Mystique Costume

I am wearing the costume. I made the dress using a thick duck cloth and a mannequin. I used an old tank top as a template and then added the panels in the front and back for the skirt. There was a lot of fabric draping. I stitched blue tights into the arms and bought wedding opera gloves to put on over the tights.

The belt was made by my husband and myself. My husband sculpted a skull out of sculpey clay and then made a mold to cast it out of resin. (We use the Amazing! brand you can find at regular craft stores.) Then I got to work making 15 resin casts of the skulls. Because resin is heavy (and expensive!), we crumbled up packing peanuts into the resin after we poured it into the mold in order to fill it up and also make it lighter!

After the resin casts cured, my husband drilled a single hole in the back of each of them. He then painted the eyes and nose black, and then plugged them up and spray painted them an antique gold. Once they dried, he painted all of the raised parts of the skull a lighter gold to keep the recesses a darker gold and give it more depth. He then screwed them all onto a leather belt.