LoSP COSTUMING: Book and Record Release Party

Thursday night was the League of Space Pirates Book and Record Release Party. I wanted to dress up fancy. Learning from our last event at Gallery 5, I dressed a bit warmer. I made three new costume pieces...hair combs with tiered chains, a cropped jacket, and a striped mini skirt. I paired those with some older costume pieces...spiked hair clips and a long striped bustle. I also wore some other favorite pieces...a black silk corset, skeleton print socks, and black hidden platform booties. The jewelry is from various places. For my makeup, I went with purple and silver for my eyeshadow. I want to play with doing dramatic makeup in various colors, since most of my costumes are black, white, and silver. I normally wear red eye makeup, for a fun challenge. I'll get into the makeup more tomorrow.

Noah took this great photo of me at Balliceaux in my full costume. I love the way it came out with the lighting and filter he used with Instagram. You can't see the bottom half in this photo, but I've added some photos of me wearing the bustle, socks and boots, to help you visualize the full costume.

I used the spike clips you see to help keep the combs of the hair chains in place. My hair isn't thick enough to hold up the weight of the chain using combs, but the spike clips make the hair style more dramatic and keep the combs still. I bent the prongs of fancy spiked bead caps around black alligator clips and secured them more with a little bit of E6000. For my hair style, I attempted to tease the top and sides of my hair. Then, pulled the tease sections back and secured them with bobby pins. I placed the chains right under the bobby pinned section, bringing the combs to the side of my head. I slipped the spike clips across the sides of the combs. My hair style stayed pretty well. I have thin hair, so it's hair to do teasing sometimes and get a nice full effect.

I made this cropped jacket from an old damaged pleather jacket. I needed the warmth, and it also added a nice edge to my costume. This is something I'll get a lot of use out of. I got a lot of compliments on it, and inspired other people to upcycle their old jackets into something similar.

I made this stretchy striped skirt to wear with my costume. I though it would fit ok, but it ended up being a bit of a nightmare. I'll need to redo this skirt tighter, and make one that comes up higher, so my corset overlaps it. I'm still figuring out how to do these sort of skirts. I wanted to do them without zippers, so they can just slip on and off easily. However, I think a zipper and waist band will have to do. I'll keep you updated on this design process as I want to eventually share how to make a stretchy reversible skirt.

I made this bustle for our event last May. I wanted to pair it with the striped skirt, to get a neat striped effect. The stripes are about the same width, despite the fabrics being different. 

Photos by Spiderbite Studios

On New Year's Eve, we meet some friends for dinner. I decided to wear these skeleton socks with this striped hi-lo hem dress and black booties I had recently purchased. Noah took this photo of me when we were finished with dinner. These are the socks and booties that I wore for the event.

That is it for now. We have a radio performance in a few hours. I'm going to do some semi-dramatic makeup for that, just in case there are photos. I'm bringing my real camera, so I can take some nice photos of us. I have on a more casual striped and velvet outfit. Not doing fancy hair or wearing any earrings, since I'll be wearing headphones a lot. If you are in Richmond, VA, you can tune into WRIR 97.3 at 5pm to listen for us. If you are not local, or have trouble tuning in, you can listen to us via the internet. Go to WRIR, click the red LISTEN button, open the download which should cause your music player to pop up. The radio station will self play live. You can pause it, but when you go back to play, it will be what ever is live, not where you left off.