Wednesday, March 7, 2012

How To Make Fancy Dress Costumes

By Owen Jones


People all over the world like watching films and films often reflect local traditional stories and folklore. The fascination with ghosts, ghouls and witches is a global phenomenon, but there are more local ones too.

One of the most famous in Europe is the so-called vampire, Vlad the Impaler, who certainly did exist but probably not in the form of the vampire that we all know of today from books and films.

Then there are the witches and warlocks who have been both respected and feared throughout history. Think of Merlin the Magician from the court of King Arthur and the witches of Salem in the United States, who were persecuted and murdered along with thousands of others in Europe at that same time.

There are also tree nymphs or dryads, believed in by the ancient druids and many peoples in other continents as well such as Asia and Africa. Fairies and goblins are or at least were widely feared all over the planet and there were the little people in Ireland, the Leprechauns. However, these characters did not only live on land. The ancient Greeks believed in Poseidon the god of the sea and many sailors believed in mermaids.

Some would argue that angels,cherubim, seraphim and the like come into the same category. Some would even say that Satan and God do as well. All of the above characters, with the possible exception of God, have been represented by human beings at parties that we call fancy dress parties many, many times.

Many films have been made which incorporate some of the above characters. The most well-known of these in recent years being the Harry Potter series and the Lord of the Rings. Just imagine the work that must have gone into making the costumes for those films.

What if you could design your own costume on that level of excellence for your next fancy dress party? Well, the costume designers working on those pictures are professionals, of course, and they have big budgets and plenty of resources to work with. You will be much more limited, but you can still realize very good results.

The first thing to do is choose the character that you would like to dress up as. Let's say a vampire. Then you ought to do a little research to find out what the character looked like. This is very simple on the Internet or you may have films and books on the subject. Then you make a list of the things you will need in order to dress yourself the same and perhaps the make-up you will require as well.

So, for a vampire, you will need long black trousers or a long black dress; a black jacket, shirt or blouse; black shoes and a black cape (or blanket). Some white make-up or talcum powder will give you a ghouls skin tone and some red or dark-red lipstick will emphasize your deathly pale facial appearance. A set of long white or yellowish fangs finishes the image. Then all you require to do is practice a couple of hypnotic stares in the mirror and a couple of weird stares and you are ready.

If you find it hard to get hold of any piece of the fancy dress, you could either rent a costume locally or purchase one from the Internet.




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