It's Halloween!

Well, yesterday was. But yesterday I was recovering from one party and preparing for another. That's pretty rare for me - Halloween's not my favourite holiday. Last time I dressed up was three years ago. I don't have any special antipathy for it, I'm just bad at thinking of costumes and worse at making them. But this year, with the aforementioned two parties and lots of friends who love the holiday, I felt I had to do with something.

Last week I came up with the idea to go as a BuzzFeed listicle. I wanted something mildly clever, obvious and easy, making BuzzFeed a perfect fit. To line up even better with the current zeitgeist, I chose Disney princesses as the topic for the listicle. The problem was that even though the idea started as a cop-out, I ended up liking it a lot and put way too much work into it. What was a supposed to be a thrown-together gag ended up taking a whole afternoon and many craft supplies.

Luckily, it turned out really well. Unfortunately, I don't have a good picture of the whole thing together, but here are the parts.

First, the shirt:

Subtlety is not BuzzFeed's style, so the costume had to be obvious. Nothing more obvious than writing it on a T-shirt. This was easily the toughest and most time consuming part of the costume. That's mostly because I'm stupidly picky about tiny things, so I spent ages trying to get the font exactly right and used markers instead of paint because they allowed more precision. Funny enough, markers also allow three times as much wrist-pain and ten times as much time. Next time I'll use paint.

I did get some compliments on the lettering though, so maybe it was worth it.

Here's the main feature of the costume, as previewed in the T-shirt. Left to right, it's Cinderella, Elsa, Pocahontas, Nala and Aurora. The nails were done by my friend Meghan and I wish I had close-ups of each of them, because she did a fantastic job. There are all sorts of little touches to make the characters recognizable. I make the outfits out of felt and glued them to a cheap pair of gloves. But because I was dumb and bought the felt and markers before picking the princesses, I didn't have quite the right colours. That's why some are a bit off.

And for completion, here's the right hand. Left to right, there's Jasmine, Ariel, Snow White, Belle and Mulan.

I was surprised by how much of a hit the costume was. The shirt was too baggy to be easily read, so I had to explain it a lot, but once I did, people seemed to enjoy it. And I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it too. So maybe I'll do another costume next year. I'll have to plan things better though.