Super Duct Tape Cosplay and Me!

I have wanted to cosplay at a convention for a while, but I couldn't decide what to make or where to go.  This year I tried to get into San Diego Comic-Con, but that was a no-go because tickets were gone in less than ten minutes.  So instead, I decided to get badges for WonderCon for my boyfriend and I.  I had everything set, the only thing to decide upon was what to cosplay as.

I am a bigger girl, so it can be hard for me to decide what characters to cosplay.  I'm not always super confident when going as a tiny character, but I don't want to limit myself because of my size, so I try and do a little bit of everything, but I do think it's cool when I can find a character that I can relate to and rock it out! I'm 5'8" and a size 20, I wear glasses and I have gaps in my teeth.  This can sometimes create a challenge for me.  And although most of the time I just work around these physical characteristics, I figured that this time I might try and find a character that these would compliment.  After thinking about it for a while, I came up with this:

 

Oh yeah.  Alice from Superjail on Adult Swim.  So I'm going to be a chick cosplaying as a dude who dresses up like a chick.  It's gonna be awesome.  It's not going to be all sexy or anything, but it's going to be very empowering!  I'm a huge fan of the show, so I figured that this would be the perfect cosplay for me this year.  And since my boyfriend is going to go with me, I have roped him into going as The Warden.

Which is perfect for him because he's a somewhat tall guy with black hair and a gap in his teeth as well.  Perfection!

I sent in our entry form for the Masquerade at the con and then came the fun part--getting everything made!

First I went online and ordered all of the tape that I thought I was going to need.  Getting your duct tape online is probably the easiest way to get all of the colors that you'll want because while stores are now carrying more of a variety of colors now, they still won't have everything you need most of the time.  This even includes hardware and craft stores, sadly.  After searching for a while, I found that the store online that had the biggest assortment of colors and styles was TapeBrothers.com.  They are kinda pricey, but odds are that they will have whatever you want and they sell it in all kinds of different sized rolls. 

About a week later my tape came in the mail and I was super excited!

I laid out all of the different colors that I had to work with and figured out what I was going to start on first:

I was having a little bit of trouble getting myself motivated to start, because I always end up working on so many projects at once.  So the first thing that I ended up making was the hat because it was just an iconic piece and I knew I would feel some sense of accomplishment afterwards.  I recycled the top hat that I had used from the Tuxedo Mask costume from my Sailor Moon cosplay a few years ago and made it just a little bit taller. 

After having The Warden's headpiece done, I figured that I might as well get started on Alice's.  I could have gone out and bought a wig or dyed my hair, but I wanted to be duct tape from head to toe and show off my creativity.  So I decided to make a wig.  For the base I took an old baseball cap and cut it to hell.  Then I took 12" strips of the red tape and folded them in half to come up with this:

After coming up with about twenty strips I figured that I had enough to make a convincing ponytail and I bundled them up, taped them together and attached the bundle to the cap.  I tried it on my head, but it wasn't coming out how I wanted because my hairline was showing way too much.  I didn't exactly have any help with this part, so I put my hair into a bun and wrapped tin foil on my head and figure out what shape the rest of the wig needed to be.  Once I had that mold, I was able to tape over the foil and get the majority of the wig finished:

It still looked a little bit like a helmet though, so a few days later I took it to a friend's house and he was able to help me style the bangs, make it fit a little better and get out the kinks.  I added a hot pink duct tape scrunchie and it was finally good to go!

I figured that the wig would be the hardest part (and it was fun!), so now that that was done, I moved on to the clothing.  The Warden's purple tux, complete with coattails, would prove to be a bit of a challenge.  There are several ways that you can go about making duct tape clothing.  You can tape the duct tape to itself to make fabric, but I don't recommend this because if you're going to wear it, it's going to get sweaty and gross really fast; you can tape over a clothing item that you don't want anymore, but be aware that when you do this the tape is going to make the garment smaller than when you start no matter how careful you are; you can tape the duct tape to a light fabric to make a sturdy duct tape fabric and then follow a pattern as if you were sewing something from scratch which is great if you have the patience and time for that; or you can use all kinds of other techniques. 

I use a combination of these.  For the jacket and pants I went to the thrift store and found some crappy pajamas to tape over.  Pajamas are cool because they usually have some kind of a collar and they are lightweight.  Here is the first part of the jacket:

I had to make a much bigger collar and trim down the sleeves so that they weren't so bulky, but it came out pretty well after that:

I kind of jumped around all over the place with this project, but I'm putting everything in order so that it makes more sense.  A few weeks later after I wasn't sick of looking at purple tape, I came back to the jacket to make the coattails.  For these, I used another duct tape technique.  When I want to make duct tape fabric, I make a kind of duct tape loom for it.  I measured my boyfriend while he was wearing the jacket and used a guide piece of tape so that I knew how long I wanted to set things up.  Then I took the tape and taped one end to my kitchen counter and the other end to my handy-dandy step stool.  The base that I like to use for my duct tape fabric is paper towels.  I've tried several other things, but this is the cheapest and, uh, most absorbent thing to use.  I lined up the paper towel with the predetermined length of tape and with some very small pieces of tape, taped one end to the counter and one end to the stool until it was taut.  Like so:

Then once you have your "loom" set up you can start applying the colored tape for your fabric over it.  This works out really well and can be done pretty easily alone.

Just make sure you do your best to not wrinkle any tape that you put down on the towel and that you layer each subsequent piece of tape at least a quarter of an inch over the next.  Once you get one side done you can flip it over, trim off any excess and duct tape the next side if you need to.  I had a really nice pic of a finished piece of fabric, but my phone ate it.  I put the jacket on the stool and placed it on the table so that I'd have enough room to work with the long amounts of fabric I had to tape onto it.

Then after I figured out how much I wanted to hack off I drew my guides on the inside and then cut off what I didn't need and finished completely taping the coattails to the inside and outside of the jacket.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out :)  The next day I pretty much repeated those same steps to make the breastplate (because it would be too hot to do an entire undershirt), the bowtie and the cummerbund.  It was exciting because it was finally starting to come together!

I wanted to make sure that we had as many details down as possible, so I made some glasses out of paper towel, duct tape and yellow cellophane that he can just tape to the rims of his glasses:

I also made some gloves and a cane, but I didn't remember to take pictures of crafting those.  The cane was nothing special, I just duct taped an old cane I had (also from my Tuxedo Mask costume haha) but the gloves were a pain.  I had him wear some latex gloves and then I taped over them with this fancy grey matte duct tape I found. (It was super hard to work with and I probably won't use it ever again because it's not as sticky as the regular kind!)  Once he was taped into them I had to cut them off his hands and then I bought some Velcro and made little panels on the inside of the palms so that he could take them on and off.  Oddly labor intensive for such a small detail.

Finally I made the pants.  When you are taping up pants it's always a major pain because of the inseam and the pockets and the like.  So I highly suggest taping the main pieces in the front and then doing the rest while your subject is wearing them so that you get the seams right as well as, um, for lack of a better way of saying it, the booty curve!  If you tape everything flat and then expect it to fit properly, you're in for a nasty surprise.  Anyway, here is the finished product:

I forgot the shoes in this one and I am still thinking of using some black on the edges of everything to create a cell shading effect, but that's what I've got so far!

Then we come back to my Alice costume.  This was even harder than The Warden costume because I am a curvy girl and that can really suck when making costumes, duct tape or otherwise.  So, I made the glasses to fit over mine:

And then I started on the shirt and it was a total nightmare!  I bought a shirt from Goodwill and it said it was my size, so I stupidly didn't try it on.  I got home with it and it was pretty snug.  Not a good thing when, like I said before, duct tape shrinks clothing that you tape underneath it no matter how perfectly you tape it.  So I cut away at the sides of the shirt thinking that that would alleviate the problem and added panels to it using paper towels and more tape:

Yeah... That worked to a point, but it was still way too tight at the chest and it looked like a damn poncho:

Honestly, it still kinda looks like a poncho and I am going to have someone help me trim it down before WonderCon, but at least now it fits!  I ended up having to cut the front of it off, tape it while wearing it to fit my curves by adding yet another set of panels and then hiding a zipper under the buttoned portion of the shirt.  Major adventure. 

Then I got to make the fun stuff for it like the epaulets and the patches.  I think I did a damn good job with the patches:

Then I made a tie and put all of them on the shirt:

Finally I made the skirt (I had to install a zipper in that as well) and duct taped this pair of sneakers I got at Goodwill to make into combat boots.  And here is the finished product on this one barring any cell shading type thing like I was talking about earlier:

I still need to take it in on the sides so that it doesn't look like a frickin' barrel, and the friend that helped me with the wig drew me a pretty awesome set of muscles on some leggings I got, but for the most part this is complete!

I am planning on doing a shoot with the costumes before the Masquerade and I will update this blog post as soon as I finish, but for now I have a million other things to do to prep for WonderCon!  Crossing my fingers that it goes well! :)