Old Spice Guy Halloween Costume

So what I have been spending a lot of my time on is this costume and now we can finally post about it! I did take pictures during the process since the 2 of us worked on it like nonstop for 2 nights with some work on other nights. Thank goodness for hot glue!

Here is what we are trying to achieve... the captain fighting an octopus/fish thing while walking in the door. I could not get coins to come out of his coat nor did I want to do the abs part either.

So we first started off with ordering a yatch captain costume from Amazon. We ordered it early September so we got it super cheap! BTW the material is thin and sort of see-through!

Now here is what I did to jazz up the yatch captain costume and turn it into an old spice guy!

1. Embellish the hat with an anchor applique!

Additionally I added some gold trim to the bottom of the sleeves. Sorry forgot a picture!

2. Medals, which I previously posted about made out of felt and some coins. See post here.

3. A gold tissue lame shash! This was simply me cutting a piece of gold lame 45 inches long (X2). Connect the 2 pieces, fold in half, sew down, turn inside out, and finish the edges with a taper.

oh and a side note I know sewing tissue lame can be challenging. I used a regulare point needle, I forget the size, released some of the tension (just a notch) and increased the stitch width. This reduced the lines you get when you sew tissue lame. I also ironed the shash to flatten it out b/c it so wanted to poof!

4. Octopus! Holy cow this took a bit b/c of the paint!
First I found some scrap grey fabric from my stash (yay for using stash!) Cut some long strips and moved in an out and taper to give a tentacle sort of look. I just went nuts with the sewing machine and had fun.

Before we started to put them together, we decided to get the free arms figured out first. We used coat hangers and glued the ends to the back of the jacket.

Here it is sticking out...

it is on my dress form (which btw is busted now!)

We just started to add the tentacles one by one. here is the front one

Then we started to spray with black fabric paint, which was disasterous and a pain! It never wanted to be a consistent spray... sigh. We covered the jacket while we sprayed. we should have sprayed and then added the tentacles. duh!

Calvin wanted a little suckers so we used the leftover felt and cut out various circle sizes.

Next we added the free tentacles to the back before adding the head next.

Octopus head! We used a styrofoam ball that we shaved down flat for the face. And flat for the shoulder too (actually in the end we notched it)

I covered the ball with batting and then fabric. I hot glued the batting but I did not glue the fabric fully so we could fuse the legs with the head. Then we just hot glued that baby to the shoulder!

That back part is wire for the odd sort of fish body, which we then covered with fabric.

We again sprayed the head with the bad fabric spray paint to match the arms. Now for the rest of it my boyfriend finished, he added the eyes and then made yellow teeth out of felt. lol. So it wound up as a sort of a comic sort of feeling. We really thought had we had more time we would have sprayed it with brown paint to give a better ton.

Here is Calvin with his costume (he didn't want to comit to a beard but later on at the party he wished he did).

He was a hit and ran around the party punching his octopus fish. :) Score!

XOXOXOX,
Lauren