Aviator Gremlin Costume!

I've finished my Halloween costume! I know it's only early September, but this time I actually have a REASON to finish this thing months in advance. I'm going to be spending the Halloween Week in Vancouver, Canada, with my good friend Sfé, and I have to mail the costume up there as early as possible to make sure that it gets there in time (something tells me that airports wouldn't be to keen on letting me bring horns and stuff onto a plane, and I don't want to deal with the hassle of checking a bag (which costs money now), and praying that it doesn't get mega-crushed during flight.) So I will be mailing most of it.

Anyway on to the pictures. I'm calling it an Airplane Gremlin because it kind of looks like some sort of '40s WWII monster of some sort, but I didn't try too hard to stick with the theme. It's actually loosely based on a sketch of a future Skin Deep character I did a few years ago (see above), and I didn't really want to walk around saying "Well I'm a bandersnatch that's half-human and wearing a costume for a fictional band that I've created for a comic that I'm making." ENOUGH TALKING ON WITH THE COSTUME.





These hoof boots were the whole reason I decided to make this costume to begin with. Briana Barber makes these fantastic hoof-boots that I just fell in love with, and I was able to wrangle a discount on a pair by throwing in an art trade and a cameo in Skin Deep for her harpy character. I provided the boots that I found at Goodwill for supercheap and she modded them for me and sent them back. I wanted to make a Halloween costume with them, and that reminded me of the sketch I did previously, since the gal had hooves in that drawing too.

The hooves are surprisingly comfortable, and are more comfortable than most of the high-heeled boots that I own, funny enough.



Click above photo for bigger version (it gets cut off for some reason). I went on the internet and looked around for parts of the costume. My sister Kate had bought me aviator glasses last year for my birthday, so I already had those. I found ram horns for the hat and springbok horns for the fingers off of eBay, I figured I could buy an aviator hat at any old Halloween/Costume Supply store, and I found an outfit from Folkwear.com that I thought would be a cool '40s-looking outfit (Big Sky Riding Pants and the Armistice Blouse).

I knew about Folkwear from my mother, who loves to sew. When I was in High School we made several Folkwear patterns for a couple different occasions (a Chinese Cheongsam for Prom and an Irish cloak that I never ended up using till college for a different Halloween costume), so I asked her how difficult it would be to get the pants and the shirt and make them. Low and behold, we actually already HAD the Big Sky Riding Pants pattern, because apparently I had wanted to make them years earlier but never got around to them.



I made this sketch after picking the materials that I wanted to make the costume out of. My plan was to use a cheap costume aviator hat and cut holes in it for the horns to go through, and to build a wire armature for the claws so I could slip my fingers out of the springbok horns and they wouldn't flop about or drag the arm off under their dangling weight.



The horns arrived from eBay in great shape! They cost relatively little for what they were and the shape they were in, but they were still the most expensive part of the costume (it was about 90 dollars total for 10 springbok horns and two ram horns, plus shipping and handling).

By the time I took these photos I had already started working on the claws. At this point all I did was sew the rabbit pelts (purchased at Hobby Lobby for about 4 dollars) into tubes and sewn the springbok horns onto the ends in a vaguely hand-shaped pattern. Lookin' good! The ram horns were even bigger than I thought they would be!



I used 20 gauge wire that I picked up at walmart and some pliers to make the armature that goes under the pelts and fastens the claws to my arms. It also keeps the claws from putting all of their weight on the rabbit pelt, since I didn't trust the hide or the thread that I used to sew it on to hold a whole lot of weight.

I also used to velcrow at the palm of my hand and on my forearm to kind of tighten the claws onto my own arm. The velcro didn't work as well as I wanted it to, as I had sewn it all wrong for what I needed to do (I used way too much of it), but it works for keeping the claws on.



The horns! I had tried for weeks to find a decent aviator hat but to no avail. I didn't want to get one off the internet because I wanted to make sure it fit right and was made out of material I could easily cut through. After weeks of not being able to find what I was looking for I suddenly came to the realization that I already had a hat that would work for this. It's my winter hat that I had bought at Target several years ago, and it worked just perfect for this. Instead of cutting it up I used the same wire I used for the arms and made a sort of hat that fit on top of the whole thing. The original hat has buttons and clasps that I used to hold the whole wire thing in place.

Also: I bought some Werewolf Fangs cause hell yeah I want giant fangs. Do they not look fantastic? These worked a lot better than the last time I got fake fangs I tell you what.



My wire secrets revealed!

I liked the way the exposed wires looked on the horns so I didn't try to conceal them. I just hope they come off like "I wanted the wires to be there" and not "I was just too lazy to try and cover these up."



The finished product! At the end of the day I didn't want to make the Armistice Shirt because I (read: my mommy hurrr) had already made the pants and I didn't really wan to shell out 15 bucks for a pattern and then more for fabric and time. SO INSTEAD I found this really swell kid's-size bomber jacket that I think works even better than the armistice shirt would have. Plus it was $1.50 at the Salvation army GO THRIFTING YAY. I also used one of the billions of scarves that I own, and plunked on the goggles and COSTUME IS FINISHED.