My Little Beastie: DIY Maleficent Halloween Costume

My littlest and I talked about her costume selection very early this year, probably in July. She decided she wanted to be Maleficent and once September rolled around I asked her again with the same reply. So into the net I plunged for design ideas. I found a really awesome tutorial for the horns on YouTube's Threadbanger page. She's a cool chic full of lovely ideas.

Anyway, I found a picture of a Maleficent action figure with an awesome punk rock look, so that became the inspiration.

Here is my little beastie all done up, getting into character. I basically used contouring bronzer on her cheeks and temples, then did some eye makeup. She is always a good subject for my experiments and has gotten rather seasoned at having her makeup done.

Here are some pictures of the process of the design. It took about one week to construct the head piece and a day for the cape. I ordered a raven prop and made a wristband out of it so she doesn't have to hold on to anything. I cut two holes in the cape to thread the elastic from the wing through. Added purple fabric and beads to the collar for some color.

The form is a basic foam head available at Michael's for around $5

The cloth you see pinned to the form below is called buckram fabric, which is used for hat making. After the pattern was cut, I submerged it in water, squeezed it out and formed it to the model exactly the way I wanted it. I doubled up the fabric, cutting the pattern twice.

 While the buckram dried on the mold, I formed the horns using paper clay, also found at Michael's. The horns had to dry for 48 hours.

Once the buckram was dry, I traced the pattern onto felt, brushed the buckram with glue, and flattened the felt over the buckram. Also, after each layer is added, you should pin it down to help maintain the shape you want.

After that completely dried (24 hours), I adhered double fold bias tape with tacky glue to give the edges a nice crisp finish.

  

Next I added the decorative trim to the edges which added to the stability and create a lip that proved useful during the beading step. I glued this with tacky glue which held great. The glue oozed through the material openings for a strong bond.

         

As the glue set on the piece and the paper clay had dried completely, I was able to paint the horns, glue them to scrap felt with hot glue and cut the scrap about 1/2 inch around the horn. Separately gluing the horns to glue then gluing them toe the top of the head piece with hot glue really created a strong attachment that just gluing the clay to the project could not have achieved. The felt was flexible and could accommodate the curvature of the rounded shape.

Here I began to wrap the remaining trim around the horns to add dimension.

Next, I glued the mardi gras beads using tacky glue at first, but quickly realized hot glue was the key. I was nervous the tacky glue would have a dulling effect on the the fabric and beads.

The final product was slightly heavy and too thick for hair pins. I bought a head band with long teeth and since the head band had more of a curve I utilized the same technique to fasten the band to the inside of the head piece as I had with the horns. To add more stability I cross-banded felt strips over top of the band between the teeth. I tied tulle to the band for a snug fit. It worked great. In the future I will attach fasteners to any hats I make before all embellishment begins.

Room Decor Class: Baby Nursery

Recently I had the wonderful opportunity to instruct a painting class for a group of homeschooling mothers as a sort of baby shower. They allowed me to decide on the designs for a little boy's room. These were 8x10 stretched canvas creations and the women had a blast. There were seven different pieces to choose from of varying difficulty. If you know anyone who would like a room decor custom event I'd be happy to assist with the project. Head to my Ceramadre page on Facebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mermaid Hair

Here is my younger sister, her boyfriend, and my two adorable dogs!! My sister, Gina, decided she wanted pastel purple hair so she bleached and colored it with products she purchased at her local supply house. As you can see in the photo, the color didn't turn out very vibrant. So I decided to step in and give it a shot.

In this next pic you can see the color she applied pretty well. It reminds me of grape drink. It doesn't look horrible, but it was not what she was going for at all.  My idea was that she couldn't have processed her hair long enough with the bleach to achieve the color lift required for vibrant double processed color results.

She was born a red-head but her hair is now a very dark blonde or light brown. Her hair bleaches very nicely, with short process time so minimal damage was sustained from bleaching her hair again.

I used the Sally brand bleach and  a 30 volume developer very quickly, but made sure her hair was sectioned into small enough pieces that it would be quickly saturated. It took me about 45 minutes to apply the lifter and then I let it process for another 15 minutes. Oh yea, I started from the bottom because the top of the head is warmer and processes more quickly. This just means less of a chance of frying her hair off...

 

This is after I rinsed the bleach. As you can see she was super happy she still had hair left and I hadn't turned it to mush. When she originally bleached her hair, she used a 20 developer which is a longer processing time, but honestly, after achieving this kind of lift I really believe she couldn't have mixed her bleach and developer properly the first time. 

  

Having it sectioned and working quickly, really helped achieve a very even bleaching.

 

I just as carefully sectioned the hair for this step too. This was by far the longest, most agonizing part. I was standing up for hours!!!! I had several different bowls and brushes and several different brands of semi-permanent hair color. As you can see I am no pro at foiling, but because the colors were all purples and pink, it was OK.

She was literally sleeping while i was putting color on her hair. Once all the hair was saturated and foiled, I put a cap on her and blow dried the heck out of her head. We don't have a salon dryer. After I baked her head inside of the cap and foils, I had her lay down and sleep for a while and I watched TV and cleaned the mess up. She was super uncomfortable in the cap so we decided to rinse it earlier than I anticipated. This is how it looked at about 4:30 a.m.

She let me curl it a little, but was going to work so I didn't get to do too much since she has to wear it up (she's a chef).

 

This was taken a few weeks after, and as you can see, the color stayed nice and bright.

This picture shows some fading in the front, which was the only place I used ion pastel semi-permanent hair color...I wouldn't recommend it if you actually want the color in your hair for longer than one washing.

This next picture was taken by photographer Kayla Sloan during a modeling session. You can see how adorable her hair still looked several months after application. Very blonde, almost white since the purple color acts as a toner to subdue the yellow and orange tint you can get from bleaching..

The updated color

After 3 months