I love Halloween…which is a surprise to exactly no one. The way it usually plays out is one of my children has an elaborate costume request and everyone else is a bit more low key. Naomi was my easy kid last year. This year she’s made up for it. All I can say is that I’m grateful for brilliant french cos-play costumiers who post their creations on-line. Naomi found said designer’s video on YouTube. It was definitely a “making of” and not a “tutorial,” however, she did put up a pattern for purchase on her website. With the video and template and Naomi’s color scheme, away we went.

Now that you’ve seen something of a progression, here’s what we did. Naomi cut the material (two separate fabrics) and I sewed them together for the wing membrane. Then I cut all the skeletal ribs and white spike out of high density craft foam, but I cut out two of everything and glued them together to get the thickness I needed. After they were all glued and joined together, I started to sculpt them. They needed to be rounded off to look more organic so I cut away with an exacto knife and then polished the foam with a dremel. Once that was done I cut a channel in the back of them and glued in a steel rod, bent to the contours of the wings. Red was spray painted on as my base color. Material was glued on and then I painted them by hand. In some of the pictures you can see that the steel rod sticks out of the bottom of the wing skeleton. That slots into a copper tube encased in a harness that I made out of mold-able plastic. There are pieces that are held by magnet to cover the harness over her shirt. Naomi can wear the harness under her shirt and the wings can rotate freely in the copper. The overall effect is wings that look and move as if they were real. Not for the first time, I wish I could figure out a way to put video’s on my blog! Naomi was thrilled with the end result and was absolutely the hit of her school’s Fall Festival. I don’t think she even knows what a huge hit she’ll be at Ren Faire in a few weeks. Oh yeah! and Trick or Treating with cousins! And I have to say, I’m pretty pleased myself with the compliments the wings are getting. I’ll add: high-density foam, mold-able plastic and metal pipe/tubes to my costume repertoire.

This year Layna won the easy child prize. Thrift store pants and jacket, a strip of material from an old costume to be a neck tie and [Poof!] she became Willy Wonka’s Daughter. These pictures show her exactly the way she wanted to look…no make up, no fancy hair, no top hat (I tried really hard on that one).

Corra has yet to have a chance to dress up this year. That’s a whole separate thing about tech crew ruining all her normal events…but she’ll go all out as a satyr fairy woodland princess for Trick or Treating and Ren Faire. Oh, I know. Pictures necessary and they’ll be coming next week in the “Halloween” post.