{sneak peak} My Halloween costume

{making}

Just a quick post to give a little sneak peak at my Halloween costume..... I've actually already worn it for our annual Halloween party this past weekend, but I didn't really get any good pictures of me in it and actually it wasn't 100% finished (although it was basically done which is more than I can say for some year's costumes at the Halloween party lol).  So I will get some better  pictures of it, but I am super proud of it, and I think it's one of the coolest costumes I have ever made for myself, so here's a little sneak peak of it on my makeshift dress form as I was working on it. (I say makeshift dress form because it is actually my cw era corset stuffed with pillows and slid over the top of a step stool thingie..... not perfect but it worked pretty well for this..... of course only because I was wearing the corset with the costume lol.

I had decided that I wanted to be a broken porcelain doll for Halloween this year.  The very first part of the costume I made was the mask:
First I painted a dark gray undercoat on the entire mask

Then I coated it with crackle medium and then white paint to get an aged and cracked look:

After doing that I realized that I really needed to trim the mask down some to get it to fit over my nose correctly and give the look I wanted.  I also added some pink to the cheek:

And apparently I've yet to get a picture of the completely complete mask, but I also added some long eyelashed to the top and bottom of the eye opening.

Next I started working on a bonnet, that I still haven't quite finished
(and don't have pictures of as of yet) and preparing my design and materials for the dress itself, I REALLY wanted it to be taffeta (and I didn't want to spend a fortune on it) and had a horrible time finding a cheap taffeta that wasn't disgusting to the touch and that was the color pink I wanted..... I ended up finding a satin taffeta that I used the back side of the fabric instead of the front (since I didn't want a satin finish) and I bought it in white and dyed it.  Before I actually got started on sewing the dress though I had another accessory to make......

Shoes are always a bit of an issue for me for Halloween costumes..... I love shoes, but I hate actually wearing them, and am never comfortable in many for long.  Halloween costumes really push that issue because many times the shoes are an important part of the costume, but I'm also typically going to be doing a lot of walking and standing in them.

these are a couple of the pairs I've had over the past couple years, for a witch costume and a monster's ball gown costume respectively.  The black boots didn't do too bad..... I managed to wear them the entire party that year and thought they'd be fine for trick-or-treating, and I made it most of the evening in them, but ended up finishing the night barefoot.  The monster shoes were a pair of pumps from goodwill that I covered in pink craft fur, and yeah, they didn't even last the whole party (which I knew they'd be wear for pictures kinda shoes since I didn't want to pay more than $5 I just had to get whatever they happened to have at goodwill at the time)

So this year when I was planning my outfit I knew I wanted shoes with spats.  I planned on finding some cheap pumps and making spats, but I wanted to find ones that would be comfortable to at least maybe make it through everything, I was even willing to pay a little bit more for them.  But a pair with the height of heels I wanted, that were comfortable and within the price range I was willing to pay, and in a color that would work were not to be found.  Then one day I was at kmart and they had a buy one pair get one for $1 sale and I needed a pair of slip on shoes for fall anyway, and there was another pair that was pretty comfortable and I thought would work.  They had lower heels than I wanted, but I figured for a dollar I better get them and if I found something better later that would be fine since these were practically free.  I didn't end up finding any others so I went ahead with these.  They were originally a tan color so I spray painted them pink.  Next I started working on the spats.  I made them out of white stretch denim using a pair of tall boots to make the pattern.  I sewed up the seems and finished the edges with narrow pink binding and mocked up the approximate placement of the adorable little rose buttons I had gotten for them

After trying them on with the shoes though it suddenly dawned on me that since I had only paid $1 for the shoes and had already spray painted them anyway that it would be much easier to finish them and to wear them if I just glued them directly to the shoes to make little boots instead of adding a band around the bottom of the shoes and wearing them as spats.  So that's what I did.

So now on to actually making the dress itself (keep in mind that at this point it was Wednesday, the party was Saturday and I still had a lot to do to get ready for that and I would only have Wednesday, Thursday evening and Friday to get it all done.... I was a bit nervous about getting it all done to say the least) I had decided I wanted the dress to be Victorian style but just below knee length - more the length of a child's dress during the Victorian era than an adult dress.  I wanted a bustle skirt with an underskirt with a striped  pleated flounce around the bottom (you can kind of see why I have so much trouble finding fabrics sometimes, I am very specific about what I want).  Even though the skirt I was planning was going to be a little bit later Victorian style I planned on using the pattern for my Civil War Era ballgown bodice for the bodice for the costume, because it is easy to make, I've made it about 5 times now and could probably make it in my sleep, and I already have the pattern (also I hate patterns, especially modern ones so I really didn't want to have to get one for a different style bodice, but that's not something I thought I could do without some sort of pattern).  I did find some images of dresses with bustles that had similar bodices though so I didn't feel too bad about using it, plus I wasn't going for historically accurate costuming, I was going for Halloween costume.  (obviously since I cheated and just put a casing and elastic in the waist of the overskirt and a casing and a drawstring for the underskirt instead of pleating them to waistbands).  I actually hadn't decided for sure what I was going to do about the sleeves until after I finished the rest of the bodice and remembered that I had a shirt that would work well under it (and at that point anything that meant less sewing and therefor less time was definitely the way to go haha.... but I also really liked the way it looked). After sewing the bodice and starting trying to drape and bustle the skirt is when I realized I REALLY needed something to put it on other than myself to work on it and that's when I came up with my makeshift dress form.

after tacking and tying up the sides to form the front drape I moved on to deciding how I wanted it bustled in the back and sewing in the tapes for the bustling

  Then I was just left with the decorations I wanted to put on the skirt and deciding about the sleeves (you can see in these next pictures that I kind of shoved the shirt under the bodice to see how it might looked and liked it)

The only thing I didn't get done on the dress itself before the party was that I have some trim to sew onto the pleated flounce to cover the stitch line where it's sewed to the underskirt, but it looked fine without it so I used the time to do other stuff that needed to be done for the party..... I do plan on adding the trim this week before Halloween though.  Other than that it was accessories that I didn't get completely finished...... I had tights for my arms that I wore (so my arms would be white like porcelain) but I didn't get the crack lines drawn on them yet, and as I mentioned I still have to finish the bonnet for it as well.  I've also decided that I want to make a purse for it that will be big enough to not only carry my phone, but a pair of flip flops (just in case) for walking around trick-or-treating on Halloween night.

Like I said I am super proud of this costume and I plan on getting some good pictures of it on and completely finished (although that might actually have to end up happening after Halloween is over for time reasons).  I'm really looking forward to completely finishing it and getting to put it on again :)