Halloween Costumes

So Thanksgiving is a few days away, so what am I posting? My finished Halloween costumes of course!  Sorry it took forever to get these photos, my sister took them and she has been quite busy with school so it took her a while to send them my way.  Well, better late then never!

So as most of you know, I decided on Poison Ivy this year.  I dyed my stockings, I made my gloves, I made my boots, I made the leafy eyebrow pieces and I made some fake lashes to top it off (which I did wear for the party I went to, but I forgot to bring them to take pictures of the costume a few days later unfortunately). 

Full body shot

Close up of my face.

I ended up being invited to another Halloween party last minute, but I didn't want to reuse the same costume (mostly for comfort reasons - those boots killed my feet) so I pulled out my old wind up key that I made for Halloween a few years ago and two petticoats I made - one for Halloween and one for a friends bachelorette party and a little flower ring I made - and threw a costume together.  I made the black circle skirt on a whim a few days before I was invited to the party and thought it would fit the costume perfectly.  I decided the color scheme would be black and pink because the belt, one of the petticoats and the ring were hot pink (my friend had a Barbie bachelorette party).  I poked a hole through the back of the belt and stuck the wind up key through it.  They day of I actually curled my hair and my sister loaned me a pair of pink and white socks.  I also had a different pair of black flats.  I went with contacts as well because the fake eyelashes were too big to be contained by glasses.

Here is a kind of crummy picture of the costume the day of the party so you can see my hair (kind of), the socks and the wind up key.

My sister needed a costume to wear at her extra curricular activities and whatnot and after finding some awesome fabric at the store she decided she wanted me to make her a simple cloak so she could be a wizard.  I also ended up making her a want too as seen in this post.

Here is what the fabric looks like with the wand.

I found a lot of patterns for "circle skirt" type cloaks but I wanted to do something fairly simple because I didn't have that much time and I only had two yards of fabric.  I ended up finding this website that explained how to make a cloak very simply and with a maximum of 2 yards of fabric, yay!

And action shots:

I made the hood come to a point.

 The fabric flowed nicely and looked awesome when she walked around.

She just wore her street clothes underneath.

I actually really loved how the cloak turned out.  I'm half considering being something next Halloween that involves a cloak of some kind so I can make myself one!

How to Wind-up Key

UPDATE: I made an updated video version of this tutorial! Check it out! Hope this is helpful!

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So, it's been a while... stress filled senior year of college.  Anyway,  I've received a lot of comments asking for a tutorial on how to make this key for a Halloween costume I had made a while ago.  I had started to create a tutorial for this but I ended up moving and all that stuff got packed away, but I just so happened to find all my stuff the other day, so I figured I'd throw this post up before Halloween so hopefully you guys can make yours in time. :)

The parts:

Here are the parts for the wind up key.

A few inches of dowel (really the length and size of the dowel are up to you.  I used what I had, which is a 1/4" dowel which I cut to be 2 1/2" long.  You'll need to drill a small hole into one side of the dowel in order to fit the metal rod of the wind up mechanism.  I used a small drill kit that I bought from the local hardware store that looked like a screwdriver but with interchangeable drill-bit head things.   Be slow with this part, or you may split the wood like I did.  Don't panic if you do though, it should be okay once we glue it all up.

The next thing you'll need is a piece of foam core board cut to resemble a wind up key.  Cut the little notch at the bottom to be the same width as your dowel.  In my case it's 1/4".  I imagine you can use something other than foam core board, but you just need to make sure it's lightweight, or else it will bog down the tiny wind up mechanism we're using.

Speaking of, the third thing you'll need is the wind up mechanism.  To get it, I took apart a dollar store wind up toy.  Usually there's a little piece of plastic at the end of the metal rod that makes it easier to turn with your fingers that you need to remove so you can stick it in the dowel.  I just used some pliers and squeezed it a bunch until it broke off.

I used some quick drying epoxy to glue everything together.  You need to make sure to use some heavy duty stuff because people will be cranking that thing all night and you don't want it to start falling apart on you.  If you choose to use epoxy, be sure to do so in a well ventilated area because this stuff reeks!

Epoxying in progress.

Here it is, now attached to the mechanism.  Be careful not to drop epoxy or glue down into the mechanism or else it may screw up the gears and whatnot inside and it won't work anymore.  As mentioned before, I had split the wood somewhat during the drilling progress, so here I also squished some epoxy down into the crack to make it stronger.

And here it is painted.  I just used some craft paints on this one.  The very first one I did was spray painted, so really it's up to you on how you want to do it.  If you spray paint it though, be sure to tape up the mechanism really well beforehand.  Or you could just paint it before you attach the mechanism.

Now, when I used this in a costume I ended up carefully duct taping the mechanism onto a piece of cardboard(to help stabilize it) that was a little smaller than the width of my back and a few inches high, then I proceeded to duct tape the cardboard onto the tank top I was wearing.  I literally duct taped this thing onto me for the whole night(it was hidden under my corset thing), but that was the best I could come up with at the time.  If anyone else has any better ideas on how to wear this thing please let me know, it would be much appreciated! Thanks :)

Hope this helps you guys out!