5 Pirates of the Caribbean Costumes fast and cheap

[Indy Magnoli]

Every year there is a quiz night in my parish, in which everyone is encouraged to come costumed. Each year, I try to assemble six costumes on a super-low budget through trading, searching, scratch-building, etc.

For those who haven't seen my previous RPF threads, here they are:

[URL="http://www.therpf.com/f24/6-star-wars-costumes-3-weeks-w-68032"]2009: Star Wars[/URL]
[URL="http://www.therpf.com/f24/6-lotr-costumes-one-month-low-budget-95161"]2010: Lord of the Rings[/URL]
[URL="http://www.therpf.com/f24/my-semi-budget-batman-126592/"]2011: Batman[/URL]

This year's theme was "P", so we chose Pirates of the Caribbean. Luckily, I already had a mostly complete [URL="http://www.therpf.com/f24/jack-sparrow-complete-update-baldric-133943"]Jack Sparrow costume[/URL]:



Since that photo, I darkened the boots with more Pecards lotion, darkened the pants (by rubbing them against my overly dyed scabbard) replaced the Anna Marie buckle with a DMC/AWE version, got an accurate linen shirt, made a new baldric and, of course, got [URL="http://www.therpf.com/f13/jack-sparrow-sword-all-metal-replica-scabbard-132802"]a new sword[/URL]. Most of this is detailed in my Jack Sparrow thread linked above, and as usual it was mostly done through trading, etc. I'm all about budget!

So, my driving force behind this years build was recycling. Normally I trade for all sorts of pieces and scratch build the rest. But, seeing as I have a growing collection of costumes, I wanted to see how much I could do by mixing-and-matching previous work.

So, here's how it went...

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It was tough to choose which characters to do, but in the end, we picked those that we thought would be easy enough, recognizable and fitting with the look of each member of our team.

King George II: For this I left our team member to her own devices and she managed to hire a costume that would achieve the look, regardless of screen accuracy, quickly and easily:



She ended up looking a little like a cross between King George and Governor Swann, but we figured her small stature should help the confusion.

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Next up... Elizabeth Swann. Now, we new this would be one of our character, but we had a heckuva time narrowing down which outfit to do. As I mentioned in one of my previous builds the ladies on our team were tired of doing "princess" outfits which we have done several times in the past. So that eliminated her fancy dresses. The other problem is difficulty. The later outfits (Singapore, etc) are quite complicated. So, we opted for the "pirate boy/stowaway" look.

I had already decided I would go with the hero Jack Sparrow outfit (so I could donate my hat and coat to other characters), so my tricorn went to Elizabeth. We already had a generic white Renaissance shirt. For the waist-coat, we took a cheap, plain frock coat we found, pinned back the lapels and collar, used black ribbon and double-sided tape to simulate the decorative buttonholes, added a long row of antiqued buttons and, of course, removed the sleeves. We left the back of the coat long as we were hoping to be able to return it to its former state as a frock coat.

We got a wide leather belt, added a leather frog (based on my Jack baldric) and sewed together a quick and cheap scabbard.

We took some existing boots and added a leather flap at the top to make them look more period.

Finally, she tied her hair up and wrapped the tail in cloth (and had to wear a beanie underneath the XL-sized Jack tricorn).

The end result:

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For my wife's costume, we narrowed it down to Angelica or Tia Dalma. She decided on the latter since it was a more interesting outfit. Now, sticking with our budget ideas, we were limited to how we could replicate this. So, we had a look around the second hand shops and found this strange hand-made dress:



After cutting off the strange orange trim, I sewed some lace and trim to the ends of the sleeves. I added a corset we had and made a shawl from one of our kids old blankets. Combining some large beads, a replica claw and cameo strung to a piece of leather created our first bit of jewelry:



I tried staining the blanket with tea, but it seemed to be some kind of synthetic, because it didn't take, so I used some brown spray paint instead.

I found a great belt in a second hand shop that was surprisingly close to what Tia actually wears. It was a horrible orange color, but had tons of beads and shells. After some distressing with brown paint, the orange was dulled and the shells darkened:



I hot glued some "fur" cut from one of Gandalf the Grey's beards from our LOTR outfits to the back of the belt and added some leather ties:



Instead of adding a full gown-like skirt to the dress, we instead got the idea of sewing sea shells to the skirt. Tia's outfit has shells on the top parts, but this is covered by the shawl, so we thought incorporating these into the skirt will get a similar effect.

Gathered from the sea side of the Pacific Ocean:



Trying to drill through the shells with a dremel didn't work very well so, instead, I hot glued small twine loops to the backs of each shell:



For the wig, I found a really cheap dreadlock wig on eBay. The photo looked decent, but when it arrived it looked almost nothing like dreads:



Firstly, I spray painted brown randomly throughout the wig to give it more depth of color. I then grouped several strands into larger bunches, twisted them, then poured boiled water to train them to stay together. Some of them I back-brushed for a more authentic dread look, but this is a very time consuming method, and I was rushed.



After doing this to the entire wig, I added some baby powder to dull the shine and add more color tones. I added some braids, string ties and a couple of feathers to make it more interesting.

For the make-up, my wife simply used some dark bronzing powder over a slightly-darker-than-normal (for her) foundation. Some black lipstick and eyeliner to dot her face and the make-up was nearly complete. A little black food coloring added to toothpaste makes for some nice teeth-darkening.

Lastly, I managed to get the MR version of Tia's necklace, so the final result was:



Not necessarily the most accurate outfit, but recognizable.

[Indy Magnoli]

And now for Blackbeard...

The big problem with the POTC Blackbeard is that he's wearing a ton of leather. So, there is no way of doing this cheaply and accurately unless you've got a cache of leather or a bunch of leather garments handy that you don't mind destroying. Since I had neither of these, we decided on concentrating on the overall dark look of the character and hope for the best.

I figured my Jack Sparrow frock coat was dark enough to work for Blackbeard and would give him an instant period-pirate look. We used the black shirt I made for my Aragorn/Strider costume and some period 2/3 length black pants that would hang above some black rubber riding boots I use for my Vader costume.

I needed another baldric, so I started with a wide black belt I had:



Cut a piece of thick dark red leather for the frog (I used the back side which was darker and sprayed the last of my black spray paint to darken it a bit more):



Add some chicago screws and we have a baldric:



I used some sandpaper to rough it up a bit for a more worn-in look.

For his sword, I used an actual US Civil War saber I've got in my collection, since it looks old and tough (shown here with my Jack sword):



For the beard, I started with a cheap costume beard from the $2 shop (the NZ equivalent of the Dollar Store):



I cut off the mustache part, converted them into side-burns and added a little grey "soul patch" from the Gandalf beard off-cuts, just to add a little extra character to the beard:



I had already cut off some length from the black wig we used on the LOTR Orc costume, so the excess hair went to make some braids:



I hot glued them to the main beard:



You can also see in the above shot that the beard now has some shape (I cut a triangular piece out of the middle of the beard and sewed the to edges together, so the beard would now hug the bottom of the chin).

I ended up doing four braids... I wanted to do more but I'm glad I didn't as the side braids ended up being partially obscured by the wig anyway.

Lastly, for the hat, I bought a super cheap "cowboy" hat:



I removed the strange string throughout the hat, added brass rivets to the outer row of holes (studs would have been more accurate, but I had the rivets on hand), and then cut the crown to start the transformation:



Luckily, this hat already had some kind of wire in the brim, so bending it into a tricorn was easy. I sewed the remaining edges of the crown into a rough dome shape:



The imperfections where then masked by hot-glued strips of leather cut from an old purse:



The finished product was dusted with baby powder to give it a more worn look:



We added a few extra belts around his midsection, including one from our Gandalf the Grey build.

For his make-up, we smeared some eyeliner around the eyes (not as much as Jack, but enough to darken the area). He had his own mustache, but we darkened it with some black acrylic paint, applied with a tooth brush, to better match the very black beard.

The final Blackbeard (without his baldric in these photos... but at the end of the build there will be better shots of all of us together)

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Last, but not least, Hector Barbossa!

Very little was actually made for this costume, almost the entire thing was pieced together from other outfits I've made/collected. Ironically, a lot of it comes from pieces from my wedding which had a Renaissance theme:



So, here is a full list of the pieces thrown together along with their original use:

Hat: Renaissance hat from my wedding, turned so the curl was at the front, and most of the feathers removed
Bandana: sample from the same factory that makes my Jack Sparrow bandanas (the same pattern as Jack's but in a light blue/green with silver threads)
Hair: wig from my Aragorn/Strider outfit
Necklace: MR Barbossa pendant
Shirt: My wedding shirt (also used in my original Jack Sparrow outfit shown in the first post)
Vest: Wahmaker western vest I got from my brother-in-law
Coat: My wedding coat (made by Museum Replicas)
Sashes: army surplus head wraps
Flintlock: Denix, borrowed from a friend
Baldric: my original Jack Sparrow baldric (shown in the first post as well)
Sword: original prototype from my Jack Sparrow sword run
Scabbard: quickly sewn by hand with leather I already had:



Glove: fingerless glove from my Strider outfit
Ring: MR Dragon Ring (since I have since upgraded to an Acme dragon ring)
Belts and pants... nothing special
Boots: My wedding boots (also from Museum Replicas) and used for my Strider costume.

We also added some press-on nails, quickly painted with yellow and brown acrylics (one popped off by the point this photo was taken):





We brought along a monkey, though didn't have time to make him a waistcoat:

[Indy Magnoli]

And finally... here are some group shots:

(Disclaimer: We were in a huge rush to get dressed, take some photos and get to the venue on time, and since I was the last one to get dressed, I had to throw myself together quickly from memory... so my belts ended up askew, my compass on the wrong side... my chicken foot dangled from the middle of my waist, which ended up causing the chicken claw to poke me in the thigh several times throughout the evening. It wasn't until I uploaded the photos and started looking at them that I realized my mistake. Anyway... on to the photos!)







Thanks for watching... come back anytime...



Kind regards,
Magnoli

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