The kid has decided that she wants to be a Weeping Angel from the Dr. Who episode 'Blink'. If you've never seen 'Blink', get it. WATCH IT. I'm not especially a Dr. Who fan and it was freakin' awesome. One of the best fantasy TV episodes I've ever seen.
Anyway, the villains in the show are called Weeping Angels, and go from innocent this:
To THIS:
So now the kid wants to scare the ever-living crap out of people by standing in our front-yard graveyard looking like a statue, head bowed and with her hands over her face until people draw near then suddenly uncovering and hissing at them. We figure it should make for more than a few soiled undergarments.
The trick will be to
1.) Make a convincing costume, and
2.) Make a convincing graveyard where a stone angel would not look out of place.
So I've done some online research and found a woman who goes by Penwiper online, who does a lot of cosplay and worked out some awesome Weeping Angel techniques. Here is the Weeping Angel:
http://www.therpf.com/f24/doctor-who-bl
So far I've got the wig done, I just used a good ol' cotton string mophead and dyed it gray, then styled it:
And done!
I've also added a gray headband. The pics don't really do it justice, it looks better in person. I simply turned the wig ends under, it was too thick to attempt making a bun in the back.
Now I've moved on to the dress...I got some unbleached muslin and dyed it gray to match the wig, although the pattern set me back nearly $11.00, on sale and marked down from $17.00! Yikes, what are pattern makers THINKING these days?! It was a pretty darned simple pattern, too.
I'm using the one for the green dress on the right, only shorter and with shorter sleeves. Yeah, I probably could have faked a little dress on my own, but didn't feel like fussing with it that much. The finished dress will have short sleeves and end at her kness--I don't need her tripping on it chasing after people.
So I've got the fabric cut out and ready to sew.
Another idea I got from Penwiper (and THIS is genius as far as I'm concerned, after going through slathering my entire family in zombie makeup last year) is to take a couple of pairs of tights and dye them gray, slipping those on as gloves and leggings instead of using makeup on your arms & legs. SO much neater and easier! Yesterday I dyed some of the kid's old tights she'd outgrown and tried it...darned if it doesn't look GREAT and work like a charm! So now I've got to sew & cut the ends of the tights for her fingers so that they are more like gloves and sew together the dress. I am going with face makeup for the kid rather than a mask, as I want her vision unimpaired at night. Also, masks are uncomfortable, hot and suck to wear for any amount of time.
I've still got to order decent makeup online, I figured on using Ben Nye--the cheap stuff they sell in Halloween stores doesn't cover well at all, as I found out last year, and I'm sure I can get much higher quality (and likely cheaper in the long run) online.
After that the final costume hurdle will be the wings...again, I'm going to follow Penwiper's advice and go with the foam painted gray. I still have to put the finishing touches on the completed costume so that it really LOOKS like a stone angel that's been around for a few hundred years, but I'm waiting until I've gotten the entire thing completed.
THEN will come the headstones! Halloweenforum.com to the rescue!
http://www.halloweenforum.com/members/t
http://www.halloweenforum.com/members/t
Another Halloween project, that may or may not get done this year, is to make a Grim Reaper yard decoration:
http://www.halloweenforum.com/tutor
For the last few years J. has been posing as a scarecrow on the lawn Halloween night, he waits until people have walked by him and come up to the door, then when they turn to leave he's RIGHT THERE in their face. He is wearing plasterer's stilts so he is about 7 feet tall, no one suspects that the scarecrow is a real person!
This is what happened last year, he scared this group of girls so badly that they trampled me and used me for traction, they actually came into the house to get away from him. Great fun! You can also see N. running around in her zombie makeup scaring people. I've got door answering duty. The best part is the first 3 1/2 minutes. WARNING: These girls scream LOUDLY, watch your speaker volume!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it9kT2ar
Or we may make the Reaper costume and have J. wear it instead of his scarecrow costume. Since J. has been doing his scarecrow for a few years now, people have gotten wise to the fact that the scarecrow moves. This year we may change it up and make either J. in the Grim Reaper or me into a fake 'shrub' that comes after you. I'm thinking of incorporating some glowing eyes and nasty, pointed teeth into the shrub, too. Although making J. up into a 7 foot tall Grim Reaper would be awesome as well...
I see a trip or two to Home Depot in my future...
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