steampunk duo

the first suggestion husband had for our costumes this year: dolly parton & kenny rogers. me as kenny and him as dolly. as much as i know he wanted to dress as dolly, i had absolutely no desire to dress as kenny. i love making an effort with my costume and kenny seemed didn't seem like it be much of a stretch. suit, wig and beard...boring. maybe we'll save this one for another halloween. anyways.

husbands next suggestion: steampunk. (steampunk: works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology or futuristic innovations as Victorians may have envisioned them, based on a Victorian perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, art, etc.) yes, we would be explaining this to pretty much everyone who asked what our costumes were. our best explanation, "have you seen wild, wild west or the league of extraordinary gentleman? we're sorta like that."

so once we knew what we were gonna be, we scoured the internet for ideas and photos. here's my main inspirational photo.


we hit up the local thrift stores and even went to mountain city, tn to hit up an army surplus store. luckily we found bits and pieces at each place and our costumes started to come together.

breakdown of my costume. jacket: $8 off ebay, hat: borrowed from a friend, goggles: $7 off ebay, white shirt: mine, corset: borrowed from a friend's wench costume, green skirt: mine, white petticoat: $4 at goodwill, belts: $2 at goodwill, utility belt: $5 at army store, canteen: $3 at goodwill, skirt hikes: homemade, spats: homemade, shoes: mine, hair: $9 extensions, gun: $1 at goodwill.

i would breakdown the husband's outfit but i don't know what he paid for everything. most of his costume is also from his own wardrobe. i know i paid $3 for his nerf gun at goodwill and he paid $2.50 for his goggles at the army surplus store.

i think we both were really happy with the end result. the husband went so far as creating alter egos for each of us and coming up with a history for his own character. i know - NERD!

as you can see from a previous post, the aviator costume the boy wore sorta tied in with ours. this was the main reason i decided to make his costume this year.

next up: pumpkin carving party.

transformation

luckily we figured out what we were gonna be for halloween early on and i was able to search high and low for costume parts. 75% of my costume i already owned or made but there were a few things i had to purchase. this post will be about the transformations i performed on two pieces of my costume. this is my $8 ebay find. super bright but perfect in every other way.




a quick dye job and the color issue was resolved. unfortunately since the thread was coated it did not pick up the dye. i ended up taking a sharpie marker and just coloring the thread. i'm sure there's another method to fix this issue but i knew it would be dark at the party and i didn't want to spend too much time worrying/fixing it. although coloring thread took a lot longer than i initially thought.

the second transformation was my weapon for the evening. a $1 goodwill find.



i'm really happy with how this turned out. a total transformation. it's amazing what a little paint will do. i added some nuts, bolts and gears and about a million layers of paint. tomorrow will be the costume reveal.