We’re only a few weeks away from Talk Like a Pirate Day, on September 19th, and that means you don’t have much time to learn how to…well, talk like a pirate.
These two videos will help you master pirate lingo in a jiffy so you don’t embarrass yourself needlessly in the face of a world wide cultural phenomenon. No pressure there.
The first video was, in fact, made by the founders of Talk Like a Pirate Day so you know you can trust them. The second video is a little iffy. I mean, the guy looks too clean cut to be teachin’ ye how to talk all pirate-ty.
Either way, these short tutorials will help you pass as pirate material so ye aren’t forced to take a walk off the auld plank! (I watched both videos and I’m talkin’ like a pirate already. You can’t place enough value on a YouTube education!)
Check back soon for more information on Talk Like a Pirate Day, including my own pirate costume and prop photos.
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Cosplaying is interesting. It’s one thing to dress up as a character you like, but cosplaying generally involves having to act like the character as well. Cosplayers pride themselves on having the most accurate, authentic costume possible, and when cosplayers start making up their own characters, things start getting a little crazy.
One interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed is something I’m going to call crossover cosplaying (this is not to be confused with crossplaying, which is crossdressing cosplaying). It’s when a cosplayer, usually for a humorous effect, combines two characters from two different canons. Sometimes a character from one canon is simply placed into a different canon, without being combined with another character.
A fairly famous example of this is the Hello Kitty Darth Vader.
Perhaps an even stranger Star Wars crossover cosplay is the Elvis Trooper.
I like the Sailor Blueberry Muffin, a Sailor Moon and Strawberry Shortcake
crossover, which I found on cosplay.com. It’s delicious!
Obviously, this type of cosplaying veers away from the canon image that is so highly respected in cosplaying, which is why this is done more for fun and laughs. It also requires more creativity in designing the costume than normal cosplay, because the cosplayer first must decide which characters to combine, and then figure out how to make a costume which represents both of these characters in the way the cosplayer desires.
This isn’t a very popular trend yet—in fact, crossover cosplayers are kind of considered the oddballs of the groups! Some cosplayers feel that crossover cosplayers are just mocking the cosplaying phenomenon, but I think they’re just trying to have fun with costume design and characters they love.
Let us know about some crazy crossover cosplays you’ve seen!
Many of you have probably heard about the new Invisibility Cloak that scientists are developing.
What a great costume this would be! I took a chance and contacted the scientists to see if they would let me try one.
The guy on the phone was like, “MyDisguises? Isn’t that the incredibly popular costume blog?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Hey, we love your blog. Sure thing, we can send you an invisibility cloak, no problem,” he said.
I was so excited. I couldn’t wait! And sure enough, several days later, I received a package in the mail.
Wow, it works great! I had so much fun wearing it. I took a bunch of pictures.
Here’s me sitting on a park bench.
Here I am about to kick a soccer ball.
Riding around town on my bicycle.
Posing with my girlfriend.
As you can see, I had a great time. It’s the best costume ever!
Looks like the kid in this video has an invisiblity cloak, too. I think his mom is one of the scientists, but I’m not completely sure.
I suspect these invisibility cloak sightings will become more and more common in the near future. If you spot someone invisible, please take a picture and send it to us!
An estimated 10,000 people wore costumes at Comic-Con last weekend. Lots of great photos are showing up online. Cinemablend.com just published a gallery with dozens of excellent photos.
Wow, everybody looks great! Be sure to visit Cinemablend.com to view the entire gallery.
We’ve been blogging quite a bit about Dr. Horrible, the supervillain musical that’s taken the Internet by storm.
Today, we’ll take a closer look at making a Dr. Horrible costume.
Lab Coat
Dr. Horrible wears a white lab coat. You can find a basic lab coat at any costume shop, but if you want to be picky you’ll need a coat that buttons on the side, not down in front. Look for the “Howie” style coat.
Here are some places that sell this type of lab coat:
EDIT: Word on the street is that these goggles actually are green in color. Apparently, the manufacturer picture is wrong and they are NOT silver as shown.
White Gloves
Dr. Horrible wears a pair of white work gloves. Some people have found that fencing gloves work, too. You can try these stores:
Sometimes, a costume is more than just the clothes you wear. Sometimes, a costume is less than just the clothes you wear.
Makeup is something we haven’t talked too much about around here. That’s because makeup is usually an accessory to the costume, something that finishes the costume to make it more complete. It’s not often that a costume is defined by the makeup alone—but sometimes, it can be.
The brilliance behind zombie costumes is that you can wear whatever you want—or just whatever you normally wear. If you had really turned into a zombie, that’s what you would be wearing. As far as costumes go, it’s about as simple as it comes. It’s the makeup that’s really the costume.
To be a zombie, you’ll need pallid, sickly-looking skin. Maybe with a bit of a greenish tint to it. You’ll need at least one wound—that’s the zombie bite that turned you. And if you want to be really dramatic, blood splatters are the way to go.
Fake blood can be easily made by mixing corn syrup with red food coloring. Adding a little cocoa powder to the concoction will give it a darker blood color and ensure that when it dries, it will look just like dried blood.
Making your wounds takes a little more work, but it’s so much more fun. There are plenty of recipes for this kind of thing. I’ve done it with cotton balls and gelatin. I have a friend who made amazing realistic-looking zombie wounds with marshmallows. You can experiment with other textures too, like tissue or corn flakes. The wounds can be glued on with latex (the kind they use in theater to attach fake beards and the like), and painted with makeup and fake blood.
You don’t have to wait until Halloween to do this, either. Grab some friends and make a fast and fun zombie film. Or better yet, participate in one of the many zombie walks that occur every year across the country! Zombiewalk.com is a good resource for finding one, or organize your own in your neighborhood.
What if I told you this stunning costume gown is made out of paper?
Yeah, that’s what I thought too.
This and many other paper costumes are the work of Isabelle de Borchgrave, of Brussels. She is the designer of textiles, ceramics, porcelain and other products for the home.
Isabelle has expanded her talents into other fields, including interior design and a new line of party paper products now available at Target.
In 1994 Isabelle met a Canadian theatre dress designer. Together they created an astonishing collection of dresses in paper known as “Papiers a la Mode,” covering 300 years of fashion history.
First shown in France in 1998, this substantial collection has since traveled all over Europe, the United States and Japan and continues to be exhibited throughout the world.
You can actually commission Isabelle to make a party dress for you…but I don’t think you’ll like the price of the paper!
Babies are channeling their inner grown-up with a pair of stilettos…even before they’re out of the crib.
Heelarious creators have fashioned soft crib booties designed to look like high heels. Now baby will be ready for high fashion shopping trips, charity events, breakfast at Tiffany’s and red carpet events.
Apparently, these little spikes are selling like crazy in 22 states and overseas.
The tiny novelty high heals aren’t for walking, obviously, but they’re soft, funny and fashionable.
Heelarious crib booties come in leopard satin print, hot pink patent, black satin, zebra satin, black patent, and hot pink satin.
Here we have Naija from the popular game Aquaria. She’s even got her song wheel.
Very beautiful, I especially like her flipper feet. This gal (who’s name is Aleze) is a master of cosplay, and it turns out we’ve posted about her before.
Last year, she got famous posing as Midna from the Zelda series.
Great work!
For anyone interested, here’s a closer look at the game Aquaria.
Having been deemed as the writer with the most costuming experience, I am here to share with you–
A Short History of My Own Costuming Experience.
Part Two: College
The next few years saw a little improvement in my costume-making skills. Of the sewing I did at this time, my creation efforts were mostly redirected to making normal clothing, and I only made three real costumes during my years of college. One was a cosplay of Victoria Everglot from Corpse Bride, one was a Queen of Spades costume, and the other was a new, more awesome pirate costume.
Remember these guys from Sesame Street? Yip yip yip yip…
Well, thanks to Instructables.com, you can learn how to make your own Yip Yip alien costume! They offer a step by step guide using fleece, sponges and mesh. Looks great!
Check out welovefancydress.com - it’s a fun costume website that lets users upload their costume photos. Their motto is, “Your online dressing up box. Put ideas in, take ideas out….”
You can browse through the photos, and “tip” the ones you like. Tipping is basically voting, and you can see which photos are the most admired. Fun!
The website is run by Clementine & Rebecca. Great job, Ladies!
Sometimes it’s hard finding a costume, especially if you’re looking for something clever and unordinary.
You may think that costume choices for wheel chair dwellers would be limited. But as these pictures illustrate, the physical limitations of wheelchair life impose no restrictions on creativity.
In fact, the wheelchair is incorporated into the costume to create an entire mobile scene, like a parade float.
The most important factor in creating a wheelchair costume is safety.
The costume must allow for chair mobility and be free of anything that might get tangled in the wheels.
With safety considerations well in hand, when it comes to creative costume choices, the sky’s the limit…not the chair.
Do you want an original costume that can’t be purchased, but you don’t know how to sew? Or perhaps you need a crazy prop for your costume and you just can’t find anything like it in stores. I went to CONduit in Salt Lake City on Saturday, and there I attended a panel that was all about turning ordinary, random things into costume items, to create items that no one else has!
There are two basic tricks to making a costume item out of something else:
The first is to break down the idea of your finished product into components. You won’t be able to find the exact thing you need, but you will be able to find various things that you can put together to make what you need. Your costume is a puzzle, and you’re looking for the pieces.
So now that you’re all aware of how awesome steampunk is, you’re thinking, “But it’s so awesome! How can I possibly design my own steampunk costume that will be as awesome as everyone else’s?” Never fear, dear readers; I am here to tell you all about the world of steampunk and how understanding it will help you design your very own, very awesome steampunk costume!
The basic premise of the world of steampunk boils down to one simple principle: It is a world in which Newtonian physics are king. Imagine if no one ever bothered to learn about atoms, if Einstein had never come along with his theory of relativity, if the threat of world-wide destruction via atomic bombs had never been made possible.
That is the world of steampunk. It is very science-oriented, but with gears and cogs; pure mechanics. Nothing is digital, nothing is atomic, there is no quantum theory. Perhaps it’s so popular because it can be considered the layman’s science.
What makes steampunk different from most science fiction is the synthesis of science with fantasy—using science to create a fantasy world. Steampunk basically says, “Anything that can be done with magic can be done with science, and we’re the ones to do it!”
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