Justice League Dark

Photo by Briumbra Photography.

Seth is really into Justice League Dark right now, so Rob and I watched the movie before we went to GACC.  There's exactly the right number and gender of characters for us: Seth really wants to be John Constantine, Rob really wants to be Swamp Thing, Sarah's going to be Zatanna, I'm going to be Black Orchid, and Sylvan's going to Deadman.  As an added bonus, we already have most of this stuff.  

John Constantine

We already own a London Fog trench coat, so I still need to Goodwill shop for him a white dress shirt, and some brown dress pants.  Rob has tons of ties.  He does need a new belt, though and new dress shoes.  He's worn out his Joker dress shoes.  Maybe something more hard wearing this time.  I think it's funny that John Constantine cosplays are super hard to tell apart from Castiel cosplays these days.  Castiel totally stole his look.

For Seth's birthday, I bought him pants, shirt, tie, and shoes.  He still needs a belt.  We need to do a fitting because the pants are unhemmed.
Fitting took place Tuesday night.  The only things that fit are his shirt and tie.  That's the problem with buying clothes for someone for a surprise.  The pants are too small and the shoes are too big.  so it's back to the Goodwill.
I got another pair of pants and now he just needs a pair of shoes.  He says he's willlng to cut and bleach his hair, so we'll see how that goes when I remind him later on this month.

As you can see he did cut and bleach his hair.  Halloween (yesterday) was the test run and everything seems to be fine.  He still can't tie his own tie by himself and he doesn't understand that dress pants are supposed to be worn around his belly button and not down around his hip bones.  But whatever.  His tie is way too long in the photo.  We didn't spike up his hair either, but we will. 

total cost: $42.00 including hair cut and color.

Zatanna

Sarah already has the black tux jacket, white shirt, vest, gloves, and bow tie, and black top hat that we were going to use for her Penguin cosplay until I found a lavender one on Amazon. Instead of buying her a black leotard (which would make it extremely difficult for her to go to the bathroom) I'm going to use the black tux pants that came with the jacket for Penguin $33 from Amazon, and just cut them off into shorts. I ordered  her black fishnets $7 from We Love Colors, and she already has black boots, they're just not above the knee.  I could easily make her black boot covers that go above the knee, but I don't know that it's that important to me, especially when it only serves to overly sexualize the character and Sarah's 11.  Then all she needs is a red carnation.  Sarah says she's going to wear a wig rather than dye her hair, again.

Total cost: $41.00

Deadman

I ordered the red unitard $56 and gloves $16 and extra fabric $18 from We Love Colors last night.  It's going to take a couple of weeks to ship because they don't have the extra fabric in stock right now.  I have white fabric for the D already.  The problem will be when I wash it I don't want the red to turn the white pink, so I'll have to wash all the red first, before I add the D.  Sylvan is totally willing to shave his head bald to do this.  He hates having hair in the first place.  I still need to order clown white makeup for him Mehron $12 from Amazon.

I ordered both clown white and a pair of red boots from Amazon yesterday.  They'll be here tomorrow.  This week I  am patterning the collar, and a belt to help reign in his tummy, as well as the D.  I have used craft foam to back the D and will attach with velcro like on Nightmare Nurse's cross.  I am backing the collar and the front of the belt with fusible horsehair to add some stiffness.  I bought him some red boots to share with Rob for his Ming costume.  I found them on Amazon for $60.  The collar has been a bitch.  I have tried to pattern it three different ways to make it stand up, but because it's lycra and not a stiff fabric, it's both heavy and wimp and because I can't sew it to the costume and have sylvan still be able to get into it without a zipper, it's a real problem.  It's not like an Elizabethan bodice that's already stiff and you can just run the boning down the back of the bodice and sew the whole thing down.  He's got to be able to take it off and pee.  I finally decided to make it with a pocket for the boning to go into the back of the unitard and have it snap into place, so that he can unsnap it before taking it off.  I didn't finish it yesterday and today is Halloween so I have to get it done this afternoon.  Yikes!  We went to Target tonight and bought him some generic Spanx for $14 to help with his tummy.

I just barely finished before close of business yesterday and one of the snaps is in the wrong place.  Oh well.  It works just fine.  We didn't do a test run last night for Halloween because it was cold and rainy and I didn't want him getting it wet and dirty before the con.  He was fine with wearing his Luke Skywalker footie pajamas and handing out the candy to the neighborhood kids.

​Total cost: $165

Nightmare Nurse

So I was going to be Black Orchid, but Rob likes the JM DeMatteis run better, so Nightmare Nurse it is.  I already have purple gloves from We Love Colors. I have plenty of left over purple fabric from my Batgirl cosplay.  I have super tall brown boots that I can either paint purple or make bootcovers for, I haven't decided yet.  And since she's a ginger with a short bob, and I need a new Squirrel Girl wig anyway, I'll buy one that I can use for both.

 I draped a pattern for her dress last night.  I'm going to ruche the front panel like it seems to be in the comic.  I cut out the pieces last night as well. Today I ruched the front panel and sewed the other pieces together.  I will have to wait for the next MAC meeting on Wednesday to get someone to fit it on me.
Wed Oct. 17: Jason did my fitting at Cosplay Club. I completed the alterations, which was just taking in the CB seam a bit.  Then I hemmed it all over and cut the straps to the right length and attached them.  I also did one coat of purple acrylic on my brown Sarah Jane boots.  I mixed two different purples with iridescent extender to get the right color and shine.  By Friday I'd done three coats and then finished with mop and glow for the top coat.  They look great.

I started on the nurse hat on Friday.  I've made nurse hats before, so I just used on old one to pattern the new one in the same purple lycra.  The lycra was much heavier than the cotton I'd used previously, so I added both interfacing and craft foam in the middle to help it stand up better.  I need to made a Joanne's run to get grosgrain ribbon trim for it and the cross on the dress.  I also need wired ribbon for the ace bandages to keep them standing away from the gloves.  I still need to buy a wig.  I got the rest of what I need to make the hat and the cross on the dress today at Joanne's for $10.99  i still need a white headband to sew the hat onto.

I couldn't find a white (or purple) headband for the hat, so I gave up and got a maroon plush one at Target for $9.99 that I covered in lycra.  Handsewing the lycra on sucked even with a curved needle.  Then I attached the hat to it, also handsewing, which also sucked.  I stuffed water bottles into my gloves and wrapped wired white ribbon around t hem and hand sewed that on as well to make the bandages.  I got the red wig today at Beauty Mart on Waco Drive.  It was the floor sample so I got it for 10% off.  It was $19.99 at the register.  It got the velcro sewn on the dress this morning and just used tacky glue to glue the velcro on the cross.  I used white hook velcro for the cross and black loop velcro for the dress, so it won't ruin it when I wash it.  I am totally done with this costume and will be road testing it on Halloween.

I bought white tights to wear with it and ordered some earrings from Amazon that got here yesterday.  They are not the Rod of Asclepius which is what she uses to identify an illness and cure it, because I couldn't find any, so they are the Staff of Caduceus, which is also used interchangeably as a medical symbol even though it's actually a symbol of commerce.  They are silver and cost $9.90.  I didn't road test my costume for Halloween like I intended because it was too cold and rainy.  We didn't even go out, we just stayed at home and gave out candy.

​Total cost: $69.90

Swamp Thing

I thought about getting a green unitard from We Love Colors, but I think it would be more comfortable and easier in the long run just to make him pants and a shirt from a less stretchy, sturdier fabric  that I can sew other bits of fabric too to create the viney look.

July 17: I started on Swamp Thing today.  We bought camo fabric from Joanne's a while ago 5 yards for $10.19 a yard.  It has a slight two way stretch to it.  I cut out pants with a high waist, a shirt and sleeves.  First fitting happens this afternoon.  It totally looks like Duck Dynasty right now, but that's OK.  It's a process.  I also cut out a hood and a collar.

Monday July 30: Sarah came to help me dye all this polyester trim green for the viney bits of Swamp Thing.  It took 3.5 hours. 
Tuesday July 31: Today we're doing more of the same.  We dyed the cotton trim pieces brown.
Wednesday Aug. 1: I started by sorting the trim into short, medium, and long pieces.  The short pieces will go on the hood and collar, the medium pieces will go on the shirt, and the long pieces will go on the pants.  I started with the medium pile and began applying the trim to the shirt.  All that took 4 hours this morning. Tonight I went back and got more trim on the sleeves and the hood and just barely started on the pants.  That took 2 hours.  Right now the whole thing is looking more like Ron Weasely's dress robes than anything else, but it's a process.  At least doesn't look like Duck Dynasty anymore.

I have been adding the trim to the costume slowly but surely.  I got a lot done the week of Oct. 16.  I spent another 7 hours over the weekend adding even more trim and I mostly had to hand sew it on the pants.  I still have more to sew on esp. the sleeves of the jacket look bare.

I'm making him a mask from thermoplastic with the mouth cut out.  I got that molded on Saturday.  I wanted to paint it on Sunday when the weather was nice, but ended up missing the daylight due to errands that had to be run.   Hopefully the rain will hold back enough this afternoon so I can get at least one coat of plastidip on it. Three coats of plasti-dip later and I can now use my acrylics to paint it.  Finished that on 10/24.  Now it needs elastic.  Did that 10/29.  I spent most of last week sewing trim on the boot covers and now today (10/29) I'm going to add pockets on the inside of the bootcovers so he can keep his phone, keys, and money in them.  Also, this weekend we went to Michael's and bought some greenery plus the red flower for Zatana's lapel ($67.06) to add to the collar finally and I'm sewing that on today.  I also bought some moss so i might add that to the mask.

​He needs green makeup for his goatee still.  I plan to finish this costume so that he can also road test it for Halloween, which is Wednesday, so I have to hurry!

The mask at this point is black with 3 coats of plastidip on it.  I used acrylics to paint it for real. Then I added moss and other viney things from Michael's.  The photo on the right is how he looked for Halloween.  I had to cut a bit more out of the right eye hole  and trim down some of the moss from around his eyes and mouth.  The only other issue is that his boot covers are swinging around on his feet as he walks, because I didn't put elastic around the bottom yet.  But I think a better solution is to velcro the pant legs to the boot covers since there are pockets inside and that would keep his stuff from accidentally falling out.  But since Con is just two days away now, I'll probably just safety pin them.

​Total cost: 118.06

FINAL COST OF JLD COSPLAY: $435.96