This idea came to me when I saw Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Alan Cumming interviewed on Good Day, Sacramento one morning. Naturally, the subject came up of what a pain it is to wear all that blue make-up. Somehow that got the wheels turning, and I came up with the idea of dressing up as Mystique from the comics (she's way cooler in the comics).

Originally I was planning to wear this costume to BayCon 2004, but I ended up having all the supplies together sometime in mid September, so I decided to see if I could get it done in time for Halloween--I succeeded ... mostly.

Most of the blue that you see is a simple body suit that I ordered from a dance supply store (urgh, can't remember which one--sorry). On my face is Ben Nye stage make-up, along with the purple lipstick left over from my Lulu costume.

The gloves and boots were bought off Ebay, then altered. The gloves were simple elbow-length PVC gloves which I cut points out of, then hemmed the edges.

The boots were simple brown leather boots which I also cut points out of, but then I had to cover them with some PVC fabric which isn't as easy as it sounds (@_@). I tested different kinds of glue, but what worked best was sanding the finish off the leather, then gluing the fabric on with fabric glue, then a bit of hand-stitching on the sides to re-enforce it. The hardest part was the toe, which took a lot of trial-and-error to figure out what shape to make the piece of fabric.

The little skulls were made from little rubber skeletons that I bought at Party City for something like a dollar each--I just cut the skulls off with an X-acto blade, then cut them in half vertically, so only the faces remained. Then I colored them gold with a gold leafing pen (the kind I use is SOOO much shinier and more metallic than any spray paint I've ever used), and dabbed a bit of black acrylic paint into the crevices with a dry brush to give it a tarnished look, then sprayed them again with lacquer. They were hollow, so I also had to fill them in with hot glue so they'd have a flat surface on the back. I attached stick pins to the skulls that were to be pinned onto the dress. The one on my forehead is stuck on with Spirit Gum--that stuff is great! I'd also made some skull earrings (simply took two whole skulls and attached a hook at their tops) but they didn't show under the wig, so I left them off.

The original dress was satin and severely altered from a Chinese dress pattern. But after Halloween, I wasn't happy with the way it hangs in the pictures, so I decided to take it apart and use the pieces as a pattern to make a new one out of lycra--that one looks tons better, I also altered the seams to follow the line of the splits better. Also, considering that I'm wearing a corset under the dress, it really needs that jacket so that forced hourglass figure I have looks less odd. I also gave it a mandarin collar at the last minute because turtlenecks make it look like I have no neck ;/

What I'm most proud of is the wig--I started with the Enchantment wig from Amphigory, then I cut it to about half it's original length, layered it like crazy, curled it a bit, and eventually came up with this almost-Rachel-from-Friends look. Don't remember if that's what I was going for originally, but I like it a lot.

All in all, I'd say the costume was a success (aside from a "wardrobe malfunction" I had just before going out on stage--I lost one of the little skulls and while it was on the floor, about a third of the paint got rubbed off >.<) Unforuntely, I never did get measured for contacts like I'd planned.