I haven’t made a good Hallowe’en costume in years and years, mostly because I’m usually spending all my time working on comic books. This year, however, Paul and I got invited to a party over at Katja and Steven’s house — and since they’re both costumers, the bar was set pretty high. I knew I’d have to come up with something decent, so I decided to be an air pirate.

Then the jacket I ordered made me look all goofy and not cool and menacing at all. Then I couldn’t find a cheap aviator helmet (or anything that looked close enough to an aviator helmet to count). And then after going through my basement and visiting both toy and craft stores, I couldn’t find enough junk to cobble together a convincing Rocketeer-style jet-pack.

So I had to come up with a new plan: The Backyard Aviatrix.

Inspired by this awesome Instructable, I decided to make a set of daVinci-glider-looking wings. I’m enough of a klutz, however, that I knew I couldn’t rig them to open and close as my arms moved, or people ten feet away would lose their drinks. Talk about widening my spill field. After a few adjustments, I settled on a pair of handles that I could use to spread and retract the wings, and they worked pretty well until the foamcore gave out. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the angle on the wings quite right, so at full extension they were at waist-height instead of shoulder height.

Still, they were so much fun and such a neat challenge that I’m thinking of making a better set for next year’s Hallowe’en out of more sturdy, permanent materials. Lightweight wood like basswood probably wouldn’t weigh much more than the foamcore, and a stretch fabric between the wingbones instead of a solid sheet would allow the wings to collapse up much closer to the body.

Yay for costuming! I forget how much fun this stuff is. Anybody else got Hallowe’en pictures to share?