This year the fam decided to join in the cosplay fun, but with our own little twist – we brought a toga party to the con. We decided to represent different pop-culture/sci-fi/literary genres while donning a bed sheet in a crowd that probably topped out at over 60,000 during the Labor Day weekend.

From left to right The Toga Revolution: Doctor Who, A Ninja (but you probably can’t see him), Elle Driver from Kill Bill, A Steampunk Lass, Darth Vader, Wonder Woman, and Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games.

I’m always so fascinated by the creativity and techniques used to put the costumes together. Because I am always wondering what they used and how they did it, and because though I went to art school, I am the least “crafty” person on Earth, I thought I’d walk you through how I made my costume this year.

So I was Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

IMAGES: Cathay-Keris Films

I began with the hat. I had collected these craft butterflies from Jo-Ann’s, Hobby Lobby and an online craft store for the extra-large butterflies. They already had wire on them, so I grabbed a piece of Styrofoam from the Dollar Tree to keep them in place.

Extra-large craft butterflies.

Their wires were a little flimsy and you can’t paint this sort of Styrofoam easily, so I used black artist tape. I wrapped the foam with two layers.

Styrofoam from Dollar Tree and black artist tape.

Then I poked the teensiest holes to insert the wire. The tape was thick enough to keep the wire in place. Then I hot-glued a hair clip underneath the foam so I would be able to attach the hat to my wig.

I had a Marilyn Monroe wig that I trimmed a bit to look a little more like Effie’s. I also sponge painted a pair of black lace gloves with ochre acrylic paint, and then I sprinkled some gold glitter on at the end so the gloves would glisten in the light.

Sponge painting my gloves.

For my collar, I used a piece of black fabric and had my mom actually teach me how to use her sewing machine so the edges would be clean. I used Velcro as the fastener. I hot glued the butterflies onto the choker and onto each other.

I didn’t want to spend the money on Effie’s paper eyelashes, so I used some Halloween stylized lashes from the drug store and cut them for my left lower lash and applied a full one to the upper right lash. I used the eyelash glue to attach the butterfly above my eye and to my body. I used Velcro again to secure extra butterflies to my belt and toga.

Ta-da!!! Done.

The finished look. I did get my hat on the wrong side, but overall I thought it was a nice little nod to the film.

As we were roaming around we ran into these other two Effie’s. Amazing!!! The girl on the left made her butterflies by hand out of orange poster board and Sharpie!!!

Two other handmade Effies.

So now I’ve written my first (and likely only) how-to blog post.  If you have any questions about any of our costumes, please send them my way! For instance, I was pretty proud of how we used drink koozies for Wonder Woman’s cuffs.

And if you were at the con, please share some of your favorite group costumes below. I would love to see them!

So I hung out with Darth Vader. For over three hours. He called me “his little friend”. I bought him a shandy, an actual shandy. He’s British. I think it’s a thing there. So yeah, not to be confused with the VOICE of Darth Vader, the great James Earl Jones, I am talking about the former Mr. Universe, Dave Prowse. The ACTUAL Darth Vader.

Drinking A Shandy

My sister and I were celeb stalking people watching during Dragoncon. We were sitting at one of the Marquee lounges when suddenly my sister elbowed me and did the eye nod. Let me just state for the record that I am terrible at silent communication. I also have terrible hearing and I can’t read lips. Basically, I would be the LAST person to take on a top secret mission or stakeout. Since subtlety is not my strong suit, I turned to her and said “what?”, probably fairly loudly based off her reaction and the fact that I’m hard of hearing. When I finally understood what she was getting at, I turned and saw Darth Vader standing five feet from us. He was chatting it up with various people and then he looked our way. I’m also really bad at looking away, particularly with famous people. He caught me staring, my sister hit me, but it was too late, I was transfixed. It was like he had some mind controlling power over me and I couldn’t help but being drawn in. hee hee. He motioned for us to come over and without a second thought, we did.

Next thing I know, he’s telling me about his daughter’s wedding and his thoughts on Spielberg and Lucas. I was totally enthralled. At least the parts I could hear. Did I mention I have a hearing issue? So for the next three hours we talked, well, Darth Vader talked. I executed the typical social cues of a smile here and a laugh there, tossing in an excited “really?” or “oh my gosh!” while adding in the appropriate amount of social shoulder touching because I could hardly hear a thing. He was right next to me and between his accent, his old man voice and my terrible ears, I basically caught just over a sentence an hour. So yes, I was totally faking it with Darth Vader, BUT, it was still completely and utterly one of the coolest experiences of my life! And I bought him a shandy.

What did I learn from it all? When famous old men call you over, introduce you as their “little friend” and let you buy them a shandy – roll with it, folks. Even if you have to fake it to make it happen.

David Prowse, my sister Steph, and Me
Dragoncon 2008