D-I-Y. It seems that D-I-Y-ing is all I ever do these days. But I don’t mind. It awakens my senses and I feel great especially if my D-I-Ys turn out great. Like the Egyptian costume for The Little Creature #1. He was assigned as Little Mr. Egypt for their United Nations Day Celebration in school yesterday. Because I’m too cheap to shell out mega cash for something that would be a one-time wear, I decided that we should just make the costume.
We did buy the headdress for P295 in Greenhills. I should have just made one.
There’s a set of plain black shirt with a pair of black pants and a belt and headdress which were packaged and marketed as an Egyptian costume for P1000. I’d be crazy to buy that especially when I have a closet full of black shirts. Even sillier, a pair of black toddler leggings cost P200 while an adult-size pair can be bought for P100! But why buy when I also have a closet full of black leggings?
Because Egypt is such a fascinating country and I used to obsess about ancient Egypt many years ago, it was fun to D-I-Y and I secretly wished I was making the costume for myself.
I cut out a sort of eye shape about the diameter of the little one’s neck from a paper plate, put strips of velcro on the back, painted it with silver poster paint, and doodled on it with Pentel and Sharpie pens. Add some shiny red plastic stickers and there you have it, a Royal Egyptian neckpiece! It doesn’t look like a paper plate, right?
As for the ankh scepter, I used the following for the base: handle of his plastic golf club, my plastic hair loop for the ankh loop, and wooden stirrers as the two pointy things on the side. I taped them all together,
… wrapped them in aluminum foil and black satin ribbon, and finished them off with random swirly copper wires. My crash course on wire jewelry last August with Craft Manila came in handy!
If I had more time, I might have done some other prop with hieroglyphic doodles on them. And if he were a girl, I might have put some Eye of Horus-ish makeup on him.
I knew there were kids in much grander costumes so I wasn’t expecting any award. It was just a relief that he wore the costume. He refused to try it on so I had to eyeball the sizes of everything. He even had to be convinced that the headdress and the neckpiece made him look like a triceratops.
So the last thing I expected was for him to be awarded as the Little Mr. UN!
The little boy-king in his mommy’s clothes – my black shirt, my black leggings, my leather cuffs. Cute!
Forty Eleven Thousand Things 