I’m hopefully getting a tardis for Yule, so this is my weeping angel costume to go with it. This is the stages.

The dress: a white T shirt sewn to a long length of spare black fabric. This was pinned into folds (belted at the waist of the dummy). To hold the folds in place I pinned then in place and then tacked short lengths of material on the inside of the dress ALL OVER. This took a VERY long time, but was well worth the effort as it kept the dress rigid as I moved and meant that when I painted the highlights and stonework, they stayed as highlights. The T shirt was painted light grey and black folds painted in (also black at edges to give definition and shadow to the edge of the dress top). The dress length was then joined together at the side (so it became a tube rather than a bit of loose material!).

The dress fold tops and sides all over were painted dark grey (fabric acrylic paint) , the tops then highlighted in a pale grey paint.

For the back, the T shirt length was left, pulled out to act as a flap to cover the wings frame. The back of the black dress was left very loose to fit the wings frame back into. (I’ll take pics later).

The masks (don’t know why 2 – I’ve only got one face…):

a blank paper mache mask base, built up and shaped with more paper mache.

The one below is the plain face with it’s base coat of primer paint (the perfect grey). For the eyes I wanted to see out of them so I inserted some netting (spray painted grey, but I could still see through the holes), glued it into place over the mask eye sockets and shaped it into a rounded eye shape using a bit of a plastic bag, so it looked really real.the second is the same as the first, just with the built up scary features of the screaming angel.

Both masks were then painted with acrylic grey/black/white , the same colour as the dress, to give highlights and lowlights, in just the same way (whiter shades to the front, darker shades where there are hollows or shadows).

The white and black paints were dabbed on with a sponge to give the specked stone effect. I didn’t do this with the dress as most people will look at the face more closely than the dress.

The wig – the hardest bit, especially as I didn’t want to spend any money: this was a cheap acrylic grey dress up wig (modeled by Doris), pinned into the wavy curls of the angels. I sprayed this with undercoat and PVA glue to hold it in place. And left most of the pins in just to be sure.

It still didn’t look enough like stone, even when I’d “highlighted and lowlighted” it with grey/white/black acrylic paints like the masks and the dress, so I covered it with PVA soaked tissue paper, and base painted it again with primer (below).

Then using grey, dabbed black and dabbed white paints to do highlights and lowlights, it looked more like stone – yet flexed so it could be taken off and on and fitted. Not perfect, but it would do.

The wings: Cardboard, two layers, front and back (as feathers show differently front and back).with a frame of wire between them. The top bit of wire (shown above) is fairly rigid as these would be heavy and needed to look like stone and not move too much. Also this bit is to be fastened to straps that are hidden under the dress. The bottom bit is just chicken wire so I could bend it into a curve of the wing (pic below showing the rigid wire frame and the chicken wire centre). These wire frames were sandwiched between the back and front cardboard cut outs of the wings.

To give it more dimension, 3D, I then cut out each individual front feather feather from yet more cardboard (and the odd pizza base from polystrene, as these melt when sprayed with primer paint so look like weathered stone) and used double sided tape and PVA to glue them onto the front and back cardboard cut out shapes. Each wing is a mirror of the other. This took forever – the fronts took all day!

To give more definition, I put some grey lagging at the top of both the wings. This was taped and glued in place. Both wings wee then spray painted with loads of grey primer, then the feathers had their features added (central spine, some feathers had chips in them like real stonework), and areas that are in shadow dabbed in black, while areas that are nearer were dabbed in white, to give more definition.

And this is the painted and sprayed finished item! White dabbed on with a sponge for highlights, black dabbed on with a sponge for low lights.

The backs I just primed with grey, then painted the feathers straight on with grey/white/black acrylic paints (the wings were beginning to get a little heavy by this point) and also I couldn’t face doing individual feathers again..

The rigid wire at the end of the wings is bent round to form the basis for a backpack type shape, and then each wing was cable tied together. Straps from an old back pack were fastened for straps to go over my arms and a bit of lagging put along the bottom to cushion it against my back and take some of the weight.

And the finished articles put together….

I’m not sorry to say I scared half the village kids (and a fair few adults) when they came trick or treating 🙂 It took a while for me to realise if folks weren’t observant and noticing I moved when they looked away…they went away thinking we had put a statue in the garden. Huge fun – wings were heavy though and I had to be careful turning around! Next time I wouldn’t cover myself with grey body paint as I was washing it off forever – I’d use a grey stocking and blotch it up to look like stone. And typically, as with all my costumes – I set off making them to wear once then sell…but can you imagine how the hell I’d post the wings! So much work it’s a keeper, though I’ll sell one of the masks next All hallows.