Sydney is my favorite - in some ways - of my 3 American Girl dolls. It's funny, because I originally wasn't too keen on the dolls, and got her (and her twin, who I gifted to a family member) on a late night spur of the moment the year that they came out.
As soon as I opened her up, Sydney began to form. She's a very pretty doll. And I have a lot of fun with her personality. She is my football fan, loves horror and Halloween. Her best friends (aside from her twin, Amber) are my Woof pups - I can't remember the brand, but I got them from Walmart this Spring. They are soft, but jointed and posable upright pups. I did a "monster" glow up on 3 of them, and therefor, the WoofMunsters were born. So Syd hangs with her 4 Woofmunsters.
The first year that I had her, I made her a Jason mask out of felt. I loved the way it turned, and Sydney lived in it for weeks, refusing to take it off. (That's Sydney for you.) While the Jason mask was cool, it was only the mask. I dreamed of making her a Ghost face costume, but it seemed pretty impossible.
The next year came and went, and I barely even put her Jason mask on her. Now this year, I actually managed to make Sydney the costume of her dreams!
How this came into being was an odd path there. Here's how it came together: First off, I had bought a BJD skull head back in the Summer on Etsy. Well, a long story short, due to all the problems the seller was having with casting the head cap for the head, I ended up just getting a refund for the head. (I have no ill feelings for the seller - she is very nice, and the problems were just beyond her control.) So, this put me on the path of trying to sculpt my own bird skull head. That didn't turn out - I loved what I was doing, and it was actually turning out looking like I wanted, but unfortunately, I didn't get back to working on for about 3 weeks, and somehow in that amount of time, the darn thing molded, so in the trash it went.
This experience, though, gave me some confidence that I could actually do some sculpting. I have made plenty of polymer clay food in the past, but sculpting heads and faces isn't something I have much experience with, if any at all. Then, the next thing that led me to making Sydney's costume, was the antique doll broken eye. I'll do a blog post simply on this project later, but again, long story short, I bought some Hearty Air Dry clay because it adheres to glass. I didn't need much of it for the above mentioned project, which meant that I had a lot of clay left over to use for other things.
I got to thinking, hey, maybe I could sculpt the Ghostface mask for Sydney after all! The Hearty Clay is different from the regular paper clay type air dry clay, in the sense that it is light weight and also dries like foam. Not exactly like foam, but if you ever have used it, you'll see why I am comparing it to that. The problem here was finding the time to do it. I expected time to - as usual - get away from me, and I would once again find myself filing away this project for next Halloween. On Thursday night a few weeks ago, I decided if I wanted to do it, I might as well do it now. So I turned on what was left of the Thursday Night Football game, and got to work.
I used a floating wigless AG head that was rolling around here to be rehomed to sculpt it on. I covered the head in plastic wrap, and started slapping the clay on it. I got the basic shape to where I was fairly happy with it that first night. It probably took 2 hours, maybe? I let it dry and then tried to fill in any rough parts and fleshed out any of the features that I felt were lacking a day or 2 later.
Then it sat in my room for a good while, maybe 2 weeks or so. The other night - again, during a football game (I think this one was a college game) I worked on sanding down the face to smooth it out, and trimming the excess around the edges. This clay doesn't sand down great. I did see that it was a little smoother, but not like I had planned on. Once I figured it was as good as it was going to get, I painted it. Filling in the black of the eyes, nose and mouth wasn't as simple as I expected it to be. I had to do it as neatly as possible, and naturally, I had a few spot to patch with the white paint. A day or 2 later, I painted the final layers. I had I tiny edge of the mouth that I needed to fill in, so on this last Sunday (yesterday, as of the time I am posting this blog) I touched that up, and then mod podged over it to seal the whole thing.
After the glue sealer was dry, I turned my attention to gluing the white felt on the inside of the mask to cushion it for my doll's face. That went simply enough, once I switched to a paint brush and mod podge. The squeeze bottle Aileen's Tacky glue wasn't holding. I am sure it was because I wasn't able to squeeze enough glue onto the mask, but there was no getting that lid off to just dip a brush into it. The mod podge did the trick. I first glued down the middle part, let it dry, the shaped around the inside of the mask with the felt, making the necessary cuts to get it to fit inside neatly within the curves of the mask. I let that dry overnight.
Making her costume was simple, and it isn't done with much detail. I just laid Sydney out on the no sew cheap, low quality costume fabric, pinned the shape I wanted around her, leaving the neck hole to be cut later. After I cut the front and back out, I held it up to Sydney and cut the neck hole where I wanted it, keeping in mind that it could stretch and make the hole too wide if I wasn't careful. Thankfully, I got it how I wanted it, the first cut. Then, I cut a several inch line down the back so it could slip on over her clothes. I didn't cut it long enough at first, which resulted in unsightly pulls in the fabric at the neck line. Like I said, poor quality! But no big deal. It's a costume and she runs around in it. I lengthened the cut in the back, and it goes on and off easily.
Next, I made her long white gloves as I don't want this to stain her. I just pinned white knit around one arm and hand, pinned in where I wanted it, slipped it off, sewed it, then cut out the second one, using the first one as my pattern. I also secured a strip of white neck over her neck, just in case any of the costume fabric got against her.
With all that done, it just left me finishing the mask. I went back and forth and back and forth over how I wanted to finish the mask. I had planned to stitch elastic to the white felt on the inside of the mask to secure it to her head, and then just drape the black fabric over her head to create the hood effect of the Scream mask.
What I ended up doing was cutting a small close fitting hood out of white knit to secure it to her head by sewing the white knit onto the felt on the inside and trimming it down to the right size once it was sewn in. That probably doesn't make much sense, but it worked well. No elastic needed. That also gave me something to sew the black hood onto, as i was regretting my decision to not glue it onto the mask, which I would have needed to have before I glued in the white felt, to keep the fabric away from Sydney's face.
Now, her costume is complete, and I am so proud of it and of myself that I actually did it! It isn't perfect - there's flaws here and there, but I absolutely love what I did. I doubt I'll do much more of a photo shoot than these quick few pictures that I took when there was a pause in the rain this afternoon. But its done, and Sydney can live in it for the next few months, and she will be happy to do just that.
Here's some of my progress photos of the project, from beginning to end.
