| 14 October 2011
Learn how to put a feminine twist on the costume of America's most famous gaming character
Mario is a classic figure in American culture. The famous little plumber is a classic "easy" costume for some, but for others who like to take their costumes very seriously (ME!) making your own Mario costume can truly be a labor of love. Especially when you can convince your friends to join in your tom-foolery.
And with Halloween just around the corner, what better time than now to start collecting the items you need to pull this costume off.
It started with an email and several bottles of the infamous E6000. My best friend Sam and I decided to be Mario and Luigi for Halloween. But not ordinary, slap on some overalls with a faded red shirt type Mario Brothers.....we wanted to put a girly twist on the classic overalls and plumber look.
For this costume, you will need royal blue fabric, over sized yellow buttons, fabric glue, red or green shirt and hat, white gloves, mustache, zipper, white felt and the letter M or L. For an extra added bonus you can also consider buying the candy Fireballs or chocolate gold coins as they are synonymous with the characters Mario and Luigi.
Hit the title/read more to check out how our costumes were made....
First we went to Joannes to pick out the fabric. We got 4 yards of royal blue fabric, sewing string that was elastic, over-sized yellow buttons, some velcro and a hot glue gun.
The only problem was getting some fabric glue for "added security". Looking at all of the varieties, I had no clue which one would be the best until I saw the name E SIX THOUSAND and thought "with a name like that, this stuff better be damn good".
Once we had all the supplies, we started making the straps. We cut our 4 yards of fabric in half, each taking 2 yards for all you math wizards out there. Cutting the long way, we estimated the thickness we wanted in the straps and started pinning.
After we cut off the straps, we cut that in half again (for 2 straps) and pinned each strap to the same thickness. folded the fabric on both sides (so the fraying doesnt show, and ironed the strap.
Once the strap was ironed, we used the hot glue gun on the inside of the fold, close to the iron crease. I used the hot glue gun for about an hour until I burned my thumb so bad that I had a huge blister on it for days! (tear...)
After I cussed out the hot glue gun, I opened the package of E600 and put the glue in the same spot. I used the iron over the fabric to help the glue dry in the right spot and I discovered that the glue dries almost instantly after you use an iron. (imagine that...heat makes things dry quicker..) After folding the sides and gluing, we repeated the fold/glue/iron (FGI) process at each end of the strap.
After the straps were completed, we moved onto the top piece. First we quickly measured the skirt length and cut more than we needed off to work on it later.
So with remaining piece of fabric, we cut it in half, loosely measured a "U" to cover where we thought the top piece should. Once measured, we used the E6000 to glue the two pieces together, iron it so it would dry faster, cut off the excess and turned the U shaped piece of fabric inside out. We iron it again, to give it more of a look of a true piece of clothing.
With the top part complete, we connected the straps to the edge of the bottom of the "U". While we are working on the costumes, Sam suddenly leaves the room in a hurry and comes back with an ORIGINAL Nintendo plastic game case. She starts to cut away and it and immediately I shout "GENIUS!!". That is how the Nintendo piece ended up on the costume.
Not true to the Mario Brother's costume, but there was no way I turning down attaching an original Nintendo piece to the costume.
The Accessories
Once our first night of costume making neared 10pm, we decided it would take alot more hard work to get this done. As as result, I began to start ordering the rest of the accessories that would be needed. I found the hat, mustache and white gloves on Amazon.
The red hat was a plain red hat but we bought a small peice of white felt and the letter M and L from a local craft store, cut out a circle on the felt and glued the M and circle to the hat.
There were some pretty awesome purses on Ebay that I ended up buying for $2.50 each from Hong Kong, but make sure you check the shipping! Cost me $32 just to ship! We probably could have made those too if we thought of it.
The red and green shirts we got a week before Halloween for $5 each and I got some red polka-dotted shoes at the mall on sale for $10. Sam took an old pair of black shoes, primed them with spray paint and then painted the shoes the same bright green color as her shirt.....again genius. You should probably start to notice that she's the creative one out of each other, Im just the determined/stubborn one!
When all the items were shipped, we had our 2nd costume making night. A bowl was used to cut out a circle on the piece of white felt picked up at Joannes. The backing on the letter had a super sticky tape to it but we still used our security blanket with E6k. On the gloves, we thought it looked alot better to have the finger tips cut off so we chopped them off just below the middle of your fingers.
The skirt was the hardest part to figure out. Once we fitted the skirt to our specific size, we folded the ends and attached a zipper with the glue. To insure that the zipper would not come off, we loosely sewed it to the skirt for added security.
Assembling the final costume
To make sure the skirt fit both in but area as well as the stomach, we had to dart the material. To do this, we pinned where the fabric was loose, iron it and glued just under the folded material, this turned out to be a bad idea to glue it all through-out the dart line because the material came apart at the end (but not the top-my advice is to just glue at the very top-inch area of the dart). After darting the material, a piece of yellow ribbon was glued to the bottom of the skirt to pull the whole outfit together.
The top piece was then connected to the bottom with E6k. At last, all we had to do was attach the back straps with some E6k to the skirt and our costumes were good to go! For added effect we bought chocolate gold coins and atomic fire balls to throw at people.
Extra Bonus Toad Costume Appearance
Though there was only a small glimpse of "Toad" in some pictures, I brought my brother into this mess which forces my mom to make a giant toad hat out of a piece of foam, white fabric and red circles placed on the white fabric. He had some white shorts, along with a dark blue pillow case that was cut up to resemble a vest.
I must say our costumes were a huge hit and people could not believe we actually made them. Spending for the costume ended up costing about as much a brand new costume (estimated $80) but we had one advantage, NOBODY had our costumes on Halloween.
Rest of the Pictures from Halloween
