Tag Archives: goblin ball

Goblin Ball Halloween Costumes Pt. 3

craft, Creativity, DIY, , , , ,

Happy Halloween (again and again) to all our readers who celebrate this weekend (and Monday)!

This year as stated in my previous posts here and here we decided to be attendees to the Goblin Ball, from the movie Labyrinth and here is an excellent video of the ball scene (and yes, that is David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin King).

I have talked all about the creation of our fun costumes, now for the unveiling.

Halloween Full Dress
Photo courtesy of my M-I-L.

We stopped at several friends houses and my M-I-L’s house before heading out on the town. My M-I-L took the above photo. There should have been some more photos by her, but my camera died just after she took one photo. So, we waited until after the night was over to take some more, and, as you can see, the costumes held up really well.

Halloween Full Dress
I love that drawstring purse. It worked great!

I do have to say that my feet really hurt in those shoes. I don’t wear pointy-toed shoes and my poor toes just did not like them, but it was endurable and they did look quite perfect with the dress. I had not planned to wear any jewelry, but that necklace just finished the outfit off perfectly. It is also courtesy of my M-I-L (she also supplied the shoe buckles).

Halloween Full Dress
Wish I had noticed that his socks needed to be pulled up.

My SO looked great. He had a lot of comments about his mask. Several people thought he was supposed to be a plague doctor (they wore these long filtered masks that were supposed to keep the germs out). He put two of my unused feather ornaments in the cuffs of his jacket and it was just the right touch. I made him a sash from the same velvet as my shawl and purse. We looked pretty good together.

Halloween 2011 Full Dress
My shawl that really did help keep me warm!
Halloween Full Dress
Here you can see the feather ornaments in my hair.

I was really happy with how the costumes turned out and we had a great time last night. Bloomington is a great town to be in for Halloween. Now what are we going to be next year?

P.S. Massive kudos and thanks to Mom (Lynne) for her magic work on the photos. They look wonderful!

Goblin Ball Halloween Costumes Pt. 1

craft, Creativity, DIY, , , , , , , , , ,

Happy Halloween to all our readers who celebrate this weekend (and Monday)! My SO and I have a particular fondness for this particular holiday. Not for any specific reason other than we like to come up with good costumes. This year, after some serious debate and wishy-washiness, we decided to be attendees to the Goblin Ball. For those of you who are devout Brian Froud and Terry Jones fans and who love the movie Labyrinth, you should know what I am talking about. For those who don’t know what I am referring to (or who have forgotten, after all, the movie is getting a little old now), here is an excellent video of the ball scene from the movie (and yes, that is David Bowie as the Goblin King).

The most time consuming part of this was trying to decide how we would go about creating our costumes and how much of an homage we wanted to pay to the creators. We ended up doing our own versions of two guests at the ball with a little more color added as we were no longer just background scenery for Sarah and Jareth.

The masks were the first things we started discussing and working out designs. My SO based his on a raven king plastic mask found at the costume shop while mine is based on a paper-mache (papier-mâché) domino mask found at the same costume shop. Then we added lots more paper-mache and plaster to complete our goblin masks.

My goblin mask before painting.
My goblin mask before painting.
My goblin mask after painting.
My goblin mask after painting.

Front view of my goblin mask.

At this point (for my mask much more so than his) there was quite a bit of carving to do to get a sinister, craggy face. With a dremel tool and some clay carving tools I had left over from an old art class, we proceeded to make an absolute mess on our kitchen table and floor. After some agony and repairs done by my SO to my mask, we both finally had something that we really liked. My SO painted his with a tea stain and mine he painted green, then overlaid that with a darker pearlescent green. Overall, my SO finished his mask in about a day and a half, and we worked on mine for about the same amount of time in total.

If you haven’t figured our between the lines, the masks were mostly done by my SO. He is an excellent artist and crafts-person when it comes to plaster and painting. He used to make the scenery and set pieces for the table-top role-playing games he played.

His goblin mask.
His goblin mask.

Side view of his goblin mask.

Front view of his goblin mask.

Our costumes were a bit more difficult to come up with and I will dedicate a whole other post to those tomorrow. We are definitely going to have some fun tomorrow night! I will certainly post some pictures of us in our completed costumes.