My Final Reveal: Shopping & Shoes

I took a little time away from my blue costume to travel and make puppets.  We finally wrapped up the puppets for "Rose: The Bizarro Zombie Musical."  We (the fantastic Evie Lovelle and I) made 100 snappers to give away at Southwest Burlesque Showcase.  I also made three puppets that sold right away at SWBS, and I spent a lot of crafting time making pasties that sold at SWBS.  I'm in LA for the next two months and I'm debuting this number the week before I travel again, so it's time to get back to work.

The gown is mostly done.  I have to set up a time to work with my buddy Evie on the hem and closures on the side of the gown that opens.  My thought was to have part of my panel skirt poke out the side, so I had to get panel skirt supplies yesterday.

I know I rhapsodize about Evie constantly, but she really is a great pal.  (We spend more time together now outside of burlesque than we do working on costumes and show stuff, but she is an incredible resource for costume ideas.)  She suggested I do my panel skirt with two colors of panels, and she knew the best place to shop for skirt fabric.  I spent $40 on 11 yards of light blue and 7 yards of dark blue net for the panel skirt, giving me just enough leftover fabric to blend the motif into the gown.  I have a couple panel skirts, but this one is going to be a cut above the others with its full skirt, fitted band, and hand painted panels.

I also popped over to Moskatel's downtown (wholesale version of Michael's that sells retail as well) for supplies to make glitter shoes.  I love my rhinestone shoes and I learned a lot from making them.  I spent more money on rhinestones than on the shoes because I thought I'd only spend the moments on stage wearing them.  Wrong!  There's all that waiting around in costume before the performance, wearing them before curtain call and while greeting the audience after, and wearing them for modeling.  A smart person would spend more money on quality shoes and smarten up on the embellishment.  Luckily for me, I'm smart.  I invested my money in good shoes, and the glitter project is less expensive than rhinestones.  (And does it really matter what I use so long as it sparkles?)  I spent $19.81 on four jars of glitter, some foam paintbrushes and some glossy Mod Podge.  I can always glue stones to the shoes later as accents.  It took about an hour for all of my hunting and shopping for this costume yesterday.

I started glittering my shoes this morning because the tutorial says it takes time to dry between layers.  I taped off the clear sides of the shoes and part of the soles so they didn't get glittery.  I started by delicately glittering the edges of the shoes, then I filled in the middle.  I'm going to work out while they dry and try to get another coat done before I head to the day job.

Total spent so far: $167.48 and 12:25.