She-Ra and Swiftwind Costume

I am wearing my homemade She-Ra costume (She-Ra is He-Man's sister for those who don't know who she is) and my husband Todd is wearing his homemade Swift Wind costume. Swift Wind is She-Ra's Alicorn (that is a unicorn that is also a Pegasus). I decided to make my She-Ra costume because she was one of my favorite characters as a child (from the 80's television series). I was planning on my husband being Skeletor until he joked that he should be She-Ra's steed, Swift Wind! That inspired his costume and we started with a plain brown horse mask that we found. I painted it white and painted Swift Wind's colors on the mask, painted gold trim, created a unicorn horn out of clay and painted it gold, and then I glued the horn to the mask to finish that part. I made his wings so that they would have about a six foot wing span! I made a wing frame out of wire (to create the shape), wood (for some stability) a metal bar (for more stability across the wing span), and plain white craft foam glued over top of the entire frame to create a smooth surface for the feathers. Then I hand cut each and every feather out of blue, pink, and yellow craft foam and glued each feather in place on both sides (front and back) of each wing. I studied Pegasus wings and bird wings in general to figure out the basic feather shapes I should use. There are Primaries which are the larger blue feathers that stick out on the far sides of each wing. Secondaries and coverts are the general shapes of the remaining feathers. Each wing has the feathers shaped to be curved in the correct direction to give them a natural look. I did the wings with craft foam instead of actual feathers because we wanted Swift Wind and the costumes overall to look more like the animated characters from the show so the craft foam feathers gave it an animated look. Next, I made Swift Wind's chest piece out of pink and blue fabric. I took a white hoodie and sewed the mane on to the hood (using a plain red wig as the mane). I sewed another red wig on the back of the hoodie at the bottom as the tail. Todd created a harness using various materials such as pvc pipes so that we could cut a slit in the back of the hoodie and then attach the wings to a pipe and lower them down into a PVC t-junction piece that was bolted on the harness for a secure fit. The harness was positioned over a white t-shirt (for comfort) and then the hoodie went over that. Todd also wore white pants and then, by cinching the hood, we got a completely white body (Swift Wind is all white) except for a tiny bit of exposed face/chin area that the hoodie didn't cover up; we dealt with that by using white face paint. I found some brown vinyl horse hooves gloves and painted them white and painted the hooves auburn to match Swift Wind's hooves. For my She-Ra costume, I started with a material called Wonderflex and I crafted both my head piece and my arm bands out of that material (you use a heat gun to mold it and then let it cool in the shape you want-you must use heat proof gloves and care to handle hot wonderflex!). I cut the pattern out of poster board and then used that to cut the wonderflex and then shaped it and let it cool. After those were done, we spray painted all the armor gold. Then, I sewed my cape (a short half circle cape) out of red satin fabric and sewed the gold neck band that connects to the cape and I connected them with snaps that I sewed on each piece. I took gems from the craft store and glued them onto the center piece of the costume as well as the head piece. The gold flourish pieces in the bodice of the costume were pieces of craft foam that Todd cut out and spray painted gold. I crafted the belt out burlap and then covered it with gold fabric and attached velcro to use to fasten the belt in the back. I found some gold go-go boots to go with the costume. The bodice of my costume is a bridal corset piece that is seamless and made with foam for a smooth look so it was the perfect base piece to work from for adding the costume elements (all of those decorative gold pieces were attached with fabric glue). My sword was interesting to do. Todd got some foam from Lowes that is some sort of hard insulation foam. He literally carved my sword out of the foam and then drilled a hole and inserted a wooden rod in the bottom over which he added the handle components which are cylinders of wood glued together into a handle shape with a wooden ball at the end as the bottom of the hilt. Finally, he spray painted the sword a hammered silver metal color and we added the blue gems that She-Ra has on her sword. So, these costumes are almost completely hand made and we worked on them for the past two months leading up to Halloween. We wanted to get involved in cos-playing but had never done anything like that before so this was our first try just in time for Halloween. Even though we are a couples costume (in the sense that we go together as She-Ra and her steed as a unit), I have separate pictures attached below because we each took pictures of each other. In addition to pictures of each of us in our costumes, I've also included a close up of just the Swift Wind mask since it is difficult to see the detail in the other pictures. Finally, I also included a picture of one of the wings while I was in the process of laying out the feathers, before gluing them on so that you can see how that process looked. We hope everyone likes our She-Ra and Swift Wind costumes!!