# Costume Help



## foxykita143 (Oct 15, 2009)

Ok, so as many of you can probably understand, I'm running low on cash this Halloween, so I decided to use my costume from last year and make a new one. I'm planning on being Poison Ivy from Batman, and I have a good general idea of what im going to do, but I need a few more tips. Here is a link to the costume I had last year:

http://images.celebrateexpress.com/mgen/merchandiser/34096.jpg

(By the way, I have every piece of that costume, including the little puffy tutu thing [forgot what its called])

So anyway, I have already cut off the pink ribbons and fur trim, and I still plan on using the little jacket as well. I'm going to buy some fake ivy from the craft store to use all over the dress on and the trim, probably some red ribbon where the pink used to be, and some type of mesh material to use to add some length to the jack and create a sort of cape. My main problem is, I need a black dress to be green. It is made out of 100% polyester, and I have no idea how I'm going to do this. I can barely sew, only enough to fix a hole in a shirt, and I dont want to ruin my "base" (the original dress) by attempting to sew green fabric over it. If worst comes to worse I guess I will try my luck but I would rather not. I would just glue it but I am afraid that once I put the dress on and it stretches it will rip. 

I thought of covering the entire dress in leaves but I dont want to look like a huge tree or something, I would just rather use the ivy as accents, or at the most, only on the full skirt. 

Any tips or other suggestions?


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

If you take individual leaves and use fuseable webbing (available at a fabric store) you could get good coverage and not be "poofy" with the leaves as they would be a flat layer on top of the costume's fabric. And they won't be going anywhere either. 

Fuseable webbing is basically a fabric glue in a sheet form. You cut it with regular scissors into whatever shape to fit and put it between the two pieces of fabric (or in this case, the fabric and the leaves) and use an iron to melt the glue into the fabrics. 

So a bit of scissors, a bit of ironing (read the instructions that come with it - you don't want the iron too hot!) and NO sewing...  You'll have to do individual leaves, but I can't imagine that it would take more than an hour or so and the stuff wasn't expensive last I checked.

Also, cut the webbing smaller than the leaf shape - you do NOT want to get the fuseable glue ON the iron surface as it is a booger to clean off and it will make a gluey mess on the fabric. 

If you do green leaves all over the black costume, get the red hair and some cool makeup, this would work really well! Good luck!

Crinoline. The tutu thing.


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## foxykita143 (Oct 15, 2009)

Wow I've never even heard of that, thanks for the great suggestion. I'm definitely going to use that, and you actually just gave me a few more ideas!


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## Gav Heryng (Oct 16, 2009)

Hi, just a heads up. My sister made an amazing poison ivy costume by hot gluing plastic ivy leaves to one of those control suits women sometimes wear. On the hangar it looked great and on the hangar it stayed as when the hot glue cooled it shrunk so my sister couldn't get into the costume. Like I said, just a heads up. I'd avoid hot glue and maybe go for superhlue or polystyrene cement.

Good luck!

Gav


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

Gav Heryng said:


> Hi, just a heads up. My sister made an amazing poison ivy costume by hot gluing plastic ivy leaves to one of those control suits women sometimes wear. On the hangar it looked great and on the hangar it stayed as when the hot glue cooled it shrunk so my sister couldn't get into the costume. Like I said, just a heads up. I'd avoid hot glue and maybe go for superhlue or polystyrene cement.
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> Gav


That would be true if you used hot glue, but fuseable webbing is specifically made for fabric, and doesn't shrink up when used. It is used to do no-sew hems, appliques, and other types of sewing so it would be useless if it shrunk up and ruined a hem or sewing project. 

At the worst, I'd worry about the leaves if they had any plastic stems or veining in them, but they'd just get a little melty themselves... so I would do a thin piece of cloth in between them and the iron to make sure they didn't melt onto the iron surface.


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## Atelier*Motives (Sep 28, 2009)

MissChievious has a nymph makeup tutorial that would make a great poison ivy.  If you put the leaves individually on to the dress maybe you could get some green fabric paint and paint some vines onto the dress. Really condensed at the top and becoming less clustered at the bottom?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3062/2798004665_1fe47ce807.jpg?v=0


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## foxykita143 (Oct 15, 2009)

I love MissChievious! I belong to the Specktra forum, and I have seen many of her tutorials but never this one. This is a good find, because I was trying to avoid doing the eyebrows.

Thanks to the rest of you as well for all of the tips. It is turning out really nice so far. I used the webbing adhesive for the middle panel and I used a lime green fabric. I also bought a ton of faux ivy and I made the entire skirt out of it (thank goodness there was no shrinking, its already pretty short!), and I made the top out of sequins! I used over 700 and it was pretty uh, fun doing that all by hand. I will post up some pictures soon, I'm almost done!


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## krypt_angel20 (Oct 18, 2009)

yes please do post some pics... Im interested to see how it turned out!!


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## shawnawitch (Oct 18, 2009)

Poison ivy costume sounded cool. And i love the face makeup on the fairy sprite.


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## foxykita143 (Oct 15, 2009)

I am FINALLY done! Well, for the most part. I think I figured out how to change the color of the tutu. For future reference, dye will NOT work for crinoline. I did try using red permanent marker which was working really well but due to the kind of "tutu" I had it would have taken forever. As far as the hair went, I didn't find the red I wanted, so I bought a brownish red wig. I also bought a cheap white wig from walmart and colored it bright red. I used red permanent marker and that cheap red Halloween hair spray and attached pieces to the regular wig so now the wig has bright red highlights, it looks really good and a lot more thick. I also made some gloves, which was kind of a pain in the ass lol. I finally finished it off by spray painting some old black patent shoes green and added some sequins and ivy leaves. I will post up some pictures tomorrow when I have some more light. Thanks again for all of the suggestions guys!


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