Amanda Did It: DIY Projects: Elphaba Cosplay Tutorial

Today I went to the Cos-Losseum Convention and I decided to dress as Elphaba, from the play Wicked. This is what Elphaba looks like:

She has all green makeup, but in this poster she has red lipstick so I decided to go with red lips:

Final Product:

The clothes:

I made the dress out of black taffeta I bought from fabric.com for $3.48/yard. (link) I had sewn this dress previously for this Halloween costume with Simplicity Pattern 2207. The hat I bought of Amazon (here) for $3. It cam to me wrinkled, but I just blew on it with a hair dryer and it smoothed right out. I made no adjustments to the pattern, just sewed it as is.

I wore black and green striped tights that I already owned from my Hocus Pocus costume in 2013. The shoes I had bought for my Halloween costume in 2015.

The shoes, from Ebay

Hocus Pocus Costume

Makeup Process:

I decided to try alcohol activated makeup this time around because it stays on so much better than water based makeup. It only comes off with alcohol or severe rubbing. I HATE when the paint on my hands rubs off on everything I touch, so this was a good alternative.

I started by practicing on my hand. Normally, you get liquid paint and airbrush it on for a very smooth finish. I don't own an airbrush or an air compressor, so I just bought a pot of paint and 91% isopropyl alcohol to activate it. I brushed it on my hand with a nylon paint brush. I bought it from Reel Creations (Green #6). The small pot cost $5 plus $5 shipping.

I poured the alcohol into the lid of my paint, dipped the paintbrush in there, then rubbed the brush around in the pot until paint got on the brush.

The paint goes on in a pretty thin layer.

It's also hard to get an even layer. After 2 layers I thought it looked pretty good, though.

I decided to sleep with the paint on my hand to see how well it stayed on.

The morning after.

It rubbed off on my fingertips.

To wash it off the paint, I just poured 91% Isopropyl alcohol on my hands and rubbed them together.

To get the rest off I poured the alcohol on a sponge and scrubbed it off.

Almost completely gone now.

After struggling to get an even coat, I wondered if 99% Isopropyl alcohol would work better (Reel Creations says to use 99%). Walmart doesn't carry that, so I ordered it on Amazon for $6.

My next test, I tried on my face:

Layer 1

Layer 2

I'm not sure what happened, but my face did NOT turn out good. The alcohol is kind of harsh on my face and REALLY dries it out (my hands fared much better than my face). I think I was trying to put on too thick of a layer of paint, and it just wasn't working well. This was 2 nights before my convention, so I was kind of freaking out. I didn't know where I could find green paint so last minute.

Luckily, my mom had a palette of grease paint from when I was a cyclops in elementary school.

I decided to test out the green. I used the same paint brush and just blended in a nice thin layer all over my skin. This stuff blends amazingly well.

If I've learned anything from cosplaying, its that you HAVE to contour and put on makeup otherwise you just look flat in pictures. I used black liquid eyeliner as well as black pencil eyeliner for the inside of my eyelids so no pink would show. I used my dark green eye shadow from my Nordstroms palette to contour my cheeks and nose. I used white/cream to highlight my cheeks and nose. I also used dark green eyeshadow on my eyelids and white/cream on my upper eyelids. I used a dark-ish red lipstick for my lips.

This girl does a pretty good Elphaba Makeup video.

My materials:

I felt like the result was pretty good, so I decided to do that for the convention. The only difference in my contouring was that I added some pink to my cheeks.

I also changed the makeup I used a little bit. Instead of just using the green, I tried lightening it up by mixing green and flesh tone. The problem is that I ended up using WAY more paint, so the layer was way thicker and more uncomfortable. In the end, it looked close to the same color anyways, so I should have just gone with the thin thin layer of dark green.

I applied it with my fingers, and then applied a layer of Green Marble to help it not rub off on things. I also made sure to get the back of my neck and and ears. I put on too much Green Marble, which came off in chunky layers when I touched my face. That was bad. I also looked very shiny and greasy. Like I said, I should have used less paint and just used the darker color

I also braided my hair and then sprayed it with black hair spray from Party City. The black hair spray tends to rub off on you when you touch it, so I then used regular hair spray on top of the black to act as a sealer.