What I'm Making For Hallowe'en

For those of you who haven't seen "Time Bandits", here is my inspiration for Rich's costume that I'm making. I LOVED this design. I thought it was so well thought out. It's as if they were saying the Minotaur wasn't a REAL beast, but a symbolic one. It was just a persona of a great warrior, and he wore the head of a sacrificial bull on his own head. I noticed though....that somewhere in the film-making, it seems someone changed their mind....and they made the flesh hanging from the bull's head fresh with blood. Then, after Agamemnon, (Sean Connery), slays the Minotaur, he takes the head/mask which is accompanied by a ripping sound ....and the remaining shots of the warrior on the ground are angled so that we see no trace of his head.
Anyway, if I had a digital camera I could post my progress immediately.......but I'll get my film developed soon and show off what I've finished so far!

More Ghosts of Costumes Past

Okay, these aren't from the 70's, they're 80's photos, but they're just as scary. I don't know what I was supposed to be. Some sort of KISS inspired alien. I was 18 years old and I went to some party downtown.....in a bar if I remember correctly.You can tell it was the 80's by the belt I was wearing. Remember those? And the ankle boots my friend liked to refer to as "Peter Pan Puddle Jumpers". The most impressive thing about the costume is that I actually took crystals from an old chandelier and made them into earrings! They were HEAVY! And the necklace was the exact same one I wore when my sister and I were dressed as cats. (It belonged to my Mom, and it's long gone now.)
Here's a later photo taken when I worked at Loomis and Toles, the art supply company. They always had inventory on Hallowe'en, which really pissed me off, but I got dressed to go to a party right after. I was supposed to be a cave-woman. I sewed all the rabbit skins together by hand, and frizzed my hair out by sleeping in tiny braids the night before. I don't think crimping irons were available yet....because I would have killed for one of those!
Boy, I actually thought I was fat back then. I can only WISH my body was in that shape again.

The Ghost of Hallowe'en Costumes Past!!!

Here are some scary photos from my distant past. I happened to find a site, which I now have linked to my blog under the heading of Ugly Old Hallowe'en Costumes, which contains tons of images of those horrid, cheap plastic costumes we poor kids of the 70's were forced to tolerate every Hallowe'en. Well not me! I only remember wearing ONE, and it was Little Red Riding Hood. It was most likely purchased at "Woolco" at Agincourt Mall! Here is a photo of me wearing only the plastic "apron" part of it along with a red woolen ski hat, because my Mom knew the mask was nearly impossible to see through, and it looked stupid......and it smelled funny.
That's me, behind the other kids....looking mildly sulky.
I have to laugh at the ingenuity of the kid dressed as a pirate's parents for colouring in a piece of paper to make it "black", so he could have a proper eye patch! He also had a cardboard sword covered in tin-foil. I was probably jealous.Here's what my Mom used to do for us. She would take two socks, cut them a certain way, then sew them back together again forming a little "cat" hood. She'd put a cotton ball in the heels of the old socks, and BEHOLD! Cat ears. This is me on the left in white, and my sister in black on the right. We were probably around 8 years old. (She was the "man" because she was taller.)
Here I am using the same sock cat hood AGAIN! Our Mom liked to recycle.
Here's me again trying to be a Hobo. That was always such a cheap cop-out. A hobo. I decided to use an empty booze bottle and put water in it and put it in a paper bag. Ah.....authenticity.
I think the scariest thing about THIS photo is the hideous orange curtains we had in our house!
Here's another pretty scary home-made costume. Scary because I had a really bad perm, and I had NO IDEA how to apply eye-liner. I also used almost an entire cake of white eyeshadow on my face too. I'm also wearing a turtleneck ! Now THAT'S scary. This photo was taken the LAST year I went Trick or Treating. I had just turned 12, and my parents thought I was too old for that stuff.

Last Year's Costumes

Here are last year's costumes. I took a shortcut, and used store bought costumes and embellished them. My son was "The Grim Reaper" and my daughter was a Mermaid. The Reaper was a cheap, black nylon robe and dollar store plastic scythe, with strips of leather fringe tied near the top. I did his make-up with just a black eyeliner pencil and white face make-up.
The Mermaid was a "Barbie" mermaid dress which I ripped the badly made sleeves off ( she couldn't get her arms into them), and replaced with pink bra straps. I also sewed some applique sea shells and fish onto the front and embellished a blue wig with cowrie shells, fake pearls and beads. I bought the tiara in Chinatown. I don't know why my daughter insisted on carrying a "magic wand"...but whatever. Little girls love magic wands. I also put some lipstick and eye shadow on her of my own. She insisted that "Mermaids always wear lipstick!"
Oh well, that's it for this post!

Back To Hallowe'en

Because I don't have a digital camera...yet....we laid this quilt directly on Rich's scanner. I made it last year, and it's a twin size quilt. I was too eager to finish it so I abandoned the idea of making it a double. He loves it, and uses it all year 'round. I got the pattern off of a quilt block website, and the blocks form spiderwebs. It looks even better as a whole, and as soon as I get a chance, I'm going to photograph the entire thing.
I think the best part was going out and finding all the various Hallowe'en fabric!
And here are my kids dressed up a couple years ago as a Black Cat, and I forget who that other guy was. You know .....someone from Star Wars......oh I forget his name.......(I hope you know I'm being sarcastic!) Anyway, I had to buy the helmet and light saber, but the rest of the outfit I made. I found him great boots at Value Village. (That store is amazing for finding Hallowe'en stuff!)
And here's an earlier one of my son as a Viking. It all started when he won a prize from TVO Kids which was a book on Vikings. He thought it would be great to be one, so I made it happen. I made the sheepskin vest out of scraps I got for free from a leather shop near Spadina and Queen. It took a lot of work to piece them together, but it was worth it.
The helmet is papier mache, as well as the axe blade. The horns I carved from curved Juniper branches, and the little rivets on the helmet are actually lentils. Oh the fun you can have with craft glue!
The suede boots came from a yard sale, and I just shortened them a bit. I made the shield out of plywood and painted it according to a Viking design on a brooch, (from that book.)

More Musicians

Here are a couple of other guys who were great that night too. The first is Dave Bachelor, who is an amazing bass player, and if it weren't for his efforts, I never would have gotten the chance to sing the one song that really meant something to me. Thanks SO MUCH Dave!!!!!
Secondly, is Jan Carlee, who was also my supervisor, and the D.O.P. of layout. He's a great guy with a great sense of humour and phenomenal taste in films. He was our drummer on many of the tunes we did!
A couple of others whom I don't have photos of were Tim Deacon who was absolutely amazing on harmonica, and Jean Pilotte on guitar. That really was an excellent night, and if we never get to do it again, I'm just so damn thrilled we got to do it at all!!!

Regarding "Still Singing"

Here are some photos of Music Night II at DKP/IDT/Starz Animation. I guess it WAS officially "Starz" at the time...so I should continue to call it that. It was held March 29th, 2007.
To help boost morale while our project was being overhauled, the studio was kind enough to sponsor a fun night, allowing many of the musicians that make their livings as artists get up there and show off. It wasn't an "open mike" thing....we'd all rehearsed together many times and tried to make it as coherent as possible. Although we were constantly reminding each other that it was just for fun and there would be no talent scouts in the audience, there still was a bit of nervousness involved....on MY part anyway.This is Eric Murray on the far left. He was really great, playing keyboards and singing at the same time. I, for one, can barely manage singing and playing the tambourine at the same time!!! That's Avi Katz on the far right playing one of his many collectible guitars. We were doing "Mustang Sally", and he sang lead vocals. I was just there for back-up.
Avi played an absolutely KICK ASS version of "Cross-Eyed and Painless" with Eric. I wasn't on that one though.
The two songs I got to sing as lead vocalist were CCR's version of "I Heard it Through The Grapevine" and (my favorite) "Don't You Want Somebody To Love" by Jefferson Airplane. People were calling me "Grace" for days afterwards!
Eric and I sang a few songs with him in the lead, and myself as back-up. "Here Comes Your Man" by The Pixies was one of them.
I really like this photo. It looks like I actually know what I'm doing.
Oh well, that's all the photos I was able to swipe...er...I mean ...have from that evening.