A Figment of My Imagination

I'm still coming down from the internet Halloween high of the last few days, but I didn't want you guys to think I'd forgotten my promise to post Figment pictures! So here goes...

About a week after we started on John's Dreamfinder costume he insisted that *I* go in costume, too. (Wha??) Since I knew I could never look exactly like the actual dragon himself, I decided to try to make a pretty, girly version of Figment. And in keeping with the character, I aimed for something more little-girl girly than sexy girly, since I'm not out to ruin anyone's childhood. ;) (Not to mention it takes industrial strength corsets for me to pull off anything even remotely "sexy." Ha!)

We hit a lot of pitfalls and challenges along the way, and I'd by lying if I said I really liked this cosplay, but here it is, for better or worse:

Everything you see here is handmade, with the exception of the boots. It turns out you can't find lavender clothing ANYWHERE, so after weeks of fruitless searching we finally bought this stretchy lavender fabric, and John made me a skirt out of it. Yes, a skirt. But he made it so long that I was able to pull it up and use it as a dress. (Me: "Hey, now I don't need a shirt! BOOYA!!") The pink cummerbund (which closes with Velcro) holds it all together - take it off and I have the world's largest muumuu. Heh. The sleeves are just two long tapered tubes that I pull on like arm-warmers. (The great thing about t-shirt fabric? NO HEMMING REQUIRED. Woohoo!)   

The yellow sweater started out as an enormous pull-over from GoodWill which we cut and snipped and darted until it was about half its original size. I used iron-on hem tape to attach the red sleeve cuffs, and John made a lovely red band for the collar as well, but sadly it doesn't show at ALL with my hair down. At the last minute I used the remaining strip of red fabric as a neck tie, just so you could see some red around my neck that way.
 

Figment has teeny tiny wings, but I made the conscious decision to make mine extra large so they would show up from the front. In my mind, if it's not going to show when people take your picture, there's no point in making it. (Yep, I'm lazy!) That's also why I don't have a tail, even though I really did want to make one - it just didn't seem worth the effort if no one would see it!

Since my sweater was open in the front I couldn't have "Figment' written across my chest - so I decided to make a large necklace of his name instead.

To make it, I held Figment's t-shirt up to a window with a piece of paper over it, using it as a poor-woman's lightbox, and traced out the letters onto the paper:

Then I cut out the letters and used them as templates on a thickly rolled-out piece of black clay, which I cut and shaped with a craft blade:

I arranged the letters in a curved shape on a piece of paper, and then sketched out a shape around them. John then cut a scrap of thin aluminum he had in the garage into that shape for me, sanding it to give it a neat swirly texture:

 I glued on the clay letters, and then blinged everything up with cheap nail gems:

The aluminum is so lightweight that the necklace weighs next to nothing!

Originally I planned to paint a masquerade mask on my face, but after a few tries I realized I just wasn't skilled enough to pull it off - and even if I were, it'd take forever to do, and I didn't want that kind of stress!

So, I made that mask up there.

 I took the shape I'd planned to paint on my face and modified it to fit this plain masquerade mask:

I cut the top portion from a lavender craft foam, and painted the mask itself a darker purple:

Then I painted thin lines of glue around the edges and added loose glitter:

I felt like I was back in grade school, doing this! And I warned John we'd have glitter everywhere for weeks, but dangit, IT WAS FUN.

I wanted to keep the mask simple, so I just added darker purple glitter on the eyes (so it looked like eye shadow), and a center line down the nose for sparkle:

Lastly I went back with a wet paint brush and cleaned off the chalk lines you can still see here.

My design is supposed to look like stylized horns, but I realize it also looks a lot like a crown - so I guess if any of you need a Barbie princess mask...

Well, I've already covered how I made the wings and horns, so I guess that's everything! Obviously I should have had lavender boots, but all I could find online were dark purple ones, and I wasn't up for spending an extra $40 on footwear. :/ (And I don't do heels.)

As long as you crop off my feet, though, it looks Ok:

I keep holding my skirt out because I wanted a big poofy skirt. If I ever wear this again, I'll have to get a nice ruffly petticoat for it.

So that was my Halloween costume! All in all, I'm still glad I didn't wear it with John's Dreamfinder, since I liked having the focus just be on him that night. Besides, my costume is more of a creative interpretation of Figment than a literal one, while John's is pretty darn exact.

Which reminds me: would you guys believe that the original Dreamfinder himself commented on John's costume?! BECAUSE HE DID! And he said amazingly nice things about it! I've been reading his blog the past few days, so that was a major, MAJOR Dizgeek moment for me. I'm still not over it; I get all fangirly and shrieky inside every time I think about it. (EEEE!)

And finally finally, a lot of you have mentioned that you've never seen the original Journey Into Imagination ride that our costumes are based on, which is a tragedy I feel compelled to correct, in at least a small way. So here's the best video of it I've found:

 
This starts with a pretty comprehensive look at the area around the ride and the building itself, so the ride portion doesn't start until the 3 minute mark. And it's a pretty long ride, so you'll need to continue on to part 2 here (sorry, the embedding is disabled). The beginning of part 2 is my favorite part of the ride, though, and certainly the most beautiful, so please don't miss it!

Thanks for being so patient, guys, and for providing me with endless entertainment/distractions the past few days with all of your Halloween costumes and pumpkins and crafts! My inbox is overflowing, so I may never get back to you all, but please know that I am LOVING all of it!