https://www.mclennancostume.com/blog/squirrel-girl 

As you may recall two years ago I started these cosplays.  I finished mine but was never happy with the tail.  I got stuck on Dr. Doom's armor, because it got ruined when I tried to do all the spray painting when it was both too hot and too humid. The final straw was when I ruined the thermoplastic mask.  Luckily, all things eventually work out and I used the ruined Dr. Doom mask for Rob's Swamp Thing mask, for which it worked perfectly. You can click on the above link to read all about it.

I took Darlisha's advice and had Rob sand all the old paint off of the armor pieces from two years ago.  I then repainted them in cooler weather.  Two coats of the hammered silver paint.  Then I went back in with flat black acrylic and did some antiquing. Once that dried, I did a clear coat of protective satin gloss.

I couldn't find the two shin pieces so I'm having to remake those with the new helmet. The shin pieces were easy to recreate.  The helmet gave me a lot of trouble. The foam I bought from Joanne's back in May was too thick, and didn't want to be heat formed nearly as well as the previous stuff. The pieces didn't fit together as well as I'd hoped either so there's quite of bit of hot glue showing on the face. It was really cold outside yesterday so I was doing the heat gun part inside the house and I was using a styrofoam head to form the EVA foam on top of.  And yes I was fully aware of how toxic styro is when melted.  However it didn't occur to me that I could melt styro that was underneath the foam.  I started smelling something so I picked up the top piece that I had been working on and underneath the head was all melted in on itself. YIKES!  I took the whole thing outside, put the styro head in the trash and then ran around opening all the doors and windows and googling inhaled poison info. We're fine.

I got the first coat of plastidip on at 6:00 and waited 30 minutes in between all the other coats of plastidip, grey primer, and hammered silver.  I brought the pieces in for the night at 9:30.  And yes, I did most of the painting in the dark under the porch light with a flashlight.  I had the brilliant idea to attach most of the pieces to each other with long brads but Office Depot closed at 7 and doesn't open again until 10 am today, so I'm doing the antiquing this morning and the clear coats before I send Rob out on that errand.

We started putting all the armor together at 11 and I worked on it till noon. We only got the upper body put together in time for the costume contest at Skellington.  That's OK because we won anyway.  There were only three entrants in the couples category, us, Sarah and Katryna, and another married couple who were Aragon type rangers.  They had bought their pieces from Pyramid Collection, I know because I get their catalogue and ordered that same belt for a show. Anyway, we won, and the girls came in second.

 So, I gained 35 pounds during the pandemic, so none of my Squirrel Girl costume pieces still fit, except the jacket.  Also, I found new boots that are better than the ones I had last time.  I ordered new things from Amazon because I just didn't have time to build things from scratch.  I bought grey leggings brown shorts, a brown corset, a new better looking wig, and a much smaller and lighter squirrel tail.

The shorts are really long, so I cut them down to a 1" inseam and then sewed fur trim around the hem. I washed the fur trim to make it match the fur around my jacket and the boots.

Sarah and her friend Katryna are planning a couples cosplay for Halloween this year. Since all the cons and Renfaires got cancelled this year I'm indulging their every wish.

Sarah wants to be this character from Avatar: The Last Airbender with her friend Katryna. Here's what I bought from Amazon in the gallery below.
​Total cost: $115.85

Everything fit except the skirt was about 3" too big in the waist. I'm going to remove the waist band and then take off about 5" from the top to shorten the length without sacrificing the fullness at the hem. Then I have to make the three tabs that hang down from the waist and do the trim on the skirt. The sew it all back together with a smaller waistband. Also I have to make the red choker for the pendant to be sewn on. And she wants me to dye her hair brown.

I made the tabs on Thursday and bought some brown satin blanket binding for the trim.  I got that sewn on Friday and then did the skirt trim out of bias binding I made from a darker brown fabric.  I reused the old waistband that I'd cut off, cut it down three inches and gathered the skirt and put the waistband back on.  I did a fitting Friday night and will attach the tabs Saturday.  I also made her a belt out of an old brown strap that was missing its buckle and the new alligator buckle I wasn't using for Sylvan's costume.

Katryna wants to be this character from the spin-off show. Here's everthing I bought from Amazon in the gallery below.
Total cost: $84.81

Everything fit very well except the pants were about 3" to big in the waist.  I'm going to dye the shirt a darker blue and make the brown fur thing around her waist. Also we need to cut the fingers off of the gloves. So when I dyed the shirt, it came out great, but two of the metal frog closures came off and a third was about to come off.  I resewed  the loose one, then reattached one of them but when I turned around to get the other one it had disappeared.  I looked for an hour and still couldn't find  it so I gave up and ordered more in silver which will match her belt.  so now I'm going to have to remove all 5 of them and then sew the new ones on. The silver ones showed up Friday night.  I had bought some white piping and silver elastic Friday morning and sewed that on too, and Friday night I sewed the silver frogs on.  It is all done and looks great.

 Sylvan wants to be this character from his favorite video game, Shovel Knight. I bought everything from Amazon in the gallery below.
 Total cost: $170.63

The shirt, pants, and robe fit perfectly and didn't need to be altered at all.  After the first fitting I realized that he needed a hood to cover his head so that we couldn't see any bare skin.

Most of the accessories were the wrong color. I had to paint the plague doctor mask green as well as the belt and the pauldrons so that they would match the gloves. I used green Kryolan spray paint for plastic and did two coats. Once all the items were dry, I used black acrylic paint to add more dimension by painting in the areas that would be shadowed like the cracks in the belt (it's an alligator texture) and the edges of the paldrons, and around the eyes and beak of the mask. Then used gold acrylic to sponge over the green. With the beak of the mask I brushed the gold on fairly heavily.

I didn't like the matching black buckle on the belt, so I bought a gold buckle that I like better.  The belt is a ratchet belt, so the buckle was easy to replace. 

The pauldron straps were not long enough, so I'm going to have to replace them with longer black elastic. ​In the end I ordered two more belts that had gold buckles but were really just black elastic and used those for straps. I'm also attaching velcro with E6000 to the inside of the pauldrons and sewing velcro to the robe so that they will stay in place better on his shoulders.

Then I had to paint the staff black. I did two coats of black acyrlic and then two coats of Kryolan black gloss spray paint and a final two coats of clear to protect the paint job. 

We're making the bomb out of a water bottle and adding a crazy stray inside for the fuse. I'm going to use RIT dye to tint the plastic bottle.  The bottom half needs to be green and the top half needs to be purple. Plus he needs a purple pouch to add to his belt, so I'm getting him a Crown Royal bag that will do the trick. He'll wear his combat boots for shoes.

I tried dyeing the plastic bottles Friday with Rit synthetic dye but it just wasn't working so today I'm going to paint the inside of the bottles with mod podge and food coloring. I glued snaps to the inside of the new belt buckles and the outside of the pauldrons to attach it.