happy halloween!

happy halloween!

 i started this sketch a few days ago on a train home from new york, until interrupted by a man who started a long conversation with my mom and me for the rest of the ride home. he was curious about me and my story because in 2009, his son was in a car accident due to black ice that resulted in him also in a wheelchair.  he was a really nice and positive man, who just kept telling me to never give up. he also kept saying how difficult it is for the parents (even more difficult, so he says) since they just want to see their kids get better so badly. i get it, but it's still really strange to hear from the parents point of view sometimes. the man's son has already recovered a great amount in only a year, so good for him, and best of luck to them.

time to make halloweeny treats and finish my horror-movie-watching. after spending the month watching friday the 13th (part 1-8), and nightmare on elm street (1-7), i'm finishing with freddy vs. jason. followed by SAW 3D later tonight with tim, the 7th and last saw movie to (sadly) end our tradition of seeing the new saw every year on halloween together since 2005. i know no one cares about my movie watching, but i get excited... 

halloween art!

i couldn't bear to go the entire holiday season (october) without a new halloween piece. i designed this last year for the trick-art-treat show with the autumn society, but decided to make my frankie's worst nightmare painting instead. i was planning on painting this since then, but considering i haven't had much time in the past few weeks, i set aside a few hours to make a quick drawing of this with pen, charcoal, and pastels. i pretty much love it, but what else is new.  happy halloween!

who framed roger rabbit?

there's a lot of boring text, so read if you're interested about the process, but at least skim through and check out our halloween 2010 costume pictures.

roger rabbit, benny, and judge doom!

it's been a few years that i had the idea to be roger rabbit and benny for halloween.  i really wanted to do this after visiting disneyland in april when i went on the roger rabbit ride where the ride cars are little benny's. i put the idea aside, but when i couldn't think of anything else i finally decided to do this, and convinced tim to be my nemesis, judge doom. the costumes were very simple to make, and i did bits and pieces at a time, but overall it took entirely too long to finish the 3 characters. for the most part (and for the first time) i basically made everything myself, which i'm pretty proud of.  tim had no time this year so i got his costume together and made his accessories for him. since i put so much time into this, i'm posting lots of pictures and explaining my processes. i'm actually not as excited about my own costume (like i usually am) by itself, but really excited for the three characters all together. roger rabbit, benny, and judge doom!

i'll start with judge doom, since his accessories are my favorite. his entire outfit was easy to find. tim already had a black vest, pants, shoes, and white shirt, and my dad had a bowtie. he grabbed a pair of black gloves, and i conveniently found his hat and glasses at the halloween store. i also bought some black fabric for his cape thing to attach to his long black coat, which we borrowed from my mom. but enough of the boring part!  the dip and shoe! my favorite parts.

the only concern we had about the judge doom costume was that people wouldn't know who he is. but if you know the movie, then you know judge doom. you must remember what i think is one of the most disturbing scenes in any movie. when judge doom kills a shoe in the dip. if you haven't seen it, or need to refresh your memory, watch it on youtube now.  this is legitimately one of the most horrifying scenes of all time and it makes me beyond sad to watch it. that poor, adorable little beeping shoe, i didn't think it was possible for a cartoon to show such emotion. we grabbed a pair of old shoes at the thrift store, and i painted the poor little fellow's colors and face directly onto the show. next, i asked my dad for a cylinder bucket that i could paint some dip on. he gave me a perfect handheld container, and i used the image on the dip buckets from the ride, rather than the movie. and thus we have the saddening but fantastic shoe and dip below!

the second best part about judge doom's costume was his hair. technically, judge doom's head is bald with white hair on top, but tim wasn't about to shave his head, so he cut his hair short all around and left it long on top. we curled it out, stuck it straight up, and sprayed it white (though it looked gray).. it looked pretty hilarious (to me anyway)

 

next was roger rabbit. the easy stuff: buying red scrubs, a white long sleeve shirt, yellow gloves, and a set of bunny ears, bowtie, and bunny tail. the bowtie was light pink, so i altered it by painting it blue with yellow dots. the ears were also not quite right, since the pink part was shimmery. i hate that look, so i painted light pink over top, and glued on some white hair that i spray painted orange. to go with my red pants, i glued strips of red fabric for suspenders and glued on some white buttons spray painted yellow. last for roger were his adorable big bunny feet! these were my absolute favorite part.

i bought a cheap oversized pair of slippers and some white fur. first i painted the bottoms of the slippers with the same pink paint that i used for the ears (even though no one would see it, because i am crazy). i covered the slippers with the fur, using hot glue. and my mom suggested i sew some black lines for his toes. so i took a needle and thread and stuck it through the front of the toes a bunch of times, resulting in perfect roger feet! i love them.

of course i finished by painting my own face like a bunny with a big pink nose. and with some heavy blue eyeshadow in place of the giant blue eyes roger has.

costume 3 is benny! what you need to make a benny: way too much time, gallons and gallons of spray paint, and unlimited gluesticks. for my first attempt to make another car for my wheelchair, my mom and i started cutting and shaping a gigantic cardboard box, which actually fit around me pretty well and had a nice box car shape. only problem was benny is more round and bubbly, and the cardboard box was so big that it would have been impossible to even get it in my car or any car. it also was entirely too frustrating to try to work with something so much bigger than me. long story short, it's difficult to do a lot of things when you're sitting and have limited mobility so i was basically sitting useless watching while my mom tried to adjust this huge box into a car. i gave up quickly and luckily remembered we still had my racecar from a few years ago. woo! so we recycled the racecar.. my dad helped tape the pieces together, made of this black plasticy cardboard type stuff, and we added sides for doors and that was that. i was going to use yellow tape to cover the entire structure, but i woke up to a nicely spray painted bright yellow car, thanks to my very helpful dad. i'm very grateful since he had to spray it white before starting with the yellow layers.

time for lots of details. my dad recently cleaned out the shed in our backyard, and since he doesn't know how to throw things away (a horrible habit i've apparently gotten from him), it ended up being a huge advantage for me. we had some pool noodles lying in the backyard that he's been asking whether or not to throw away or to keep them "just incase." so i cut them a part, and made bumpers with them. the blue i used for the front and back bumper (with smaller pieces hot glued on), and the red i used for the black on the sides around the wheels. it took a lot of spray paint to get them gray and black, so much my little fingers hurt, along with a sore wrist the next day. the wheels are store bought styrofoam wreaths (the back wheel and steering wheel sprayed black) with pieces of cardboard (sprayed gray) glued in the center.  benny's eyes were made from a styrofoam ball, cut in half, with cardboard painted black glued around it.  for his mouth, i just cut a giant piece of white cardboard in the shape of his happy mouth and drew/painted his teeth and tongue. the last thing i needed, but couldn't figure out what to use, was all the thin gray tubing around his eyes, mouth, and top. my mom came up with the idea to use rope that we got at the fabric store and sprayed gray/silver, hurting my little fingers yet again. i glued the rope in each of those areas and used the extra for benny's door handles.

the hardest part was figuring out how to glue the black noodles around the tires and on the sides smoothly. i ended up cutting pieces for each tire and hot gluing them on individually, which took the longest out of anything. pool noodles don't like to curl (or stay), so it was ungodly frustrating. no one should have to use so much hot glue at one time.  after gluing on all the other elements, i glued each wheel onto the car structure, then a piece to connect them in the middle. the last step i did was paint big black rectangles where the taxi checkers should go, and finished by using yellow tape to make it checkered, which lucky for me the yellow tape was the exact same color as the yellow spray paint. and we have benny!

up close photo below! you can kind of see judge doom's hair. thanks for reading about me wasting my life on a halloween costume. i wouldn't have it any other way.

costumes part 2 : wheelchair edition

i can't believe it took me as long as it did to finally start taking advantage of the hunk of titanium i'm sitting on ever single day of my life.  in '07, i was working at the halloween store in hamilton, and i was conveniently placed by all the sexy costumes. i'd rather cut a finger off than wear any costume that has been sexified, however they had a cute racecar driver costume and my mind instantly went to being a driver and having my wheelchair be the racecar. i convinced tim it was an awesome idea and it was really exciting, especially as my wheelchair's very first costume. 

i got that "sexy" racecar costume and altered it a little by sewing up the skirt's big slit, wearing a shirt under so none of my lovelies popped out (not that i actually foresaw them doing so anyway), and covering up the silly "69" number on my chest with an "88." i wore black armwarmers cause i'm basically a rolling icebox at all times, but my costume was completed by my sister's at-the-time boyfriend's giant helmet, for that last extra touch.  for tim's costume, we altered his red shirt and black hat with some matching racing stripes, another thank you to mama bear for helping with her handy dandy sewing skills. he threw on some oversized sunglasses and headset to make him look like the professional pit crew that he is, complete with a little jug of gas.. or inflammable liquid. both of us, however, made the point to iron on our names on our shirts because that's what made us a real racecar crew.  like i said, it was exciting as our very first attempt to use wheelchair as a basis for our costumes.

and that's our racecar crew!

 next up is my greatest creation from 2008. pee wee herman and chairy! i tried my hardest to convince tim to be jambi or whoever else but he refused. this costume actually ended up helping me win a thousand dollars and two airline tickets, which paid for my trip to vegas that summer. what a glorious halloween that year.  the story behind my big win: we dropped by 93.3 mmr's creep show and i can't tell you the excitement when they told me go get up on stage for the costume contest.. and i can't tell you the amazement i felt when i heard everyone screaming my very own name up on stage, loving me, chanting it: "peewee! peewee! peewee!"  it was like a dream come true.  especially after they gave me all those sweet prizes. 

my suit jacket was found at the thrift store in the little boy's aisle. since i'm not actually a little boy, i wore my own gray pants. luckily i already had a blank white pair of shoes lying around, that i had planned on (still do) painting them. i sprayed my hair black, slicked it back, and went to town on my face making it pale with bright pink cheeks. basically all that comes down to is i looked like 13 year old with too much make up on. the fun part was making chairy. like our itchy and scratchy costumes, my mom took over this task as well. my mom, my dad, and i cut up some plasticy cardboard to fit around my chair and my mom found the perfect color fabric, and really soft fabric at that, which covered each cardboard piece: backrest, armrests, seat cushion, cushion below (mouth) and the tires.  chairy's eyes i made from  styrofoam and left over fabric and i think her eyelashes were just layers of tape cut to size.

and that's peewee and chairy!

finally is captain hook and his nemesis crocodile from '09! this one took a whole lot of time, from a bunch of different people, but i fully feel it was worth it. while i was constructing my ship, trying to figure out how to make it stand on its on, on my chair, figure out how to push it, and decorate it to look like a real pirate ship, my mom was off sewing my captain hook's jacket and tim's crocodile belly and tail.i went crazy looking for a big hat, but all i could find was a pimp hat that i of course used all my red spray paint on, and glued on the biggest feather i could find. building my ship wasn't an easy task, but once built, i just added details of wood, windows, cannons, and anchors, with paint/marker, and tiny little handmade ropes and sails, some sails even higher than me. basically, what truly brought my costume together wasn't any of the details or accessories, but the mustache. of course. 

tim's costume was also simple. after sewing a belly filled with stuffing onto a green shirt, my mom did the same for the tail attached to the back of the shirt, then sewed a green hood.  this is where we came in. we grabbed some foam sheets and cut out the shape of the mouth, teeth and tongue and began to make mr. evil crocodile man come to life. his eyes were styrofoam for cartoony effect. i believe the last step in finishing tim's costume was the dark green spikes i glued on from his back down to his tail.  perfection.  kim joined us as peter pan, so our trio of nemesis of nemesis of nemesis ended up being pretty fun.

and that's captain hook and his nemesis crocodile!

come back soon to see one last costume post about my adventures making costumes this year, i'm excited so you should be too!

costumes part 1 !

for those of you who are dressing up for halloween, but don't quite have that amazing costume yet, here are some past ideas of mine(and others).  and how to do it. 

...except, you can't really redo our ideas because you won't be nearly as cool as us. but here we go.

first up is from everyone's favorite cartoon, the itchy and scratchy show! these are some of the coolest simpsons costumes i've ever seen, and i'm allowed to say that without sounding conceited because my generous mom devoted her time to helping us out. she basically took over our costume project and put her heart and soul into sewing up the costumes herself while we sat and enjoyed hours and hours of laughter with the simpsons. that's a lie, but she did way more than us. 

tim and i came up with these costumes in '07 while tim was still working for a stuffed animal company. that means they had hundreds of giant stuffed animals from all different popular shows and movies. after sending me some decent ideas, tim sent me the idea to do itchy and scratchy and it was instant excitement. we were planning on just cutting holes through them and wearing them almost like t-shirts, but my crazy, but brilliant mom got involved. we had a confetti party while removing all the stuffing from the bodies of the toys.. which you can see the excitement from my sister in the picture on the right. of course it wasn't just fluffy stuffing, but lots and lots of tiny little styrofoam balls. needless to say, it was a huge mess. but we had fun. 

tim and i bought gray and blue t-shirts to match the color of our characters and my mom proceeded to sew the empty bodies to the front of the shirts. after ripping off their heads, my mom took some fabric to fit our heads and sewed it inside the toy heads so we could wear them like hats. that's basically it, along with some store-bought weapons. so if you want to be a cartoon character, find a stuffed animal and wear it for halloween! but like i said, ours is better.

next, are the universal monsters. in '08, we were invited to a wedding on halloween and came up with the group costume idea of universal monsters, but all dressed up nice and formally for the wedding. we have phantom of the opera, mummy, wolfman, bride of frankenstein, and inivisble man, all dressed in our finest. i can't say much about how everyone else's costumes were made, since i had no part in it (if any of you ever read this, feel free to comment with your costume escapades)... and technically there's not much i can tell you about how to make mine and tim's (bride and wolfman) that you couldn't figure out yourself. but i'm using it as an excuse to post our amazing group.  bride of frankenstein was made with a creepy red dress we had lying around in a halloween box in the attic, but any dress could obviously be used for this. i ripped apart some netting and pinned it all over the dress to make it look more old and horrorish. the rest was just pale make up and a horribly itchy store bought wig that i spent a lot of time trimming the bangs and hair spraying to make it actually look like a nice hairdo like in the picture, instead if looking like it's been stuck and tangled in a bag for 3 months.  wolfman was a bunch of nice clothes bought from the thrift store, altered with holes torn and fur glued in place- in legs, arms, vest. complete with a cute, red bowtie. his long werewolf gloves were store bought, but his face was the best part. lots of brown fur/hair glued to his face, surrounded by and blended by lots of facepaint. he was pretty impressive to me

so these aren't the most original in the world, but you have to admit it's a fantastic idea for a wedding and when all together, we looked pretty awesome. or maybe i just get overly excited over things, especially halloweeny things.

i made a painting based on these monster costumes (of tim and me), so check out the post from last year to see pictures.

tomorrow i'll post pictures of halloween costumes where i used my wheelchair to my advantage and to enhance my costume ideas.  the fun has only just begun!

halloween cupcakes

who's excited for the last week of halloweeny posts before returning to boring real life and real art?! i am! i wish halloween month could last forever.

i baked and decorated some yummy cupcakes for a halloween party this weekend. i don't know why i get so excited over fiun decorated tasties, but i do, and i was excited about these. except the 2nd photo (of 9) which were the last bunch i rushed through when i ran out of time. i stole brian's idea for the mummy cupcakes (when we made halloween treats recently), but it's all over the internet so i don't feel bad about it.

now, who's excited to see the upcoming thanksgiving cupcakes i'll be decorating!? i am!