Manning Makes Stuff - Halloween decorations, paper mache masks, costumes, party ideas, and more

Manning Makes Stuff - Halloween decorations, paper mache masks, costumes, party ideas, and more

Posts tagged "suit":

Making a scaly suit for my Creature from the Black Lagoon costume

I made this shiny scaly men’s suit for Mardi Gras 2023 for my “Creature from the Black Bayou” costume!

I made the scaly suit with shiny metallic paper and hot glue, and I want to stress right away, this is not the best way of doing this! A much better way to make a suit like this would be with fabric or vinyl or some other kind of flexible plastic Read more…

Published by Manning on March 8th, 2023 | No Comments

Painting a skeleton shirt with fabric paint

I’ve already posted two articles about painting skeleton clothes — my first skeleton suit, and a new pair of skeleton pants — and I learn something new every time I paint up some new clothes.

I’ve been wearing my skeleton suit every Mardi Gras for years now, usually with a black dress shirt, sometimes with a tie and/or vest, but last Mardi Gras (2017) was so warm it made me realize I also need an option that doesn’t involve layers. So I decided to paint this skeleton dress shirt. Read more…

Published by Manning on December 27th, 2017 | No Comments

Painting new skeleton pants

I’ve been wearing my hand-painted skeleton suit for five Mardi Gras in a row now, with a few Halloweens thrown in there as well, and for some reason the pants seem to be harder to squeeze into every year! Huh! I wonder how that could be; they must keep shrinking in the wash a little more every single year! Yeah, that’s gotta be it. So anyway, it’s reached a point where I absolutely needed to make new ones for this Mardi Gras; last year I seriously thought they might split open on me during a parade! I learned a lot from how I made these last time, and luckily this was a much more successful project my second time around…

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Published by Manning on February 13th, 2017 | 6 Comments

The Devil Man and the Swamp Goddess

The Devil Man and the Swamp Goddess

This old-timey photo of me and my fiancée — dressed as the Devil Man and a swamp goddess — is an edit of a photo by New Orleans photographer Kevin O’Mara, taken at our Voodoo Bayou Halloween party in 2015. In editing the pic in Photoshop I wanted to try to make it look like an authentic vintage Halloween card; I think it’s pretty close! Let’s see if this pic starts turning up in dumb listicles about terrifying old Halloween pics; I see those kinds of lists every year and half of the photos in them aren’t actually vintage, or aren’t actually Halloween-related.

You can see the original, unedited version of this pic (with crazy green lighting) in my post about making the foam board antlers for my fiancée’s headdress.

Published by Manning on November 15th, 2015 | No Comments

My hand-painted skeleton suit

how to make a home made skeleton costume

I made this skeleton suit for my first Mardi Gras (2012) and have worn it every Mardi Gras since, plus a few Halloweens here and there. Making the suit was a fun project, and a little more challenging than I expected.

I started with a thick black blazer and a black pair of cotton pants, both of which were from H&M; I already had them in my closet and chose to sacrifice them for this costume.
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Published by Manning on June 21st, 2015 | 4 Comments