This is Halloween, this is halloween....

I never thought I'd be a fan of Halloween.....I don't like anything remotely scary, I hate the idea of walking up to strangers' houses and asking them for stuff...however, I really really REALLY like costumes. Which is what has won me over for the last few years. I've been a Corpse Bride, a Cabaret Vampire and Mrs Lovett, but I think this year was my favourite.

This is Halloween! Everyone hail to the Pumpkin Queen!



The idea behind this costume came from two objects. One was the wig - I saw it on eBay ages ago and thought it was oh so pretty! It was even listed as 'Pumpkin Orange'! Second was this little bottle.



Pumpkin Juice brought back from Harry Potter World in the USA from my best friend. The bottle was way too awesome to not be used for something!

From then I started to piece together how I wanted to look. This was my first and only sketch of the costume - as you can see it has a few similiarities, but is definitely not identical.



All I knew about this costume was that I wanted my skirt to stick out at strange angles and just look generally awesome. Thus began the most time consuming element of any costume I think I've ever made. Each individual 'leaf' was cut from fabric and a piece of interfacing. The interfacing was then ironed on to one of the pieces, with a length of wire stuck in between, This was sealed by heat and then everything was sewn together for extra support. I then burnt the edges of each individual leaf (even got some melted fabric stuck to my finger at one point D:) and once it was cool, I'd paint detail with gold metallic paint. A select few lucky leaves got to have creepy faces painted on to them for good measure. The leaves were the main feature of the costume, making up the overskirt and the sleeve.




The rest was mainly bought. Trusty black corset, black tutu and orange tights - all from eBay. The headdress was made by cutting off the top of a pumpkin (yes that's real....it was still slightly juicy and VERY heavy) threading wire through it and securing it to a headband, that was in turn secured with a million bobby pins to stop it slipping off. Makeup was fun, orange eyeshadow brings me great joy!Last but not least was my awesome creepy clawed hand, that was sewn quickly last minute because on a whim I suddenly wanted one!