One day - two parties !

Yesterday was busy busy busy. I had two birthday parties to go to. Two ! Who can live at that speed !! I don't know how those LA socialites do it. And imagine Bruce Wayne ! Having to live THAT life AND be a crime fighter on top of that. Yeesh.

The big focus on attention though ( as it was for most of the previous week - hence no updates ! ) was my costume for the second of the two parties - Clare's 'Space' party. I admit that I was pretty stumped for something original for a few days when I got the invitation. Yeah - I thought of all the standard Star Wars and Star Trek openers ... but I wanted something unique ! Something NO-ONE was going to copy.

It was tricky alright - something that was original, but WASN'T going to cripple me financially either.

Then a week ago today ( almost at the same time too ) - it stuck me.

A crew member of the 'Nostromo' - complete with chest-burster alien !

Genius !

But that DID mean I had to make myself a chest-burster in under a week - as you can't just go out and buy these things ( I looked, trust me ! ).

Cue much paper-mache work !

Oddly enough, one of the hardest parts of the process was finding some of those long thin styled balloons to get the paper-mache on. It was damn near impossible ! Everyone only had the round kinds. Can you believe it ? At about the fourth place I looked at I was getting pretty distressed ( as the whole plan hinged on having one of these balloons - just freaking ONE ! ). Then, JOY ! It had something similar - weird caterpillar shaped balloons. They didn't look much like caterpillars really though - to be honest, they more looked like ... well ... sex toys ( they were kinda ribbed too - very unsettling ).

Despite their unusual 'added value' they worked just fine. The second hurdle was getting the paper-mache tube to dry in time. It was very slow going - even with being bunged in the hot water cupboard. In the end I just wacked int on top of the woodburner. THAT got things sorted !

The painting and gluing was reasonably straight forward.

I did investigate getting some sew-on patches made stating various Wayland-Yutani slogans and such - but that were FAR too expensive to have made. In the end I just printed off some from net pictures and sellotaped them to the pair of overalls I got. That worked reasonably well ( and way cheaper ! ).

People at the party seemed to think it was kinda cool, and I have to say that I was pretty pleased with the final effect.

Jenni's Rock-Star party was a lot of fun - though Viva and I couldn't stay long. It was nice to see people, and I was reminded ( yet again ) of how lucky I am to have such great friends. I really am fortunate to know such a great bunch of cool, interesting and NICE people.

Yay for friends ! And for the absence of parasitic xenomorphs on Earth !