Hoth Leia

4/19/2018

I have been wanting to do a Hoth Leia ever since my sister did it for Halloween a few years back. Once Orphan Black aired and Allison was wearing Leia's Hoth vest, I knew that I must have one! Coincidentally, my "seestra" also does Helena from Orphan Black. So, I have been on a quest to find a white ski vest for a few years now. Goodwill never has them in my size, unfortunately. So this year I put it on my Chirstmas list and my wonderful husband hunted one down at the Mall. It was brand new, never been worn before and it was MINE! Naturally I didn't have anything else to go with it, but I wore it all winter, almost every day anyway. Then in February, I was show shopping For South Pacific, and came across white pants and a white long-sleeved shirt that actually fit. Those went into my cart immediately. And so I had the basic outfit but no shoes or greeblies.

A few weeks later, still show shopping at Goodwill, I found a pair of grey, wedge heeled suede calf length boots that had a fur cuff. They were beautiful and perfect and a size 10. Waayy to big for my foot. I was super sad about that. So I went home and tried to console myself by making Greeblies out of my kids' legos, but they didn't have any pieces that were the right color or shape. Flash forward to show shopping for the last production this season, Wind in the Willows. I bought probably a hundred things from Amazon Smile with our Prime Membership. I thought to myself, I wonder if I can find Leia boots? And the answer was, Yes, Yes I can! For the low, low price of $29.99. So here they are: grey, wedge-heeled, leather, zip up, but no straps. Then I mused, surely someone makes Greeblies that I can just buy. And I asked Amazon Prime and they answered me with Empire Greeblies, $13.99, which I can totally make work. The boots arrived the same day as my Greeblies, which was last night and I immediately got to work.

Greeblies

The Greeblies are molded silicone and are very flexible. Some of the reviewers on Amazon had a huge mad about the Greeblies, "When it arrived I couldn't even wear it, there was no way to attach it to my costume!" they ranted. That's why the Empire lost, you fools! I can either do sticky velcro to the Greeblie and stitch on velcro to my vest or I can glue on a magnet strip to the Greeblie like my work name badge or I can duct tape on a safety pin. There are so many ways you can attach it. But, the first order of business (did you get my pun?) was to reshape the bottom row of squares into circles. I used an Exacto knife and didn't cut myself once. It took about half an hour. Then I repainted the whole thing in primer grey. I used acrylic paints to do a base coat of light blue, orange, red, and black. It was so hard to wait and let it dry overnight, but I did. Then I did a second coat and used a smaller brush to clean up the edges. I still need to do a top coat of clear to protect it and then decide how I'll attach it, but it's ready for me to wear to my first ever Cosplay Presentation for West High School theatre students on Monday.