A Weeping Angel!
Making my Weeping Angel costume wasn't all that difficult. Here's how to do it!
1. Find a grey/silver dress
My grey/silver dress was a hand-me-down from my fashion savvy friend, Julianne. Now, this dress has a whole story of its own. It didn't start its life belonging to Jules. No-one really knows who owned it, actually. All we know is that Julianne was going crazy one year trying to find a dress for the races, and after finally giving up and deciding to wear something she already owned, this dress appeared outside her apartment in a dry-cleaning wrap. She left it there for a day or so, and when nobody claimed it, took pity on it and wore it to the races. When I moved to Ballarat, she passed the legacy on to me :) It seemed only fitting to bring it out for Sleazeball!
2. Sleaze up your grey/silver dress
This option is only applicable if your weeping angel costume is supposed to be sleazy. I do not recommend a sleaze-up for a regular costume party/convention. Unless you take your parties with Mean Girls rules applied. In which case, sleaze away! To sleaze up my costume I took a few steps. I didn't want to sleaze up too much (as it happens, I think I was the most-clothed person at the ball! Ooh la la!) so I settled with lowering the neckline a little and synching the dress in places to hoik up the hemline and give it a bit of a different shape. Made it scrunchy-like!
After sleazing up my dress, I realized I needed some appropriate underwear to go with it. I didn't however own a grey/silver bra and in true shoestring fashion, decided to alter what I already had. I got my bikini top and tacked some silver material and lace onto the top of it. Only that tiny bit at the top showed when my dancing skillz threw my dress around a little, so I was all set and no-one would be any the wiser! Sneaky...
3. Find some grey stockings
Do this as early as you can! It's actually a lot more difficult to find grey stockings than you might think! I bought two pairs - one for my arms and one for my legs. You can always get just the one, or even neither, and paint yourself instead. Being winter, and not wanting to spread my paint all over my friends with every touch, I used the stockings option. I cut a whole in the crotch of the arms-stockings, and five holes in each foot for my fingers. It didn't look as shmick as the paint would have, but I was warm (and showing even less skin! Ha ha!)
4. Make some wingalings
Again - pretty easy! I found some cardboard and cut it out into a nice wing shape. I made them smaller than the regular weeping angel. I figured dancing and body length wings didn't really go together all that nicely. I cut my wingalings and then went crazy with the grey paint. I outlined the edges and made some patterns. The back side of the wings is the same colour as the outline of the inside. And the wingy/feathery cut-away at the bottom goes up in the middle. I bought some maribou to go around the outside, but it didn't look very nice so I didn't attach it (and now I have grey fluffy stuff in my craft collection - win!) I made wee holes in the shoulders and tied some silver twine through them to put around my shoulders. Note: this was not super effective. I lost my wingalings some time during the evening.
5. Find some silver shoes
I didn't have any silver shoes to wear (nor them money to buy some), so I went crazy with a can of spray paint and painted some heels silver. (I was very tempted to buy a pair of silver sequiny kids hightops that I found in Target for $10, but I figured that hightops didn't quite go with the sleazy theme I was after. I was however impressed that I fit into a child's pair of shoes...)
6. Paint your face and do your hair!
Excellent fun, this! Luckily, my house mate had some silver face paint lying around (I know! What are the odds?) So the face was greyed up without any expense. It wasn't too tricky either, which was lovely. I bought some silver hair spray and curled my hair with my hot-rollers, using the colour-spray as hair spray. Super effective. I pinned it back into some kind of curly bun thing and voila - hair complete!
...and that's how I made my Weeping Angel costume...
 |
| Don't Blink! |
 |
| Me, with threeof the four horsemen of the apocalypse (the third one is hiding...it's like Where's Wally for the End of Time) and Jack the Ripper. As you can see, the paint started to come off a little...that's ok...it was dark... |
