Ah Halloween, the best time of the year for people who hate being themselves and love wearing weird shit. This is most certainly my holiday. I usually decide what I’m going to be over the summer in order to have adequate time to work on my costume. I had about a zillion uninspired ideas until one day I got bored, threw on Hulu and watched Little Shop of Horrors.
The rest, as they say is history. I decided to forgo the traditional big giant plant head and went for a looser interpretation of the original. Think of this as Audrey 2’s hot but unmotivated sister who’s really into Instagram. I love the idea of being dangerous but also kind of pretty. Thus this costume was born.
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I started working on this costume in late August. Around the first week of October I started to get worried I’d bitten off more than I could chew timewise, but I pulled it together in the end.
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The base of the plant heads are made of styrofoam eggs and a blank styrofoam wig head. I bought a cheap foam cutting tool online to cut out the mouths and slice off the neck of the wig head. BEWARE! Cutting styrofoam smells just so, so, so bad. Like burning plastic. It’s terrible. I’d recommend doing it in area with lots of windows. That shit lingers.
The foam cutting tool I bought was a little sketchy. I bought the cheapest one I could find on Amazon and the directions are in the brokenist of broken English. It basically works like a curling iron that you can use to slice through things. It worked pretty well but I DEFINITELY wouldn’t leave that thing plugged in unattended.
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After I carved out the styrofoam, I paper towel papermached the inside of the mouths, then covered the rest of the styrofoam in clay. I did this to reduce the weight of the overall piece. Initially, I wanted to use professional modeling clay, but it was much too heavy to be supported by the floral stems I was planning to attach to them. I ended up using Crayola Model Magic. Not great for professional pieces, as it has a tendency to shrink and crack, but it was the lightest weight material I could find.
I created the the tongue and teeth separately. I stuck toothpicks in the end of the tongue so that I could stick it directly into the styrofoam, along with some glue.
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After I painted the pieces, I put some varnish on the tongue, teeth and lips to make them look a little wet.
Once the plant heads were assembled and painted I attached the stalks. I have a ton of floral stuff hanging around so I used the thickest stalks I could find, stuck them into the back of the plant heads, then reinforced them with a cut up paper towel roll and duct tape. Then I glued some leftover leaves onto the base of the stalks to cover up all that mess.
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The smaller plant heads were much easier to deal with and didn’t need any extra reinforcement.
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After all that nonsense, I sewed more floral stuff onto a green dress I used for an old Halloween costume and made a flower crown to match. When those were finished I sewed a few of the smaller plant heads into them.
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After all that (and seriously I was getting burned out) I had to figure out how the hell to actually attach those big plant heads to my costume. I feel like I could have found a better solution, but for the sake of time I took the easy way out. I bought a very wide belt and wore it under the dress. Then I stuck the plant stalks through the back of my bra and the belt, then tied them off at the top. Definitely not the best solution and they kind of bobbed around all night, but a pretty easy solution for time crunch.
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After that it was wig and makeup time! I got this great pink cosplay wig off of Amazon. As a rule, I avoid wigs from Halloween stores because the quality is usually pretty terrible and for the same price, you can get a great cosplay wig. A lot of people just assumed I had dyed my hair when they saw me, so while it’s not super professional quality it definitely got the job done.
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I finished off the costume with some bright green and pink makeup, and some fancy face crystals from Primark. I will never need an excuse to wear face crystals. I’m a nerd but I love them, just so much. I also donned some nude fishnets and my plantiest of boots.
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Over all, I had a ton of fun making this costume but I wish I had given myself more time. The clay I used worked pretty well, but I hate that it cracked. The stuff is pretty fragile, so after the first night I went out, I had to repair the tongue on the larger piece. Even though it looks super cool, I wouldn’t recommend doing tongues that stick out too far again, unless you are SUPER careful and not drunk at all. Heh.
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I’d love to figure out a better apparatus to keep the stalks in place aside from just sticking them down my back. If I can, I’ll probably reuse some parts of this for the Mermaid Parade this year.
And in case you’re wondering I would absolutely dye my hair that color pink if I wasn’t positive it would get me fired from my day job. C’est la vie!
Happy 2 weeks after Halloween! Here’s a photo of my costume in action, featuring the lovely Sasha!
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Now, on to Christmas! (And Thanksgiving’s okay too.)