{"id":22782,"date":"2014-10-15T05:08:34","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T10:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=22782"},"modified":"2014-10-13T09:48:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T14:48:29","slug":"this-years-costumes-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=22782","title":{"rendered":"This Year’s Costumes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"EgyptianIt’s time for the annual costume recap! Every year I spend entirely too much time making costumes for Shadowboy and a friend’s niece, then have professional photos taken. Sometimes I’m lucky and can talk them into matching costumes–like when they were a vampire and a bat<\/a>–and this year after she decided she wanted to be Cleopatra I was happily able to talk him into being King Tut (showing him this<\/a> may or may not have had anything to do with it).<\/p>\n

I was thrilled because: 1) Yay, no street clothes! and 2) Lots of room for embellishment. Here are the results: Pharaoh 1<\/a>, Pharaoh 2<\/a>, Cleopatra<\/a>, Cleopatra 2<\/a>, Duo<\/a>, Duo 2<\/a><\/p>\n

For years<\/em> now, one of Butterick’s staple costume patterns was a child’s “Egyptian princess,” and in keeping with my normal luck where the Gods of Crafting are concerned, the year that I finally needed it it was discontinued. Fortunately my habit of buying likely-looking patterns whenever the local fabric stores have 99-cent sales came to my rescue; after digging through my entire stash I found a copy of the pattern which I’d purchased years ago. It’s Butterick 3586, but if you can’t find one from a discontinued-pattern reseller the dress is just a simple sheath and could be adapted from any number of other commercial patterns. The only change I made was to shorten it and make the hem rounded instead of straight.<\/p>\n

The decorative collars and the boy’s overskirt are from the same pattern, but they would also be pretty straightforward to make freehand. The gems on the collars are self-adhesive jewels<\/a> from Oriental Trading. (The adhesive works surprisingly well, so be sure the gems are right where you want them before sticking them down. When I tried to pull a misaligned one back up, it took the gold top layer of the fabric with it.)<\/p>\n

The girl’s belt was made freehand from a piece of brocade; it’s fastened with velcro underneath the front flap.<\/p>\n

The boy’s tunic was Simplicity 4213, shortened and with a cutout in the front of the skirt. The boy’s headdress is another discontinued pattern, Butterick 4313. I first tried it freehand but couldn’t seem to get the proportions right, so I broke down and bought the pattern from an Etsy seller.<\/p>\n

The girl’s headdress is hand-beaded because I am clinically insane. I followed the general guidelines found here<\/a>, but I don’t have a styrofoam dummy head so I just laid everything out on a flat work surface and tied it that way (I also used monofilament beading thread instead of the waxed thread mentioned in the instructions.)<\/p>\n

The girl’s staff is a wooden dowel spray-painted gold, topped with a cobra head finger puppet<\/a> which was spray-painted and then embellished with beads: The plastic was soft enough to just push a needle through the base and tie off the thread on the inside.<\/p>\n

The boy’s crook and flail were made from a wooden cane<\/a>, cut in half and painted. The flail’s head is a couple of pieces of PVC plumbing pipe stuck together and spray-painted; I strung some beads on monofilament and fastened them inside of the pipe with duct tape.<\/p>\n

The boy’s belt and sandals were lucky thrift-store finds, and the girl’s sandals were purchased at a costume shop.<\/p>\n

My friend did her niece’s makeup–in her words, “Thank heaven for Pinterest”–and also put a little Egyptian-style eyeliner on Shadowboy. It didn’t all come off with makeup remover, so he looked like Robert Smith for the rest of the afternoon; I considered that sort of a bonus.<\/p>\n

Shadowboy’s portrait will be framed appropriately and added to my Big Wall o’ Costumes, and now it’s time to start planning for next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s time for the annual costume recap! Every year I spend entirely too much time making costumes for Shadowboy and a friend’s niece, then have professional photos taken. Sometimes I’m lucky and can talk them into matching costumes–like when they were a vampire and a bat–and this year after she decided she wanted to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22782"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23358,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22782\/revisions\/23358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}