Making of: Punk Poison Ivy (Patreon)

So this write-up is a lot easier than Sylvanas, so I thought I would whip it up quick for you guys!

A price breakdown is going to be a littler harder, because I got all of the fabrics in the garment district in LA! Even the excess spikes are from there!

So this costume was inspired by, really, the idea that Poison Ivy cosplays usually involve just hot gluing leaves to leotards/bras. I, of course, have no problem with that, but with my Poison Ivy renditions (like my ballerina and this one), I just wanted to give Ivy the time and energy she deserves :D And with all of the punky Harley Quinns running around, just figured it would be fun to make a design of her to match!

A lot of inspiration came from my friendKelton's Poison Oak:

and actually the Monster High character, Venus Flytrap. You can see the similarities: :D

I started out by buying and dying a bra. I was literally making this cosplay in one day, so using a pre-made bra was useful :D

I used Rit's new synthetic dye, since the iPoly dye I usually use I know turns the green more blue/green so I thought I'd try something new. I got my dye at Joann's, but Arda Wigs sells it now too: https://arda-wigs.com/shop/rit-dyemore-synthetics/

It still turned out a little blue/green, but it was worth a try!

The Bra

Me being me, I wasn't satisfied with just average-looking leaves. Ever since making Sylvanas, I've been a little obsessed with giving my cosplays dimension to look better in photos and from a distance, so I'm painting EVERYTHING now. Plus, I wanted my greens to match my skirt more (which I'll show below) so it involved some paint :D

After I added the leaves to bra, I added some bright bright green for highlights where the light would hit (shown later)!

Having a mannequin, even if it is a size 2 whereas I'm a size 6, has been amazing for pretty much all of my latest cosplays. I used it here for gluing on my leaves, starting at the center of the bra and working my way outwards:

Completed bra before the highlights, well as the skirt I sewed up, the $3 belt from Savers, and a pair of suspenders I bought at Target for $10 for Tifa that I never made :D :

The Vest

The vest had many phases that I sadly didn't take pictures of because I was kind of rushing to get it done before I went to see the new Civil War film! I sewed it up, then superglued all of the small spikes onand screwed in the big spikes (leftover from Nick's Skyrim cosplay):

This is badass enough right? Nope! I wanted to make it look like she just came out of the earth. So even though it was pricier than what I usually invest in a cosplay ($30), I bought this wreath from Joann's:

I just LOVED the vines and little branches, and the idea of the moss on it, and highly inspired the earthy look I wanted my cosplay to have. So of course, with all things beautiful, I ripped it apart and added it to my cosplay!

But NOT before I painted/weathered the crap out of the vest and hotglued on some moss!! I added brown and black acrylic paints all over to make the vest look dirty and grimy. Folkart's Burnt Umber and Mississippi Mud are my go-to colors for mud/dirt, and sometimes Burnt Sienna if I want a red color.

As you can see in the photo, I also watered down some black/brown and painted it onto the edge of the skirt. Here you can also see the highlights I added to the leaves on the bra. There's a bunch of little details throughout too, like all the big shoulder spikes are tipped with bright green paint to look like poison, and on the back I painted on "Every Rose has its Thorns". I made the little striped sleeve out of a fabric from Joann's, and the necklace and bracelets I wore I got from a clothing swap in LA!

I used SUPERGLUE if I was gluing something directly to the vinyl, and hot glue if it was any other situation :D Hot glue is my friiiiiieeeeeeeend!!!

The Boots

The boots were SO RUSHED and that's why they broke! I used paperclay to make the venus flytrap mouths, and didn't let them dry before painting on wood glue. I've been this impatient before with paperclay (my Azula breastplate details were made this way), but it mean being fragile with them. Sadly, when I stepped in the dirt, one of the mouths squished and fell off, because it was still soft :D I'll redo them for my upcoming shoot that I have scheduled, and be a little more patient with the drying process :D

The Wig

The wig was the most fun part, and the part I was most looking forward to!! I used my old Black Widow wig, which is a Matilda in Pumpkin from Arda Wigs (I had also used this wig for Jessica Rabbit and my ballerina Poison Ivy as well!).https://arda-wigs.com/shop/matilda-classic/

Chrix Design made this awesome Vi wig tutorial that I used for making my "shaved" sides: http://chrixdesign.blogspot.com/2013/06/how-to-style-vi-wig.html

I bought my wool roving on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dimensions-Needlecraft-3-Pack-Roving-Orange/dp/B00CLQWJF0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00

And found some green wool roving at Hancock Fabrics for super duper cheap as well for the dreads!

The first photo below shows how I just cut the sides choppily so I could lay the wool roving on it smoothly.

It was a very tedious process doing the undercut, having to poke the wool roving time and time again with a felting needle to make it tighter and close to the scalp to look realistic. The second photo shows the raised area is before a poked it, and the shorter area is after poking it!

I actually did undercuts for both sides, because I was unsure of if I wanted a one-sided undercut or a full-on mohawk. I played around with the hair for a bit, but was so determined to have dreads that I ended up styling it to have the mohawk fall to the left side.

The dreads were also made of wool roving, using typical wool roving dread tutorials to make them. They would've been better and more realistic if I had had more time, but I was making these at 3 in the morning and I was dead tired and crabby :D But I most just dipped the wool strips into boiling water and then rolled them into a thin coil until they looked kind like dreads! I then added them to the wig with bobby pins!

I ended up NOT using the red dreads because, with the green in there, it looked too much like Christmas. I really liked the contrast of orange and green on it's own!

Makeup:

OH!! And a final touch was my makeup! The body paint was Mehron's Paradise AQ in Dark Green and Light Green, as well as green contouring all over using my E.L.F. big huge color palette! My lips are the dark green body paint, with black eyeliner on top, and then a random shimmer green eyeshadow patted on top!

And there you go! My completed Punk Poison Ivy kind of!! I'm making a few additions this week, and will hopefully have photos of that soon! Let me know if you have any questions! It was a fun simple costume to make that really means a lot to me! <3