So I decided to make the prince Beast Costume to go with my Belle costume-minus the Beast part.  It took me about a week.  Let me know what you guys think!

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My website has been a bit neglected due to the fact that I have been filming and nursing my boyfriend back to health from the swine flu. I apologize and I want you to know I have not forgotten you! Lots of love and stay healthy.

I like to call this the Fifteen Minute Han Solo Costume, because that is all the time I had to throw this costume together for my buddy Fed.  I think that it turned out pretty good, all things considered.  He even made it into the newspaper!  Most of it is alterations of thrift store treasures.  Let me know what you think!  All in all, it cost about twenty bucks!

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Due to popular request I will be posting a Snape tutorial soon. Keep checking back!
Cheers!

Hands down the hardest costume I have ever constructed. With all the leather working, sculpting, and faux embroidery I lost track of the hours I spent on this one. The leather I got for free, and if I divulged how I managed to do that I would have to kill you all! I MacGyver’d the tooling on the leather with a block of wood and a screwdriver.

The hardest part was the embroidery. I tried hand embroidery for the tunic, but it would have taken me years instead of months to finish. It was way to expensive to have it done professionally, (as in 6,000 dollar too expensive), so I searched online on how to fake embroidery. I found that thread company Kreinik does iron-on thread, turned out to be my best bet. http://www.kreinik.com/ Though still expensive, (about a dollar a meter), it wasn’t as expensive as having it done professionally. I went through about 280 meters of thread and still didn’t finish the bottom of the tunic.  The thing about anything iron-on is that it has to be top stitched. So I bought some invisible thread and ran the tunic through the sewing machine.

I have to thank the amazing Jonathan Castile for sculpting the buckles. I’d say he did an excellent job. The initial plan was to do silicone molds and resign castings, however the deadline for the costume was looming and the terra cotta clay positive ended up on the end product. It’s holding up pretty good.

I premiered this costume with the paint still wet at a comic-con party aboard The Rose in San Diego.

Currently one of my biggest vice’s is thrift stores!  Ironically as a child I didn’t want to be caught dead in one, due to a life altering episode of Who’s the Boss, (if you saw it, you would remember it).  Now as a starving artist I thrive in those glorious piles of junk, those misplaced garments and those neglected heaps of trash.  Every once in a while I stumble upon a real treasure.

I had no intention spending my day yesterday altering a dress to fit my version of Belle from Beauty and the Beast-but that is what I did.  The dress was a prom reject from Macy’s still new with tags still attached, (worth about $400.00), I got it for $25.00.  As I perused the rest of the store I found a matching scrap piece of yellow fabric that cost .99 cents for the sleeves.  I rummaged in my costume closest at home and found a brown wig, a little sprits here and few boby pins there and wala !  Instant Belle Halloween costume.  Sometimes I surprise even myself with my resourcefulness.  Feel free to leave a comment if you like.  I would love to hear your stories of thrifting.

Oh yes, it will be mine.  My next costume adventure will be to recreate the red dress worn by Uhura in the newest installment of Star Trek.  It’s been really hard finding reference pictures, but here are a few that I have.

Here is a little mask that I made inspired by the Venician Style of masks.  Made with glue, flour, casting gauze, and wall putty.  It has the old papery feel to it, yet is really strong, stronger even than sculpy.  Maybe I’ll do a how to tutorial…

I love the smell of colored pencils and the feel of eraser dust underneath my elbow.  Art class.  My excuse to explore every different medium from paint, to pastels, to pencil, to plaster of paris.  It was in a sterile gray room at Shelley High School that I learned I was a little different from the other kids.  Our teacher, Miss Likes pulled out a color wheel one afternoon and gave us our assignment.  We were to create a color wheel and then show different ways to mix contrasting colors.  I attacked this assignment with gusto.  I worked on the assignment for a week, painted and mixing, the pigment flying from my brush like pixie dust.  I ran out of room, so I added paper to make it bigger.  I was having a blast.

Well the day came that the assignment was due and I proudly marched my assignment up to the teachers desk.  I stood in line with the other kids.  Miss Likes was looking at the pictures flipping them over and delivering a neat little red checkmark to the back.  If you got a checkmark you passed.  As I stood there I began to notice my classmate’s work.  Every single canvas was identical, each one of them had painted just what they were told.  A color wheel, or a wheel of color-whatever you want to call it.  Each painting had neat little square boxes off to the side to show the mixture of colors.  I looked down at the paper in my hand.  I had painted a landscape with a starry sky and in the center was a castle, the archway above the portcullis was the color wheel and the bricks of the castle were the mixture palates.  Patrick who was standing in front of me said, “Your face is so red right now.”  I hate blushing.  I thought of not turning it in, but heck I didn’t want a bad grade, in art class no less.  So I handed my assignment over.  My teacher picked up the painting and stared at it for a very long time.  The other kids were watching.  Ug, really?  Don’t you people have other things to do? Then my teacher turned the picture over, checked it and handed it back to me.  “Very nice.”  She said.

After that I think my teacher made it her private quest to stump me.  Every project we did she would challenge me.  So my projects got bigger, crazier, and always ended somewhere out in left field.  I loved our little competition, I loved the challenge and I loved the art.  I was as happy as a bug in a rug. Art was my favorite class, and as the hour ticked by I dreaded 2:09.  2:09 is the only time that I remember from high school because that was when art class was over.  That was when I would shrug my backpack over my shoulder and trudge off to Algebra 2.  Ugh.

Well, unfortunately in my high school there were only two classes in art.  Art 1 and 2.  It was on my last week of Art 2 that my teacher made the announcement that she had permission to start an Art 3 class.  There was no room on the schedule for the class so it would take place during Art 2 and we would just receive different assignments.  I don’t know if I had anything to do with the class starting, but I like to think so.

It was in Art 3 that Miss Likes stumped me.  Calligraphy.  I didn’t know why she was so smug.  Not until I put ink and pen to paper.  My hand dragged across the ink smearing the little “a” I was making.  It looked like a comet.  I tried lifting my hand, and doing it again.  The letter came out all wobbly.  Now it looked like jell-O.

I had always been slightly teased for being left handed, I never thought anything of it until someone would bring it up.  I have to admit, I liked the attention.  I felt special, and it was entertaining to me that my friends liked to watch me write.  I think Miss liked to watch me write that Thursday afternoon.  I went home so frustrated.  I sat at my diner table trying to get the letters right.  I couldn’t do it.  So I turned the page.  Nope.  So I turned the page the other way.  That made it worse.  I hated Calligraphy, it was ridged and there were rules, literally.  I felt trapped, how can you think outside the box when you have to stay in it?  Then I got it.  I turned the page upside down.  My hand was away from the ink, the letters were smooth and even.  I just needed to turn the box over!

The next day I went into class and sat down.  I set up my station taking my time, drawing the attention of my teacher.  I sat down, looked her in the eye and slowly turned my paper upside down.  Winking at her I started writing.