Weeping Angel DONE!

After just about a solid month of work, the Weeping Angel costume is finished!

The foam feathers for the wings took the longest, that's one thing I'll never do again, I swear...to help support the wings I used chicken wire & burlap (so the glue has something to grip)and ran it through the old backpack. This shows the foamcore opened up like the covers of a book with the wire/burlap in between. My craft table really took one for the team here, it was a mess by the time I was through!

I think I could have safely gone without the foamcore board, the thin craftfoam feathers could have glued to each other back-to-back and been fine, it would have saved a wee bit of weight. But what the heck, it's done.

But the painted tights that she'll wear on her arms & legs in place of makeup came out great.

Started with basic tights dyed gray. Sponged on black & white while she was wearing them...*cue delighted shrieks, 'Mom, it's cold & tickles!"*

After that dried, applied some of the thinned rust-brown paint and let it run down...

The result looks REALLY good and I'm indebted to the lady who made the Weeping Angel costume and posted tips online. This trick would also work for anyone doing any kind of arm/leg makeup, and SO much neater than smearing yourself in all that gloopy makeup! Although making these into gloves defeated me, I ended up cutting the fingers off and leaving them as fingerless gloves and will do makeup on her fingers.

The string-mop-head wig was done with the same steps, except I'd added fabric stiffener to it, a step I would skip if I had to do it over again, it came out too stiff.

Nasty pointy teeth & claws! The claws are really cool, and I think she's gonna have to keep those away from her daddy or he'll appropriate them.

And finally, the kid modeling the dress, wig & wings. The flash makes the photos look weird, the costume pieces all actually match each other pretty well. I'll be sure to take more pictures Halloween day of her in the entire costume & face make up. Here is the 'weeping' pose:

She's going to be standing in our front yard graveyard and when someone walks up to her, do an uncover to THIS (you'll have to imagine the fangs & claws for now):

With maybe some reaching tossed in...

The wings & the old backpack harness I cobbeled together worked out OK. I am going to reposition the wings a bit to stand out more, they aren't visible enough from the front. But in all it should be a pretty damned good costume and at least it is comfortable to wear and she'll have fun, which is the entire point of Halloween!