The hardest part was deciding what to make the suspenders out of...orange garbage bags? orange body suit? orange reflective vest? And then it came to me...ORANGE DUCT TAPE!
Ah, duct tape. The handywomen's secret weapon. The hardest part was finding orange duct tape; I checked Canadian Tire, Home Depot, and more. Finally, I caved and checked out -ugh- Wal Mart. I normally try to avoid Wal Mart at all costs, for obvious reasons, but this was an emergency! And of course, they had orange duct tape. I bought one roll and ended up having to go back for more.
So, first step was to make the duct tape into a sort of fabric by double siding it. The trick here is to make sure your "fabric" is long enough (you don't want to be taping a bunch of small chunks of fabric together).
Once I made enough "fabric", I taped a piece to a mannequin and drew out the shape of the suspenders. If you don't have a mannequin, just find a good friend who owes you one.
Next step is fairly obvious - cut out the suspender that you just drew. (Yes there is a sewing machine in this picture, but no you do not need to sew for this project).
Now that you've cut out the suspender, you have a pattern you can use for the other side. I just traced the cut out on another piece of "fabric" and voila! After cutting out both sides and taping them together, I decided that I wanted to give the edges a nice finish so I used tape as trim.
Making the back of the suspenders takes some guess work. I taped the front two pieces to myself to figure out how long to make the back piece. Once you've attached it to the back and on either side, it's time to trace out the circles. I used a pendant and then cut out each circle with an x-acto knife. Make sure that you draw the circles on the inside of your suspenders so that you don't see any pen marks.
And that's it! For the suspenders that is...there was still the rest of the costume to deal with. I looked EVERYWHERE for gold leggings and ended up having to buy some from American Apparel for *ugh* $40. Urban Planet had silver ones for $6 but nooooo....Leeloo had to wear gold.The white shirt was easy and the boots I ended up getting from Urban Planet.
A couple of weeks ago I actually got to test out the costume. Andrew had rented a couple of tables to sell video games at a scifi/vintage/retro toy fair where people were dressed up as everything from Star Wars to Anime characters. I figured "The 5th Element" is sci fi right? Well, I learned a valuable lesson during this test.
I bought some spray on, bright orange, ONE WASH hair spray from Value Village and it looked fantastic. Thing is, I am so blonde that my hair soaked it up and didn't wash out. It left me with a pink tint. I even went to the hairdresser and she couldn't get it out completely!!
Lesson learned. Tomorrow, I'm wearing a wig!
