The Costume Chronicles

Welcome to the Costume Chronicles, the community scrapbook of The Wardrobe Door. Here you can share pictures and and reports of costumes you've made, and see the handiwork of your fellow Narnia costumers!

Chronicles are arranged chronologically, starting with earliest submissions. Enjoy!


Mr. Tumnus

Mister Tumnus

Timothy

This costume was the product of three Narnia fans. We took fur material from walmart. Also at walmart we found the scarf and shrit to wear due to the cold temps. For the horns and ears we took a plastic hairband, raindeer horns to but a cat, and brown material. We cut off the the horns to a little stub and melted them to the hairband. Next we glued the brown material at the end for ears. The Umbrella we found at Kroger, and it is a Tote wooden hood with light brown umbrella. We used used box and wraped them in brown packing paper.

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Mister Tumnus

Steve

Horns - cardboard

"Goat" tee - real hair

Scarf - dark red yarn

Umbrella - black

Parcels - Wraped in paper bag

Loin cloth - Velvetish material

Pants - Cordoroy

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Mister Tumnus

Alicia

My grad school group was going to the premier of the Narnia movie in costume, and we needed a faun. We talked a friend into being our Mr. Tumnus, and then I went to town making all the props and learning to work with fake fur. Since it was cold, and we were going to a movie theatre, we let him wear a coat. This was the GQ Tumnus. :-D

I loved the horns, which I had a good time making and painting, and his ears, which he was a great sport about wearing! This was a fun, relatively simple costume, though it did shed dark brown fake fur bits all OVER my apartment.

This was my first time working with fake fur, and it was a steep learning curve. The pants were actually designed to be worn without a shirt or coat, and to look like movie-Tumnus' legs, so they were, and were intended to be, high on the waist. They looked good, but I would have liked to do some leg-shaping to give him hocks, and built up the heels on his shoes to change his center of balance and make him walk a bit more like movie-Tumnus.

This was a good, fast costume to add to the overall look of our group of seven people.

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Mister Tumnus

Carrhunger/BCTumnus

Tumnus was a joy to make... Especially since Fauns are so full of joy...
I supose we should start with the head. Head to hoof.

The wig was originally a very long curly wig. We washed out any pre setting sprays and such and then lightly rolled styling gels into it. We then put it on Martin's head and carefully trimmed a little bit off at a time, until we were satisfied.

The horns were first made out of plasticine and then cast with plaster. In this case (due to lack of time) we poured 2part urethane resin (you can also use automotive fibreglass resin) into the plaster and broke the plaster on the floor in order to get the horns out. Usually we would use a flexable material for the final so we can save the mold. Then we hand painted with craft paints. We stuck it to the wig using a load of spirit gum (just in case we have to take them off and start again) but you can also stick them with hotglue. It should be something that dries fast.

The ears are leather. There is a really thick leather you can buy from leather suppliers that is commonly used for quivers, stiff bags, leather crafts.. etc.. We had some left over from another project. It is thick, too thick, so we 'planed' it down (with a leather tool called a skiver) until it was thin enough and simply folded it at the base. We stuck it together with contact cement so it would curve for the right effect. In future we hope to add hairs and such to it. In actuality, the ears are on a small stiff headband under the wig. The wig hides the band and by spiritgumming some of the hair from the wig infront of the ears the look is complete.

That's his own facial hair.

Hooves. It is hard to describe the hooves so I am providing some visual references. The photo titled 'broke' is Martin standing on his actual feet. Here you can see where his heel actually is and get an idea as to how much extension the hoof is from his foot. The photo titled hoofdia is a diagram we drew up tonight to help you see how it all came together. We took old shoes. Cut off the soles, but left the sole where the toe is. Screwed the toe of the sole to the wood hoof and covered it all with fabric, making sure the fabric came down over the top of the wood so it doesn't show.

In essence he is walking on his toes inside the top of the wooden blocks that make up his hooves.

Advice... Practice walking on your toes and your balance. Your muscles need to get use to the strain you are about to put them through and your balance is different when you have wood under your toes. Also add extra padding to the inside of the toe. Martin hurt his toes really bad that night. AND The unbrella does help to have on hand. Sometimes it touching the ground, is all you need to re-establish balance.

OH! His flute. Mouthpiece. Piece of brass hammered into shape. Inside bit, 'Y' shaped piece of wood shoved (and glued) into the brass. Two pieces of PVC conduit (The same as we used for our Susan's bow) attached and painted. It didn't make any sound but it looked right.

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Slideshow video: Tumnus


Mr. Tumnus

Robby

First let's start with the pants: the pants are made of a short fur type fabric. We used a fabric glue to stick together the seams of the pants.

Seeing that we were only going to use them once, we didn't want to waste the time on hand stitching the pants together (we don't have a sewing machine). The scarf was made by my Grandma. It is a dark red/brown/blue color scarf made of very nice thick yarn.

For the ears we used a type of clay called Magic Foam. We hand shaped them into a 'Tumnus' type ear shape, and painted them with a peach colored paint. The horns were actually cut out of a egg carton, then plastered with Paper Mache and painted with a brown colored paint. The 'hoofs' were simply a black pair of slippers I had sitting around my house.

The Packages were made of paper bags cut up and wrapped around brown boxes. Last, the umbrella was also just the first umbrella I could find, so I used it.

Final Result