Ever since I was pretty young, I’ve enjoyed CosPlay. My earliest attempts were a combination of things I pulled together and things I managed to persuade my parents to make for me.
My first serious cosplay was Hawk Girl. I was keen to have wings, a helmet, and (as I called it then) my trusty whammer-hammer. The helmet and hammer I made with my Dad’s help. The helmet started life as a Wolverine face mask. We added papier maché and paint. The whammer-hammer was a wooden dowel, a styrofoam ball, papier maché and parts of an egg carton. I do remember driving my Dad a little crazy with how I wanted the painted finish to look!
We repurposed the hammer (I still have it!) for a Nordic Warrior costume. The shield was painted cardboard with hot glued metal buttons around the edge.
After that came Luna Lovegood. This was all thrift store finds and definitely marked the start of my lifetime love of shopping for secondhand clothes.
Then came Totoro. I’m a huge Studio Ghibli fan. My Dad and brother actually made this in secret as a surprise for an upcoming Comic-Con. If you zoom in on Totoro’s mouth, you can just about see my nose. The costume used pool noodles as a skeleton, covered in a layer of batting and a furry microfiber blanket.
One of my all-time favorite movies is Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, so I decided that Jack Skelington would be my next project. The head was made using a small inflatable beach ball that we covered in papier maché. We realized part way through that it wasn’t going to be very strong, and also that we’d never get the surface to look smooth. We tried a few different things, but ended up covering the outside with car body filler. The material is really stinky, but it can be sanded to a very smooth finish. The first photo shows the head before we finished sanding, and before we painted and varnished it. The next photo shows the end result. I found a black pin-stripe suit at a local thrift store, got some skeleton fingers from Amazon, and made the bat necklace with odds and ends from the Dollar Store. I was really happy with the end result, but it got really hot wearing that head.
Then came my brief time as a hobbit. This was assembled from thrift store finds and plastic feet I found on Amazon. I added some hair (got to have furry hobbit feet!) and painted the feet to be closer to my skin color.
The last photo is from a 2025 Renaissance Fair I went to. This outfit is almost all thrift store finds. Who doesn’t want to be a pirate?
Enjoy this trip down memory lane, from oldest to newest creation.
