Chicago Comic-con 2010!

Another Comic-con come and gone; my last here in chicago. Next year it'll be SDCC, but this year Wizard World was a little more like San Diego, I gotta say. There were some bigger names there than in years previous: Brent Spiner (Data!), Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn, James Marsters (still dreamy!), Nicholas Brendan, and yes, the Shat was there. I even saw Bill Shatner for about two seconds. It was awesome;)

Tab and A pulleed together amazing-looking Steampunk costumes from what we had around the house. One of the perks of living with a costumer;) They got, by far, the most picture requests, and it's pretty easy to see why!

This was the only other person in an Iron Man costume, and I'm really glad we ran into each other;) Almost literally ran into each other; it was super-crowded!

There were a couple other Steampunkers there, but I think Tab and A looked the best, by far;)

It wouldn't really be Comic-Con without the 501st, would it?

This was a pretty awesome-looking group.

After wandering around for awhile looking for him, exchanging phone calls and voicemails, we finally bumped into our dad. He had just finished getting a picture with Bill Shatner.

I'm so glad we ran into Kitty Zombie before we left too! He is so much fun; I wish we had had more time to play, but we were on our way out!

There were a few cool costumes walking around, but not nearly as many as I was expecting . . .

All in all, we had fun, but it was ten-times more crowded than it has been in years previous. I guess that's preparing my for SDCC!

My highlight of the day was getting the chance to chat informally with John deLancie, who played one of my favorite characters on Star Trek: TNG, Q. It was nice to get to shake his hand and tell him how much I loved the role; I had kind of a mini-nerdgasm. Overall, a pretty good day;)

Black Widow Diary: Part 2

Time to make some bullet bracelets, folks.

One of the most interesting projects for the Black Widow costume has been her iconic accessory; since Black Widow's introduction in the comics, she has worn bracelets made from very long, high-caliber bullets. I knew they had to be included in my repro, but it took a little figuring out. I tried to find empty bullet casings or blanks, but was unsatisfied with what I found: either overpriced or just not the right shape ot size. Enter the crafter.

What you will need:

-5 wooden dowels

-sculpy clay

-hack saw

-sandpaper

-hot glue gun

-silver and black spray paint

-clear stretch filament thread

-tape measure

Directions:

1. I started with the dowels. These are 1/2" dowels, and they seemed about right in width. I looked at the pics of Scarlett and figured that the shafts of the bullets should be around 3 1/2" long; if you want to, you can look up how long the bullets actually are, but I was going on appearance. Using a pencil and tape measure, I marked each dowel in 3 1/2" intervals.

2. Next, I took my trusty hacksaw and went to work. A lot of the time the dowel would break or split before I was finished sawing through it; given that they are 1/2" diameter balsa wood, this was unsurprising. It's no big deal, though; once I sawed through the pieces, I used sandpaper to smooth both ends, and that took care of any jagged pieces. The wood is so thin that even scissors might work on any pieces that might be sticking up. Once I had 42 pieces of wood, cut and sanded, I was ready to make the bullet heads.

3. I used the rounded, bullet-shaped end of a gel-ink pen as my positive mold. It was the perfect size and shape! Using a small block of sculpy clay, I pushed the end of the pen into it to make my negative, and baked the mold for around a half-an-hour at 275-degrees; follow the directions on your clay for this! Then, I made lots of bullet heads. Forming the clay into skinny logs I pushed them into the molds and then cut them off to the correct length. When I had 42 bullet heads, they went back into the oven at 275 and baked for about 15 minutes.

4. Once the bullet heads were cooled, I hot-glued them to each of the dowels. What I ended up with was a sharp reminder of just how phallic bullets really are;)

5. In a sturdy shoe box, I spray painted the bullets, first in silver, which gave them a very bright, flat silver look, then dusted them in black to give them a more gun-metal appearance.

6. Finally, using the filament thread, I tied the bullets together at the top and bottom, knotting each one into place and leaving long trailing ends so they can be tied onto my wrists on Saturday. Thanks for the help with this, Tegan!

A few notes: Measure your wrists and then calculate how many bullets you'll need to make to encircle them. My wrists are pretty skinny, so I only needed 42 bullets, but you might need more or less. If you want more of a chrome look, there are chrome sprays out there that could work, but I didn't have the time to search for them. Chicago has a law against selling spray paint in the city limits, and I just didn't feel like hunting through the suburbs to find what I needed.

I'll post pics after Saturday of the finished costume! Can't wait for Comic-con!

Black Widow Diary: Part 1

As promised: here's part 1 of the Black Widow Dress Diary. I thought the convention was this past Saturday so I rushed to get things done, but now it turns out I have an extra week! Yay! More time for procrastination!

Anyway, I started, as I always do, with analyzing the actual costume. While some pictures make the bodysuit look black (as the original comic book costume is), watching the film and seeing the costume brightly lit reveals that it is actually navy blue. So, I picked up a navy blue spandex zentai suit as my base garment, and cut the gloves off:

Pretty non-descript and boring, right? Well, here's where it gets interesting: Scarlett's costume has grey princess-seamed piping down the front and back. I had a perplexing problem to solve: how do I put piping, which is generally a stabilizer, down something that stretches? If I'd had a little more time and money to solve the issue, I probably would have sought out stretch grey lycra binding and a thicker rope-elastic to serve as piping, but instead I gave myself a challenge, and used rattail and grey grosgrain. I just love a challenge. 

While the bodysuit was on, I marked points at my shoulders, center bust, natural waist, knee, and ankle, and then connected the dots, so to speak. My assistant (thanks, Tegan!) did quite a bit of this, since I couldn't reach everything myself!

Then, still wearing the suit and standing straight, we pinned the grosgrain and marked the same notches, so I could match the bodysuit to the piping once the bodysuit was no longer stretched to my body shape. I unpinned the rbbon and sewed it over the rattail to create the piping, and then sliced the bodysuit up the lines I had drawn and sanwiched the piping into the seams, stretching and pinning the suit to match up the notches I had drawn earlier, and sewing the piped princess seams into the suit.

 It looked very wrinkly until I put it on, and then everything stretched out perfectly! Yay!

 However, given the chance to do this again, I would definitely make the extra effort to use stretchy piping. The non-stretch ribbon pulls tight and doesn't really allow me to sit down in the suit; it's sewn to give a smooth appearance when I'm standing, but stretches too tight when I bend! Oh well. Who wants to see Black Widow sitting down, anyway? ;)

Everything is very nearly done. I'm not wearing the bullet bracelets yet; a post is coming about them soon. I need to attach the S.H.I.E.L.D. patch and the drop thigh holster too. But, otherwise, Black Widow is ready to kick some ass next Saturday!

What do you think, dear readers?

Black Widow Coming Soon . . .

We're coming up on Chicago Comic Con 2010; there's just a little over a week to go! Woo hoo! I guess that means I'd better finish my costume;)

This year by popular demand I'm going as Black Widow from Iron Man 2. So far, I've assembled the navy blue unitard, utility belts, gun holster, gloves, and boots. I need to add piping to the suit, paint the belts the correct colors, fix the gloves (sadly huge at the wrist), and attach the S.H.I.E.L.D. patch I made. I'll take pics as I progress, and post them here, of course!

Now, if only I could look as tiny as Scarlett in my unitard . . .

And the Winner Is . . .

Taking into account the comments on my blog, on my Facebook page, and my own assessment of the cost/labor ratio, the winner for which costume I'm making for Chicago Comic Con is:

Black Widow!

As though the picture above didn't already clue you in;)

Stay tuned for dress diaries!

*I just found out that Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, James Marsters and (drum roll) William Shatner are going to be there this year! Eeep! (brain explodes from geek-happiness)