Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead.
For ConBust at Smith College.
More photos here, and construction details under the cut.
Background: So I am really late to the Who party--my friends only succeded in converting me within the past couple of months. And then I made the extremely poor life choice to watch "Blink" for the first time alone in my room in the middle of the night. Needing some way to exorcise the lingering trauma, I made another extremely poor life choice: share the trauma among many, many people by making a weeping angel costume for ConBust! Which was in three weeks! Even though I have never really done crafty things ever in my life, and tend to generally suck at them!
The result was... not as horrific as I expected, really. Horrifying, yes, but only in the intentional way.
My main reference for all of this was penwiper337's legendary version of the costume, though I cut a lot of corners due to ineptitude, time constraints, and plain laziness.
Dress: no underdress, just a thrift-store bedsheet dyed gray with darker gray paint in the creases to create the faux-stone effect. The front is pretty much a long trapezoid pleated and sewn onto the yoke; the back has a drawstring at the waist and a long panel that hides the wing harness and tucks into the waist. The lovely ladyhamilton was the one to actually sew this after we'd agreed on a final design, since sewing machines tend to cower and snarl their thread in terror if I look at them crosswise.
Mask: Made from those papier-mâché strips that you dip in water and then put over your face, so it's actually fitted to me. I then sculpted on it with clay to give the features more definition, and spent an absurd amount of time painting it only to realize the whole thing was just a bit too dark. :( There are a few layers of black tulle covering the eyes, because that's what I had on hand--if I get around to revamping the costume, I'll swap it out for gray.
"Skin" (arms/neck/etc): Used penwiper337's trick of painted opaque stockings. Got a couple pairs of white stockings, dyed them gray along with the fabric for the dress, cut a neck-hole in the crotch of one pair and hand-sewed the ends into gloves, cut a foot off the other pair and pulled it over my head and neck and made a hole for my face, then invited a handful of friends over to messily have at it with a paintbrush. It's a great trick for the stone "skin," but I ran into lots of problems due to craft!fail. The fingers didn't quite work (lots of holes/runs/ripped seams, fingers of one hand were too short, fingers of the other hand were too narrow for me to fit into them and I had to chop them off and sew on new ones out of scraps) and the neckpiece kept riding up around the collarbone, so we had to take a big square scrap of the dress fabric, cut a head-sized circle in it, reinforce it with lots of interfacing, sew the edge of the stocking to the neckhole, and pin the edges to the inside of the dress to keep it down. It worked, but it meant I either had to get someone else to pin the thing down (and thus not be able to get into the costume by myself) or keep it pinned there and have to shove my head into a stocking while I was putting the dress on.
Wig: Cut the legs off one of those pairs of stockings, sewed the crotch/hips/etc. area into a cap, and stitched yarn down the middle. Headband is more scraps of dress fabric. Spent a very fun night styling it, then used a positively disgusting amount of craft glue to hold it all in place. I might actually have used more paint on the wig than the dress--glue-covered yarn, even when dry, does not take paint very well. This is the part of the costume I'm most pleased with, though.
Wings: The first thing I started, and the last one I finished. The wings are the biggest evidence of what a last-minute rush I was in to finish the costume--if I'd had more time I would've rigged up a harness that didn't suck and painted them with a proper faux-stone effect instead of just matte gray with lighter highlights. I was so, so careful in the beginning to work with reference images to get the right proportions and find the right balance between accuracy and a practical costume design that wouldn't use up all my foamboard. All the feathers etc. were cut out and given a basic paint job weeks in advance. But in the end I wound up putting them together the night before the con with nothing but half a roll of duct tape, which (combined with the crappy harness) is why the feathers are going every which way in some of the pictures.
Wing harness: The crappiest, shoddiest part of the costume, literally slapped together out of foamboard, string, wire, and duct tape the morning of the con. It consists of three long, heavy wires that go up inside the wings and are taped (on the inside) to the sturdiest part of them, a piece of foamboard that rests on my back and has little holes punched into it that I can stick string through, and lots of string tying the wires to the foamboard. The straps are folded-over pieces of duct tape--one over each shoulder, one that ties around the waist--that are messily "stitched" to the foamboard with more string. One of the strings broke during the con, leaving me to sheepishly wander into the artists' room carrying the wings under my arm and beg for some embroidery floss to fix them. And the shoulder straps were "stitched" on loosely enough that the whole rig tended to sag back and look all askew. Definitely the first thing I'm fixing if I wear this costume again.
The con itself: I concur with everyone who's said that costumes like this are physically wretched to wear, but SO WORTH IT for the reactions. Most of the wretchedness was my own fault, anyway--the makeshift harness was super uncomfortable, I had to be careful about my hands to keep from ripping the gloves, and the first day I was stupid enough to wear HEELS under the thing, not realizing it's hard to sit down when you've got a big honking pair of wings strapped to your back. (Also, doorways. Doorways are a problem.) Visibility was okay, though, since tulle is pretty easy to see through. But despite all the discomfort, this costume was SO MUCH FUN. Creeping up behind people. Making people scream. Strangling people in photos. Staying very, very still as people debated whether I was a statue or a person in a costume, and sloooowwwly turning my head to watch them as they walked past. Lurking in corners with my hands over my face, waiting for someone passing by to say "Oh god, don't blink," and keeping my fingers parted just enough to see when they blinked or looked away so I could go in for the kill.
In conclusion: so much work, but so worth it.
More photos here, and construction details under the cut.
Background: So I am really late to the Who party--my friends only succeded in converting me within the past couple of months. And then I made the extremely poor life choice to watch "Blink" for the first time alone in my room in the middle of the night. Needing some way to exorcise the lingering trauma, I made another extremely poor life choice: share the trauma among many, many people by making a weeping angel costume for ConBust! Which was in three weeks! Even though I have never really done crafty things ever in my life, and tend to generally suck at them!
The result was... not as horrific as I expected, really. Horrifying, yes, but only in the intentional way.
My main reference for all of this was penwiper337's legendary version of the costume, though I cut a lot of corners due to ineptitude, time constraints, and plain laziness.
Dress: no underdress, just a thrift-store bedsheet dyed gray with darker gray paint in the creases to create the faux-stone effect. The front is pretty much a long trapezoid pleated and sewn onto the yoke; the back has a drawstring at the waist and a long panel that hides the wing harness and tucks into the waist. The lovely ladyhamilton was the one to actually sew this after we'd agreed on a final design, since sewing machines tend to cower and snarl their thread in terror if I look at them crosswise.
Mask: Made from those papier-mâché strips that you dip in water and then put over your face, so it's actually fitted to me. I then sculpted on it with clay to give the features more definition, and spent an absurd amount of time painting it only to realize the whole thing was just a bit too dark. :( There are a few layers of black tulle covering the eyes, because that's what I had on hand--if I get around to revamping the costume, I'll swap it out for gray.
"Skin" (arms/neck/etc): Used penwiper337's trick of painted opaque stockings. Got a couple pairs of white stockings, dyed them gray along with the fabric for the dress, cut a neck-hole in the crotch of one pair and hand-sewed the ends into gloves, cut a foot off the other pair and pulled it over my head and neck and made a hole for my face, then invited a handful of friends over to messily have at it with a paintbrush. It's a great trick for the stone "skin," but I ran into lots of problems due to craft!fail. The fingers didn't quite work (lots of holes/runs/ripped seams, fingers of one hand were too short, fingers of the other hand were too narrow for me to fit into them and I had to chop them off and sew on new ones out of scraps) and the neckpiece kept riding up around the collarbone, so we had to take a big square scrap of the dress fabric, cut a head-sized circle in it, reinforce it with lots of interfacing, sew the edge of the stocking to the neckhole, and pin the edges to the inside of the dress to keep it down. It worked, but it meant I either had to get someone else to pin the thing down (and thus not be able to get into the costume by myself) or keep it pinned there and have to shove my head into a stocking while I was putting the dress on.
Wig: Cut the legs off one of those pairs of stockings, sewed the crotch/hips/etc. area into a cap, and stitched yarn down the middle. Headband is more scraps of dress fabric. Spent a very fun night styling it, then used a positively disgusting amount of craft glue to hold it all in place. I might actually have used more paint on the wig than the dress--glue-covered yarn, even when dry, does not take paint very well. This is the part of the costume I'm most pleased with, though.
Wings: The first thing I started, and the last one I finished. The wings are the biggest evidence of what a last-minute rush I was in to finish the costume--if I'd had more time I would've rigged up a harness that didn't suck and painted them with a proper faux-stone effect instead of just matte gray with lighter highlights. I was so, so careful in the beginning to work with reference images to get the right proportions and find the right balance between accuracy and a practical costume design that wouldn't use up all my foamboard. All the feathers etc. were cut out and given a basic paint job weeks in advance. But in the end I wound up putting them together the night before the con with nothing but half a roll of duct tape, which (combined with the crappy harness) is why the feathers are going every which way in some of the pictures.
Wing harness: The crappiest, shoddiest part of the costume, literally slapped together out of foamboard, string, wire, and duct tape the morning of the con. It consists of three long, heavy wires that go up inside the wings and are taped (on the inside) to the sturdiest part of them, a piece of foamboard that rests on my back and has little holes punched into it that I can stick string through, and lots of string tying the wires to the foamboard. The straps are folded-over pieces of duct tape--one over each shoulder, one that ties around the waist--that are messily "stitched" to the foamboard with more string. One of the strings broke during the con, leaving me to sheepishly wander into the artists' room carrying the wings under my arm and beg for some embroidery floss to fix them. And the shoulder straps were "stitched" on loosely enough that the whole rig tended to sag back and look all askew. Definitely the first thing I'm fixing if I wear this costume again.
The con itself: I concur with everyone who's said that costumes like this are physically wretched to wear, but SO WORTH IT for the reactions. Most of the wretchedness was my own fault, anyway--the makeshift harness was super uncomfortable, I had to be careful about my hands to keep from ripping the gloves, and the first day I was stupid enough to wear HEELS under the thing, not realizing it's hard to sit down when you've got a big honking pair of wings strapped to your back. (Also, doorways. Doorways are a problem.) Visibility was okay, though, since tulle is pretty easy to see through. But despite all the discomfort, this costume was SO MUCH FUN. Creeping up behind people. Making people scream. Strangling people in photos. Staying very, very still as people debated whether I was a statue or a person in a costume, and sloooowwwly turning my head to watch them as they walked past. Lurking in corners with my hands over my face, waiting for someone passing by to say "Oh god, don't blink," and keeping my fingers parted just enough to see when they blinked or looked away so I could go in for the kill.
In conclusion: so much work, but so worth it.