Posts tagged "costume":
Making a crown for my festive Creature costume
The short version: the crown is foam board with just one layer of paper maché, and it’s held on with magnets! The jewels are craft foam covered with Mod Podge and then painted.
(This is the last part of my Creature costume project: check out my articles on making the Creature mask and hands, and the scaly 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…
Creature from the Black Lagoon hands
Making these hands was the easiest part of my whole Creature from the Black Lagoon (/Bayou) costume. Here’s how I made ’em!
I started by tracing my own hand onto foam board, and then drawing a much bigger hand over that; I wanted to be sure that when I’m wearing these hands that my real hands are totally hidden. Read more…
Creature from the Black Lagoon mask, part 2
This part 2 of my Creature from the Black Lagoon(/Bayou?) mask process. See part 1 here!
Okay, so the paper mache for the Creature head was all done, and now it’s time for painting all the other finishing touches.
Painting the Creature head
For all my big masks, I always use some kind of base coat before moving on to spray paint. This time I tried something new: I started with a coat of Mod Podge (paid link) that I brushed on; Read more…
Creature from the Black Lagoon mask, WIP part 1
For Mardi Gras 2023 I made a Creature from the Black Lagoon(/Bayou?) mask and costume! I makde this stuff for my second year marching with my Mardi Gras krewe, Cryptique. Here’s my article about making the mask!
Pro wrestler skeleton costumes for Mardi Gras 2022!
Many months ago while brainstorming ideas for our new Mardi Gras skulls/costumes, my wife had the great idea for us to be skeleton pro wrestlers; we decided to be a tag team, and I came up with the name The Skull Krushers! These costumes were extremely fun to wear for our first march with Cryptique! Here’s how we made our skull masks…
Paper maché wolf mask
I made this oversized paper maché wolf mask for Halloween 2018! It was a rush project without a lot of planning, and I took a lot of shortcuts, but it still came out pretty cool (but, uh, way bigger than I was thinking)! Here’s how I made the thing…
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…
Magic the Gathering cosplay — Avatar of Woe: scythe
After I finished the Avatar of Woe’s helmet, I moved on to her scythe.
I drew the shape of the Avatar of Woe’s scythe blade onto foam board and cut it out with an X-acto knife.
Magic the Gathering cosplay — Avatar of Woe: helmet
Another fun commission! This client wanted to cosplay the Avatar of Woe card from Magic the Gathering, and she hired me to make this custom horned helmet and scythe.
Making the basic helmet shape
Wolf skull mask — part 4; making the ears
This is part 4 of my paper maché wolf skull mask; see part 1 here.
I wanted to give my wolf skull some ears; I had this idea because in researching wolf skulls I realized that basically all carnivorous mammals’ skulls look almost indistinguishable, and the main different from one mammal head to another is the ears. So my hope is that adding ears will help people recognize my skull as a wolf (or at least a dog! I’ll settle for a dog!). Read more…
Paper maché wolf skull mask — part 1
I made this here paper maché wolf skull mask for Mardi Gras 2017! It’s got detachable ears, a movable jaw, and it’s one of my most lightweight and comfortable skull masks yet. It was a lot of fun to make; here’s how I did it!
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…
Stabby ghost costume!
This was the second of the two “person getting killed by a ghost” costumes that I designed. Read about mine here for most of the basic info. I made my fiancée’s ghost second, using most of the same steps and materials, with a few important differences. I’ll cover those below…
Strangler ghost costume!
Hooboy, this costume was a big undertaking! The basic concept for this costume is a lightweight ghost sculpture, made with wires inside to make it somewhat adjustable, and it’s attached to a harness worn under one’s clothes. There were so many different parts to build and so many problems to solve, and I basically made up the whole thing as I went along, jumping around from part to part in a weird order. So, I’ve put together as much info as I can about how I made this thing here…
Creepy paper maché hands for my ghost costume
I made these creepy hands for my “guy being strangled by a ghost” costume! (Article about that whole thing coming soon.) You could use this same method for posable, realistic hands for any kind of monster decoration: a witch, a vampire, a zombie, etc!
First, I traced my own hand onto a sheet of craft foam (aka Wonderfoam). I kept my thumb stretched way out since ultimately I wanted these hands to be in a strangling position around my neck.
A video of my cuckoo clock skull mask in action!
A friend of mine took this video of me opening and closing my mask on Mardi Gras morning, around 9am at Jackson Square. The hinge mechanism in the door (made from a plastic file folder and some magnets) held up great over the course of the long day. Check out parts one, two, and three of my process for making this mask, and the article I wrote about making the little cuckoo bird skeleton. Fun!
Cuckoo clock skull mask, Mardi Gras 2016
Behold my cuckoo clock skull mask for Mardi Gras 2016! Wow, this one was complicated and fun! Here’s the short version…
This mask was made up of a lot of individual paper maché parts that I built separately and assembled. Here’s a very quick rundown of the parts and what they’re made of:
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.
Devil Man mask with horns — part 2
Okay, when we last left off, I’d finished the horns and the base for the mask. I neglected to take a lot of pictures of my process for putting the whole mask together, so I’ll explain all the remaining steps here.
About Manning Krull
How to make a 4-foot paper maché alligator
My violin skull mask, Mardi Gras 2015
Three-headed paper maché dragon sculpture