Curls and Creations

As soon as I found out that Sheffield was having a film and comic convention later this year I knew I wanted to enter the Masquerade. I have been trying to come up with cosplay ideas and the one that I keep coming back to is a Captain America USO dancing girl. ( Source )

As I have mentioned previously, I have subscribed to Something Sweet magazine. Today I finally got around to making something using a recipe in one of the magazines. I decided to make some Viennese biscuits from issue 9 for a tea party that I am going to tomorrow.

I have finally got around to putting my photographs from Grease on my laptop, so here are the pictures of the costumes that I wore. Act 1 Glasses - Primark - £3 £1 on sale Shirt - Peacocks - £9 (I think) Skirt - Made by me Socks - Primark - £1.50 Shoes - Primark - £3 High School Hop Hair Flower - Claire's - Don't remember price Dress - Vivien of Holloway - £89 Corsage - Provided by company Shoes - eBay - £8 Act 2 Blouse - Made by me Belt - Don't remember Skirt - Made by me Along with my costume pieces, I also wore a Jessica Simpson hairdo 15" wavy clip in extension which I purchased on eBay last year in order to make my hair appear shorter. I pin curled the bottom of my hair up under the hair piece and then pulled the top of my hair around to the back and created a few pin curls to disguise the length and hide the top of the extension.

As soon as I knew that we were doing Grease, I knew that I wanted to make my own costume. My original idea was to make a burgundy felt circle skirt to wear with a pale pink blouse, but when I found out that I would be playing a geek, I changed my mind a little and went for slightly darker colours. The pattern that I used was Simplicity 3847 , which is a pattern for a blouse, circle skirt, apron, hat and petticoat. Each ensemble member needed two costumes (one each for Act 1 and 2) and one High School Hop costume. I had a dress which I knew that I wanted to wear for the High School Hop, which meant that I just needed to make costumes for Act 1 and 2.

I have never attempted a pin curl set before, and I was a little unsure of how it would work on my already curly hair, but I decided to give it a go. I bought some setting lotion and a boar bristle brush on eBay and they arrived in time for me to try it out for my cousins birthday party on Saturday. On Friday night I washed my hair and towel dried it, before brushing some setting lotion through it. I then sectioned my hair off and started to pin curl it. My pin curl clips seem to have vanished, so I just used a lot of hair grips to hold the curls in place. My set was pin curled in opposite directions on each row as I wanted to achieve a 40s wave style. I slept on it and gave it a quick blow dry in the morning to get rid of the few damp bits that were in some of the slightly thicker curls. My spiral curls when I took my hair down. I then finger combed my hair to separate the curls, and my hair more or less double in volume. It took a lot of brushing t...

For my Grease costume, I needed a pair of shoes to wear, but wasn't keen on any of the green ones I could find in shops because they were a little bright. I didn't want white shoes either because they would stand out a bit too much against my dark tartan skirt in Act 1 and dark green dress in Act 2. With this in mind, I decided to dye a pair of white pumps to match my costumes. The supplies I started with: White Pumps - £3 - Primark Dark Green Dye - £2.99 - Wilkinsons Rubber Gloves and Mop Bucket - Poundland I had never used this kind of dye before, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I also wasn't entirely sure how well the shoes would take the dye, but I was reassured as I saw them darkening in the bucket. The shoe laces unfortunately didn't pick up much dye, they are an extremely pale mint green, but that isn't too much of a problem as they look fine alongside the white grommets and soles of the shoes. Ta-da! Green shoes! The ...

A few days ago, I went to the post office to collect my box containing issues 2 and 3 of Something Sweet magazine. Issue 3 came with a free folder in which to keep all of the magazines. The inside of the folder has lots of handy conversion guides and temperature guides for both chocolate and sugar. Issue 2 contained a Sugar Mouse Mould (with tails), Gold Cupcake Cases and a Pink Truffle Box.  Issue 3 came with a Hydrangea Cutter and Embosser. The first subscription gift was a Sugar Thermometer and a Chocolate Thermometer. Both of these will be useful for trying out some of the variety of projects detailed within each magazine. I look forward to trying a few new recipes and putting the gifts that come with each magazine to good use. I will hopefully be able to make lots of wonderful sweet treats in the near future, just need to buy the supplies first!