Squirrel Girl is BACK (well, she is Unbeatable :) )

This was a fairly straight forward costume to make. The most impressive part, the tail, was actually the easiest thing to build! The hardest part was the wig. I went through several iterations before settling on this one.

This awesome set of photos was shot by Mark Painter Pariani. On top of being a fellow GAAMite, he has some mad skills at photography.

Progress:

A nice chunk of stuff has changed since the last set of photos. I lost weight and my skin is looking way better! Yay! *pats own back*

TAIL:

I built the original tail using faux fur and stuffed animal stuffing. I laid the tail out so the final “seam” would go on the side away from my back, and cut it into a shape like 2 P’s placed back to back.

Then I stuffed it, glued up the seams and ran coat hangers through the tail. Originally I wanted the hangers to somehow wrap around my waist under the leotard and hold the tail up that way, but the tail weighed like 8lbs so I ended up setting the wires up as straps. I REALLY was attached to using wire because I liked that it didn’t show too obviously in photos.

I thought the wires would rest on the leotard straps. Unfortunately, my chest kept pushing the wires into my armpit area, which left huge, black bruises and welts. The first time I wore the tail I actually broke the skin. For this shoot I ended up running padding down the inner wires which really helped.

CLOTHES:

I purchased the leotard, tights, jacket and boots. I just glued the fur onto the jackets (because I suck at sewing!) It got the job done, although the jacket fur liked to flip up a lot. The belt is from an old Rikku FFX2 costume.

HAIR AND ACCESSORIES:

For this shoot I redid the wig. It looks much better! I’d like to add some more “wildness” to it in the future.

I also remade the earrings, the same way I did before – acorns from the driveway glued to earring hooks.

My teeth were fake fingernails I glued to my gums with denture glue.

Tippy was a great investment from amazon. 

I also made the deck of photo reference cards. Most of the art I pulled right off the comics, cleaning it up so it didn’t look too bad at a larger size.

MISTAKES:

It’s crazy how I’ve worn this costume so many times but I still have mistakes! Pobody’s nerfect, amirite?

When I wore the teeth to Megacon, I accidentally glued them to my lip. That sucked. This time I got them on my teeth/gums but they did NOT want to stick. I’m thinking for the future I’ll build some sort of retainer system and tuck it under my upper lip, since you don’t see my top gums when I smile, anyways.

Another mistake – I painted (and stained) my fingernails blue! Luckily you can’t see it, but in the future I’ll be investing in a “nude” style polish so I don’t have that problem again.

Finally, I really need to remake my belt. Squirrel Girl’s has 4 pockets, not 2. I just really hate working with eyelets, so for now I’ll keep flipping the pockets to whatever side is facing the camera.