Evil King and Queen of Hearts Costume

Our costume is "The Evil King and Queen of Hearts".
Last year, we went to a casino and entered into their annual Halloween costume contest. I thought our costume and makeup was pretty original, but after seeing the other entries, I knew I needed to step up our game for 2019. And, because we were entering a contest at a casino, I knew I wanted to our costumes to tie in with a casino theme.
The idea of the King and Queen of Hearts came to mind, but I knew just the homemade costumes wouldn't be enough. I did some research and watched some YouTube tutorials on how to work with the FX makeup. I had never done anything like this before, but I decorate cakes sometimes and figured it couldn't be much different than working with fondant. I knew I wanted to have it look like our eyes were gouged out in the shape of a heart as well as a heart on my chest. But it was my boyfriend's idea to have it look as if his crown was ripping out of his head. It's the one time his baldness has worked in his favor!
As far as all the cards, I knew it would get REALLY expensive if I had to purchase multiple decks of cards and only use 13 cards out of each deck since I only wanted the hearts. So, I used the resources I had at my fingertips. I work for a printing company, so I had 1000 cards printed...all hearts...I knew I’d be gluing the cards to form the dress and robe, so it didn’t matter that the backside wasn’t printed. I did purchase a few decks of cards so I could use the back (red) side for contrast on the corset of the dress as well as the vest under the King’s robe.
Assembly of the costumes were tougher than I imagined. For the Queen’s costume, I started with a cocktail dress I found at a thrift store. Initially I laid the dress flat to assemble, until I realized that my body isn’t flat and as soon as I tried the dress on, the cards didn’t lay the way they should, so I ripped them off and started over. I did the only thing I could do…I assembled the entire corset part of the dress in front of the bathroom mirror while I was wearing it. It was the only way I could make sure the cards formed perfectly to my body. It was quite an uncomfortable experience at times as the heat from the hot glue would penetrate the fabric of the dress and burn my skin; but the end result was worth it! The skirt of the dress was assembled by hanging the dress on a hook in the ceiling and adding cards row by row.
For the King’s robe, I affixed the cards to a cheap king’s robe we found at the thrift store. The backside and parts of the side of the robe I was able to work on by laying it on the floor and gluing them in rows and working my way down. The top part of the robe needed to be assembled while my boyfriend wore it to make sure the cards shaped correctly over his shoulders. The vest he wore under the robe was made with regular Bicycle playing cards glued to a thrift store vest. He then wore black dress pants and shoes to finish off his costume.
The crowns were also made entirely with playing cards. I created templates in Adobe Illustrator and printed them out to fit on our heads and glued cards together to create the design I wanted. I also cut out cards and glued them to some black heels I found at the thrift store. I watched a YouTube tutorial to make a rose out of cards since the Queen of Hearts needs her rose from her famous rose bushes from the movie! I finished my costume off with a red clutch, also found at the thrift store and red tights that I ordered from Amazon.
All said and done, the costumes (including the dress, vest, robe, two crowns and rose) took around 50 hours to make and include over 1200 cards (between real playing cards and the printed cards) and 200 glue sticks.
Doing the makeup was quite the process. We checked into the hotel at 5pm and immediately started on my hair and our makeup. I had a system. I worked on both of our eyes essentially at the same time. I worked in sections around our eyes and would do a section of his eye, then a section of my eye and so on until the entire heart around the eye was complete. I used Mehron brand Spirit Gum, putty and wax to create the effect I was looking for. Then I worked on his head, and the cut in the side of my face where I inserted the Queen playing card. Again I used the same process and makeup. I finished with the heart on my chest. Then using XF makeup and blood I added the bruising and bloodiness to our faces and his head. Between putting my hair up and doing all the makeup on both of us, it took a full 4 hours to complete.
When we were at the costume contest and walking around the casino floor we were shocked at how many people stopped us to tell us how awesome our costumes were, asked questions about the costumes and make up, or took pictures of us. Some people even asked to take their picture WITH us. We kind of felt like celebrities. People asked all sorts of questions about how long it took to make the costumes, if I was a professional makeup artist (which I am definitely not!), how many cards we used and always commented about how realistic and creepy it was. It was fun hearing people comment about us as we walked by as well!
The contest we entered was broken up into two categories: Scary and Unique. And within each category was a subcategory of couple/group or single. We won first place in couple/group for the Unique category. It was an incredibly fun evening and a fun process of making the costumes and teaching myself how to do the special effects makeup! I will definitely come up with something for next year!