Halloween & Day of the Dead

This years Annual Halloween outing included Kidvic, Jeff and Vanessa (her first Hollywood outing). This was my 4th year heading to Hollywood, and it’s become a tradition now. My ass got grabbed quite a few times and I didn’t really care until I was in line ordering pizza and some dude just got a handful grab of my derrière. Wasn’t expecting that, but I was starving and I got my pizza, so meh!

The night was super fun. I saw some awesome costumes and many scantily-clad hotties. We were debating going to a bar, but the lines were SUPER long, and it began to sprinkle at this point so we decided on heading back to the car as it was about 1am at this point. People in the streets were cheering and dancing, and I will say it was pretty cool. Our trek to the car became a nightmare when out of nowhere gushes of water fell from the sky. Pandemonium struck and people in the streets began screaming and running looking for cover. Some girl tried to jump a puddle, landed wrong and rolled in the puddle. She got up, looked around and said, “I’m fine. I’m fine. I still want to go dancing!” Brave girl because if that was me, I would have been mortified. Wearing a zentai suit with only my boxer briefs underneath did not help as the rain continued. We got to the car soaking wet, and drove home.

The day after was the Day of the Dead festival at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I had never been to it before and have always wanted to attend. I ended up going with Vanessa and Lulu. A bottle of wine was our pre parting drink of choice, and having not eaten much earlier that day, it did its job fairly quickly. Before entering the cemetery, we got a street dog, and if you are not familiar with these, they are hot dogs wrapped in bacon and toppled with onions, bell peppers and condiments. My god, there is no other hotdogs that come close to these amazing motherfuckers!

Jessica and Nessy went separately and took their kids. We were supposed to meet up with them inside, but we never found each other. We ended up getting double shot margaritas to warm up. The way the altars were decorated was really a sight to see. I’m not a very spiritual or religious person, but this whole thing was fascinating to me.

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We decided to all meet up in Downtown LA, specifically The Broadway Bar. Daylight savings time was coming to an end and we would gain an hour, so we were hoping for an extra hour of booze. When we got there, we ended up meeting with an old middle school friend and the people he was there with. We got some drinks throughout the remainder of the night and ended up spending about an hour and a half outside the bar after they had closed. We ended up getting some pizza and one of the guys I met ended up giving me condoms and comparing me to looking like an actor. He was so drunk, and although his friend was super annoyed at his behavior, I had a lot of fun.

The ride home with Vanessa, Lulu and Jessica was the most interesting part of the night due to the conversation we had. I fucking love these girls!!

Nightwing

Leaving shit to the last minute is never a good idea. “I tend to work best under pressure,” is such a bullshit excuse. Lets face it, it’s laziness met with the realization that time is running out. I knew exactly who I wanted to dress up as, but had no idea exactly how it would come out as many ideas filled my head.

In my mind I was first going to just get a fitted black long sleeved shirt and spandex pants and use felt to sew on the design I needed. Although that seemed like a good idea, in hindsight it was terrible. I decided to try and make more out of it, so I went shopping a few days before Halloween.

Almost everything I needed was gone. Target had taken 80% of their halloween items down and began putting Christmas stuff up…. Seriously…. Fuck this, I decided to purchase almost everything from Amazon. As a prime member, I get free 2 day shipping.

I bought a black zentai suit, foam to make armor pieces, spray paint, pvc piping for the Escrima sticks, liquid latex and spirit gum for the mask.

Googling some images I took ideas from various pictures and began formulating my Nightwing design.

I then began making the escrima sticks from the pvc pipping, which came out better than I anticipated.

The mask was the next step. Many coats of Liquid latex is needed for this. My advice, be patient. I couldn’t find a mask to use to make the costume mask, so I used my niece’s makeup to draw the mask on my face, filled it in with more makeup before beginning to apply the liquid latex. After about 10 coats, I used baby powder to peel the mask off.

Slowly the costume began formulating. Using a heat gun, I was able to bendy the pieces of foam to get a better fit on my body. When making costumes, a glue gun has been my best friend. I wouldn’t dare try to make a costume without a glue gun. The mixture of ideas and tutorials really began paying off.

At this point I found out I could use other materials instead of foam to give the costume a better look, but I decided to use that for the next costume I make and just focus on finishing this one with the foam. The end result:

Although I learned to late what I can do and different materials to use to make my costumes better, I was proud of this specific
costume design considering it only took a few hours in total to get this done.