The Holiday Season
This last month has been crazy for me. No lie! Sorry for the low contact with LJ, but we've been under somewhat of a deadline and spent several near-sleepless nights working on one incredible project.
For the past few years, I've been making a few impromptu appearances at the local mall as Ramius the White-Tailed Reindeer (who has undergone a few changes throughout the years, but I'm mostly settled on her appearance for now). Last year, as I was prancing around the mall handing out candy canes and spreading good will, my dad suggested he could come in costume as well. Thrilled to be able to do some costuming with my costuming hero, we hopped to it in November.
Here's a lot of pictures of what's been eating up the majority of my time for the past month:
My dad worked on the appliances he'd be wearing. He sculpted the looks using Roseart clay on a bust of himself, then casting the appliance off the sculpture. There's three pieces: a muzzle piece, a brow piece, and a forehead piece, which is attached to a fiberglass cap he wears to give him that tall forehead we noticed a lot of Grinch costumes are lacking.
This is what he looks like before he puts on the cap. I made the furry hood that is connected to the cap to cover his neck and give him that Grinch mohawk.
Friend Victor Armstrong helps us get some final touches in place before our photoshoot.
Full body picture! The Ramius outfit hasn't changed much from last year, but the Grinch is all new. We reused a really awful Santa coat we already had (it was appropriate for the Grinch), and I used the pants that went with said Santa coat to make the shoes. My mom stitched the fur to the pants- even though we slimmed down the pants a lot, the fur added a lot of bulk. I made that set of gloves, though Dad ended up making another, better pair later.
Ramius is thrilled the Grinch will be spreading Christmas cheer and helping her get her foot in the door for Santa's sled team; the Grinch is just happy to be a few hours closer to finishing the 3000 community service hours he was assigned by the Whoville courts for his several counts of breaking and entering, possession of stolen property, and several misdemeanors.
Ramius does her very best Grinch impression.
The Grinch, in turn, does a noisy Ramius impression. This picture was taken on the day of our third outing, as evidenced by the more solid makeup jobs.
Our first outing was to the museum where I volunteer on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They annually have Santa visit, and the director was excited to have more characters there to interact with the children. We had to slave over the costume to get it finished on time, but we managed! We had our photo taken with director Jill Smith just as we walked in.
Unsurprisingly, several children were frightened of the Grinch, despite his best efforts to reform. Once a few brave souls got near him, others joined. This little girl was memorable- she started out the day deathly afraid of him, but absolutely adored the Grinch by the end of it. She wanted him to come visit her at home, which was pretty cute.
Ramius encourages the Grinch to go make nice with Santa Claus. The Santa they had at the museum wasn't very nice to us for some reason. We think we freaked him out a bit.
Our second outing was to our local library for a dramatic (in every sense of the word) reading of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but we've not got many pictures from there. Our third outing was Ramius' annual trip to the mall, now with Grinch in tow!
After getting swamped by children coming in, we finally made it to the mall Santa, who is easily my favorite Santa. He looks for Ramius every year, and was pleasantly surprised to find the Grinch with her this year. While the Grinch didn't make nice with the museum Santa, local mall Santa was delighted with him. Here's the picture taken with our camera, though we have one of the nice, official photos somewhere.
We stopped by our friends at the Airbrush Shop, where we saw some strangely appropriate attire. What a coincidence!
The kids at the mall were a lot less afraid of the Grinch than the ones at the museum. He got lots of hugs and high-fives on that third outing. ♥
We saw Joe, a friend and fellow improver, working at the mall, so we decided to stop and greet him. The Grinch isn't so good at being friendly.
As you can see, it's been a lot of work, but a fantastic amount of fun. We'll have one more outing to the mall this year (and we'll be likely to called to more things next year, judging by how many people asked if we were open for events), then I can get back to work on other projects. I've got a few more rows to knit on a certain something, I need to work on various Secret Santa gifts, and I've got a surfboard that needs another coat of paint waiting for me. Back to work!
For the past few years, I've been making a few impromptu appearances at the local mall as Ramius the White-Tailed Reindeer (who has undergone a few changes throughout the years, but I'm mostly settled on her appearance for now). Last year, as I was prancing around the mall handing out candy canes and spreading good will, my dad suggested he could come in costume as well. Thrilled to be able to do some costuming with my costuming hero, we hopped to it in November.
Here's a lot of pictures of what's been eating up the majority of my time for the past month:
My dad worked on the appliances he'd be wearing. He sculpted the looks using Roseart clay on a bust of himself, then casting the appliance off the sculpture. There's three pieces: a muzzle piece, a brow piece, and a forehead piece, which is attached to a fiberglass cap he wears to give him that tall forehead we noticed a lot of Grinch costumes are lacking.
This is what he looks like before he puts on the cap. I made the furry hood that is connected to the cap to cover his neck and give him that Grinch mohawk.
Friend Victor Armstrong helps us get some final touches in place before our photoshoot.
Full body picture! The Ramius outfit hasn't changed much from last year, but the Grinch is all new. We reused a really awful Santa coat we already had (it was appropriate for the Grinch), and I used the pants that went with said Santa coat to make the shoes. My mom stitched the fur to the pants- even though we slimmed down the pants a lot, the fur added a lot of bulk. I made that set of gloves, though Dad ended up making another, better pair later.
Ramius is thrilled the Grinch will be spreading Christmas cheer and helping her get her foot in the door for Santa's sled team; the Grinch is just happy to be a few hours closer to finishing the 3000 community service hours he was assigned by the Whoville courts for his several counts of breaking and entering, possession of stolen property, and several misdemeanors.
Ramius does her very best Grinch impression.
The Grinch, in turn, does a noisy Ramius impression. This picture was taken on the day of our third outing, as evidenced by the more solid makeup jobs.
Our first outing was to the museum where I volunteer on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They annually have Santa visit, and the director was excited to have more characters there to interact with the children. We had to slave over the costume to get it finished on time, but we managed! We had our photo taken with director Jill Smith just as we walked in.
Unsurprisingly, several children were frightened of the Grinch, despite his best efforts to reform. Once a few brave souls got near him, others joined. This little girl was memorable- she started out the day deathly afraid of him, but absolutely adored the Grinch by the end of it. She wanted him to come visit her at home, which was pretty cute.
Ramius encourages the Grinch to go make nice with Santa Claus. The Santa they had at the museum wasn't very nice to us for some reason. We think we freaked him out a bit.
Our second outing was to our local library for a dramatic (in every sense of the word) reading of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but we've not got many pictures from there. Our third outing was Ramius' annual trip to the mall, now with Grinch in tow!
After getting swamped by children coming in, we finally made it to the mall Santa, who is easily my favorite Santa. He looks for Ramius every year, and was pleasantly surprised to find the Grinch with her this year. While the Grinch didn't make nice with the museum Santa, local mall Santa was delighted with him. Here's the picture taken with our camera, though we have one of the nice, official photos somewhere.
We stopped by our friends at the Airbrush Shop, where we saw some strangely appropriate attire. What a coincidence!
The kids at the mall were a lot less afraid of the Grinch than the ones at the museum. He got lots of hugs and high-fives on that third outing. ♥
We saw Joe, a friend and fellow improver, working at the mall, so we decided to stop and greet him. The Grinch isn't so good at being friendly.
As you can see, it's been a lot of work, but a fantastic amount of fun. We'll have one more outing to the mall this year (and we'll be likely to called to more things next year, judging by how many people asked if we were open for events), then I can get back to work on other projects. I've got a few more rows to knit on a certain something, I need to work on various Secret Santa gifts, and I've got a surfboard that needs another coat of paint waiting for me. Back to work!