.

·         Then using the highlight and shadow you want to accentuate the structure of the face. Because of the decaying, zombie faces should look sunken in. So make sure you have shadows in your eye sockets, the sides of your nose, your cheeks. Sometimes I’ll also do the sides of my forehead or I’ll create a hollow above my eyebrows to make them appear to stand out. Use your highlight color to accentuate the things that stick out like your nose, chin, cheekbones, and parts of your forehead.

Shadow before blending.

·         Make sure to blend your shadows and highlights into your base. Using a makeup sponge just dab at the borders until they are blended together and gradient. You don’t want to look like you’re wearing war-paint. It should look like it’s caused by the light hitting your hideous, distorted, sunken face. Fortunately being onstage means the makeup doesn’t have to look perfect up close. It does have to carry across the room though, so the shadows and highlights should be somewhat drastic.

Shadow after blending

Highlights before blending

Highlights after blending.

            

·         I ended up adding more shadow in a couple places because it wasn't dark enough. The black and the grey didn't blend well in certain places so I had to reapply the black.

       You also need to remember to do your ears, neck and any other exposed skin. I usually use the cheap stuff and some colored hairspray for my arms and back (though I have seen some dancers do some really cool stuff with makeup on their hands), but since my neck is so close to my face I like to keep going with the same makeup. The neck should have highlights and shadows as well, and you can also accentuate the collarbone.

·         After I’m done with the base, highlights and shadows I like to add stippling to create texture. Sometimes I’ll set the rest of the makeup first, but not always. I like to stipple near the edges of my face and the edges of the shadows. I also use stippling to make things asymmetrical.

Stippling!

·         Once you’re happy with your makeup you need to set it. All of it. Including any makeup you’ve put on your ears, neck, arms and any other part of the body. Use a powder brush and apply an even layer of the translucent powder over any skin with makeup. You can set different layers at different times, just be aware that once you’ve set a layer you can’t blend it with any other layer.

      Once you’ve powdered you can:

A.      Spray your face generously with water. Take a paper towel, drape it over your face and slowly dab up the excess water.

B.      Spray your face with a setting spray.

C.      Spray your face with hairspray.

This will set your makeup.

·         After setting you should be good to go!! When dancing and sweating a lot sometimes touching up is necessary, but if you’ve set your makeup well it should last a long time.

Removing the Makeup!! You’ll want plenty of paper towels for this too.

·         When all your zombie fun is over, grab that baby oil and apply generously to your face (and anywhere else with makeup). Mush that baby oil all over, then grab some paper towels and wipe off what you can. Usually I do this once or twice then use those disposable makeup-removal wipes to clean up the remainder. I usually finish off by washing my face with a simple face wash – usually in conjunction with a shower to get all the hairspray out of my hair.

·         Use the dish soap to clean up your brushes and sponges.

Good Luck and happy zombieing!!

Costume Design - Sweeney Todd

In a previous post I shared some designs I did in costume design class in college. In continuing with that here are some other designs I've done.

In this portion of the class they had a graduate student come in as the director. They picked out a play and we worked with them just like a costume designer would. We discussed their vision and how they wanted the show to look.

This is 'Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street':

Sweeney

Mrs. Lovett

Judge Turpin

 

Johanna

Anthony

Tobias

Beggar Woman

I had a lot of fun making the clothes look dingy. I added ink to the watercolors and it was awesome.

I tried to tie all the costumes together with a hint of red (to reference the bloodiness of the show).