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This was my Halloween costume that year. It was inspired by a friend who had done a cute fairy costume the year before. Her's was much flowerier and natural looking, but was an inspiration none the less. I got the general idea when I thought of making a fairy using the crinoline I had made for the Card Captor Sakura costume that was in progress. I wanted to use the crinoline because I had it completed, but it wasn't going to get any use for quite some time since my plan was not to actually make the Sakura dress until I finished losing weight... and actually attended a Con. Since I had put so much work into the crinoline I wanted to exploit an opportunity to wear it and the idea for the fairy just came about. The blue butterfly fabric I already had and was trying to use up, and I planned the costume around it. It's the same fabric that I used to make the mandarin dress the previous year. I got the whole bolt (was like 4-5 yards of 60inch fabric?) for 5 bucks once upon a time from the clearance rack at Joann's. I was ecstatic about the notion of maybe actually using up that butterfly fabric. It's lovely, but there's not alot you can do with it and it'd been sitting in my sewing box for waaay to long.
The actual costume cost me about 15 bucks out of pocket. The white of the blouse is just muslin that I usually use for mock ups, which I got for 50c a yard (yay coupons). And the lace on the shirt is the same lace that is on the crinoline (which I got for 15c a "generous yard" at the Wright's Factory Outlet). The only things I actually bought for the costume were the flowers and butterflies for the headband and then wire and fabric for the wings. Everything else I actually already owned. It was nice to finally get the butterfly fabric almost used up. I still have SOME left, but not like there was before. The wings individually slip into a harness that I wear beneath the shirt and dress. The double prongs you can see in the picture are of 12 gague copper wire. They are doubled so that they don't rotate around pell-mell on their own. They actually slip into two pieces of copper tubing bent into U's. It works extremely well. I can get into it on my own if necessary, but if I have a friend to help it's a total piece of cake for someone else to slip the wings in. Mmmm... cake... This way the whole wing assembly can be taken apart to store more easily and I can reuse the wing harness again in the future, should the need arise.
The headpiece is a bit of wire with some silk hydrangeas on it, one rose and two blue butterflies. The ivy wound in is actually the ivy I used on the Tree Nymph costume. I have no expectations of ever wearing that costume again (poorly constructed as it was...) so I cannibalized the ivy and put it to new use.
I did a narcissistic photo shoot in the costume because it's overall fun, but also because I wanted to get alot of good pictures of my work. Too often I've had to rely upon photos taken after wearing the outfit for a while when it's all rumpled or something, or photos taken by friends that I get months later. I decided to be proactive this time and took pictures in a setting thats somewhat "fairyish". The pictures were taken at Hopkinton State Park, because I wanted to pose with big rocks. :D The camera was held by several obliging picnic tables. Yes that's my own hair incidentally. A night sleeping in foam rollers can do that to a girl. Something that these photos don't generally show though, is that it was seriously raining during this little endeavor. I had a towel around the camera to keep it dry, but could not afford the same luxury for myself. As a result the curls rapidly deteriorated (snuffle!) and by the time I got home left me with just modest waviness to my hair. Mowell. At least my hair looked kickin in the pictures. The only indications in the photos that it was raining are the occasional drops actually caught by the camera which show up as white sparklies. One picture I'm facing away and reaching out and by amazing coincidence a sparkly appeared there so it looks like I'm reaching for some white shining apparition. Kinda neat. The red item I'm contemplating in various images is an obliging red mushroom that I happened to find nearby. It had already lived its life and fallen over, so I didn't pick it for the exclusive purpose of exploiting it in photography. It just seemed to fit the costume well.
A final note about the photos: Barefoot in New England on a 40 degree rainy day makes for COLD feet. I finally stopped taking pictures not because my memory card was full, but because I couldn't take it anymore.
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