Ooh, I love this question.

So first up:

Trampoline shoots.

You will want a fairly large trampoline in an open space, and you will want it positioned in a place where you can (more or less) shoot against the sky. Unless you want your neighbours’ houses or trees as the background, an open sky is the best because you can fake supreme heights by just removing the few little distractions that squeak in and photoshopping in some clouds or some land below or something.

You will absolutely need a photographer. I don’t think tripods really matter because you’re going to be moving around so much that the freedom of movement is much better for the photographer if they can move swiftly, too.

You want to pick a day that has nice lighting. Overcast is great because you don’t end up with harsh shadows on your face and whatnot, but it can also make pictures a little grey. No problem, you have post-production to fix that. Also pick a day where you’re not going to sweat your ass off; we did our first trampoline shoot in 40ºC weather, and afterwards, I could practically wring the sweat from my skirt where the belt had pressed it against my skin. (Beautiful mental image, I know. I’m just trying to spare you the Gross.)

Any heeled or unsafe shoes for trampolines are a no-no. Jumping around in my sock-boots with thin, flat soles for Supergirl is great, but I’d never jump in heels, both to protect my own ankles and protect the trampoline. Likewise with heavy boots. You don’t want to injure yourself or damage your trampoline (or your friend’s trampoline, or whoever’s) just for cosplay pictures. Is your footwear crucial? Wear coloured socks or make alternate shoes that are “lightweight/flat” editions of your regular shoes. You don’t need heels for height when you’re being flung through the air!

The biggest trick to actually doing these photoshoots is controlling where the cape goes. If you just bounce around and let it go wherever it pleases, you are going to end up with it going over your head, wrapping around your body, getting caught between your legs, etc. You need a cape that is long enough for you to hold onto the edges. Ideally, you are going to hold onto it to guide it as you go up, and let go juuust when you start descent. This way you aren’t holding your cape, but you have it spread out beautifully and your hands are wide and “joyous”.

Stop periodically to review the pictures with your photographer. Figure out what is working, what isn’t, and what you need to try again to see if you can time it better/get luckier. If you need to change how you’re working and start calling out timing or make suggestions, do it: communication will make it easier.

However, I also want to note that not all costumes really “work” with trampoline pictures. Josh and I did a shoot once with me in my DCAU/Danvers “white t-shirt” Supergirl costume, with the short cape and the tight-fitting miniskirt, and we found it just ended up looking awkward. In fact, we didn’t get a single picture out of it. We got better pictures out of casual clothes. Trampolines make for very weird shoots; if you only have a little cape flying around you, one you can’t really control, then it often just ends up going wherever it wants. I’ve seen Ms. Marvels pull it off with the sash as the moving fabric or even without, but short capes just tend to be like “hey, did you want me around your head? Done.” I think the “flight” illusion gets a lot of help from loose skirts and whatnot, too. Basically, the more moving fabric you have, the more “dynamic” the picture’s going to end up being. Flying and rushing fabric shows motion. By all means, put whoever you want up in the air, but the more fabric you have, the easier it is. (Unless you’re in a ball gown. Then I don’t know what to tell you.)

But all that aside, I think the hardest part of the shoot is just how much you have to control for. It’s HARD to really nail the shots because not only do you need the camera to be focused and fast enough to catch you when you’re moving all over the place, but you also need to be in control of so much. Your expression needs to be right, so you have to “act” while you’re bouncing yourself through the air. You have to watch how you position your feet and legs. You have to be aware of what you’re doing with your hands, how you’re positioning your body, where your hair is –– it’s maddening work, and while you’re doing it, you have to wrangle a cape and/or make sure your skirt isn’t flipping up. (I have no idea how many shots have been ruined because of that, so I’m going to throw in “get yourself some cute hot pants” as advice.)

And I really want you to be prepared for an insane payoff-to-shot ratio. With us, we usually get about 5-8 useable pictures for every 200 shots we take. If you’re experienced with photoshoots you probably know that lots of pictures end up scrapped in ANY photoshoot, but given the nature of trampolines, you’re just more likely to run into the “shame you’re making a fucking weird face in this shot” problem. Or “oops your cape flipped over your shoulder.” Or “PAAAANTY SHOOOOOTTTTT.”

————————————————————————-

Flying shots without trampolines.

It can be done, but I honestly don’t have much advice for it, because I largely find it’s unsuccessful. Here’s the thing: when you’re on a trampoline, you’re going to be “up” again in a second, and the elastic nature of it is going to soften the blow of impact. When you’re not, you’re climbing to the top of whatever fool thing you’re jumping off of, and then trying to land on what is probably a hard, unforgiving surface.

As such, it is extremely, extremely hard to do a convincing flying shot by jumping off ledges or stairs or whatever. You will be 90% focused on balancing yourself and not wiping out your ankles or going to your knees upon landing that you won’t even think about where your cape is going. “Jumping off a ledge” gives you “falling” shots, and they don’t even make good landing shots. Also, the distinct lack of height means it’s very hard to get a clear sky/good background that doesn’t look like you’re “falling down in front of this building” or “about to plunge off these stairs.”

It’s also exhausting.

So instead, focus on the going “up”, and have your photographer shoot from a low angle to get a more dynamic view.

The key to this is long straight jumps. You’re much more likely to get a good shot if you’re going parallel to the ground, instead of towards it. Take a good running step and leap as though you’re a ballerina or a martial artist or something.

This is semi-successful, but I didn’t push it enough:

Bend one knee and bring it forward so you’re not a flying stick, and do it dramatically enough that you look like you have forward momentum. That’s how we got shots like the Supergirl vs Powergirl one. They aren’t necessarily as dynamic as trampoline ones, but I think they are better than the “I’m about to wipe out on this concrete, aren’t I?” falling ones.

And if you’re doing fighting poses, make sure your swinging arm is up and away, so you don’t block your body/face with your own arm.

——————————-

Landing shots and simple cape movement pictures.

These are a lot easier than they look, though just as trial-and-error to get the right effect. What you basically need to watch out for is speed.

Think about it this way: when you move fast, your cape is going to rush, and then it’s going to hit you as you stop because it wants to keep going. If you’re moving fast, you’re also making timing more difficult for the photographer.

What you really want to do here is keep your movements “short”. Start from a standing position and then move forward as if you’re doing an aerobics “lunge” move, dropping down to one knee. Hold the edges of your cape as you start forward and release at the mid-way point. You ideally want your photographer to snap the picture just before your knee hits the ground, when your forward leg is at the knee at about a 90º angle. If you can do this motion slow and smooth, your cape will “glide” with you and your photographer has a better chance at grabbing the picture at the right time, in focus and all that jazz.

Want to just get a “standing” shot where your cape is in motion? Instead of turning in full circles (which gets you shots like this) or running to get your cape moving, try a quarter-turn. That’s how Elemental and I got the awesome shot in front of the grey brick wall. Start with your left side to the photographer, holding the right side of your cape with your right hand. When your photographer is ready, swing your right leg to turn yourself to face the photographer and let the cape fan out. The quarter-turn gets just enough motion running through your cape (and skirt) that you get movement going on without going so far that a) the photographer loses you or b) your skirt flips up. The quarter-turn also means you can be facing your photographer the whole time, instead of trying to look at them while spinning in circles.

Hope that helps :)

Jenn

Time for another tutorial, huh? This time we’re going to learn how to make basic, single-layer bows. These bows can be optionally stuffed with batting for a puffier look, or left flat like mine.

These are really useful for bows for sailor uniforms, hair bows, lolita stuff, whatever. I made four of these suckers tonight for the bows on Madoka school uniforms, but I took a picture of it on my head because it looked super dumb on the front of my pajama shirt in pictures, and pfft, like you can convince me to get dressed at 1:30 am just for a picture. What am I, a model? (Like, a real one?) These bows are also nice because you never have to tie or untie them. They’re just perpetually beautiful.

So here’s what you need:

• Your usual sewing tools (pins, scissors, sewing machine, etc)
• Your fabric, which can be anything and everything. How much you need will widely depend on how big your bow is, but this one used three pieces — 6.5”x19”, 3.5”x5” and 12”x2.5” I just so happened to use red ciara satin (the same stuff I used on my Supergirl skirt) and it photographs horrrrrribly under my bedroom’s light.
• Some scrap fabric to make a draft/play with sizes. (I didn’t do this, bad girl.)
• Ironing board.
• Optional: interfacing, batting, etc, whatever you want to put inside the bow to change its shape.

So let’s get started.

Picture 5 is what you want to get first. “Jenn,” you say, “what the hell is that?” That, my friends, is what you are going to make before cut any of your good fabric. (My scrap just so happened to be the same fabric as my final bows.) Take various rectangles of fabric and fold them over and around until you get a rough idea of how big you want it to be. From there, you can probably guesstimate what kind of pieces you’ll be working with, but you want to come up with three parts: the main body, which should be twice as long as the finished bow, the knot, which should be twice as wide as what you want the finished knot and the right circumference around, and the tail, which should also be twice as wide as what you want the finished tail to be.

I ended up with  6.5”x19” for the body, 3.5”x5” for the knot and 12”x2.5” for the tail. Make sure you add seam allowance.

When you are happy with your bow mock-up, cut out your rectangles from your proper fabric. You’re going to want to do the following to each:

• Body: Fold the longer side by half and sew up the width. Leave a break in the middle!
• Knot: Fold in half lengthwise and stitch up the whole length.
• Tail: Fold in half lengthwise, and sew all open sides save for a gap in the middle. The smaller you make it, the more finicky it is later to turn it right-side-out, but you will have less hand-sewing to do.

With that done, move to your ironing board. Turn the tail and knot right-side-out and iron them flat, taking care that the seams are opened nicely. Use a pin to gently pull out the corners on the tail so they are right angles. I like to move the seam on the knot to the middle (I’ve shown you both sides in picture 7) so that it’s not visible from either side, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. When that’s done, go back to your body.

Now: move the seam-with-a-gap to the middle and press it open, keeping it inside-out. Now you get to sew the top and bottom closed. This way, you end up with a weird little flat rectangle sealed on all sides, but with an open gap in the middle of the back. Use this gap to turn the sucker right-side out, and again, iron it so the seams are brought out nicely and the corners are sharp. 

Take your knot and attach the ends to each other, making sure the “middle” seam ends up on the inside of the bow (unless you want a stripe down the middle, but hey, that’s your call.) 

From there it should be pretty self-explanatory, or at least you can figure out what happens. Hand-sew the gaps on the body and tail shut (or use the gaps first to stuff or fill it with glitter or whatever your heart desires), and then assemble the pieces by putting the body through the knot and centering it nicely, and then hand-sew it in place so it doesn’t slide around. You may want to spend some time manipulating the body so it sits just like how you want it, first, and if you want an extra-tight, not-budging-an-inch bow, you can gather down the middle of the body (where it will be hidden by the knot) so the ruffling stays in place, too.

Some people like to put the tail through the knot, but I prefer to just sew it in the back, as it sits nicer. No one’s going to see it anyway. The knot has the added bonus that you can put an elastic through it to wear it, or use it to easily attach the bow to headbands or sashes or whatever, and then you can hand-stitch some more to keep it from sliding around.

Pretty fast, huh?

- Jenn

Right! I had a picture initially, but there just wasn’t enough room for it.

In the picture, it is just pinned to Josh’s shirt, but how you attach it depends on what character you’re using it for. For Mon-El, it will attach via snaps placed over the collarbones, with decorative discs overtop.

I wholeheartedly recommend snaps as the number one way of attaching capes –– I cannot stress enough how dangerous it can be to have capes sewn directly to your shirt or clasped at your throat, simply because if someone steps on your cape or it gets caught in something, the cape releases instead of yanking you by your neck or trapping you. Of course, some cape styles don’t allow for this –– Supergirl’s Turner cape, for example, loses a lot aesthetically when you attach it via snaps — but whenever possible, please consider your own safety and comfort and just use snaps. Big snaps are certainly sturdy enough to hold it in place, and it also makes it easier to take apart to store, iron, wash, etceteras. Don’t underestimate the usefulness of being able to remove it easily, it just makes your life as a cosplayer a million times easier. 

Velcro is another option, but I don’t really recommend it. I hate velcro. I hate the sound, I hate the texture, I hate the finicking to get it lined up  properly when you put it on. I hate it. But most heinous of all, velcro and spandex tend to be destructive when put together, as velcro can easily tack to the surface of spandex and destroy the surface when you try to take it off. If you must use velcro, use a lightweight kind.

Alternately, you can close it at your neck with a clasp, but again, I don’t like things that join around the neck. I just cringe whenever I see people wear capes that clasp there, and we altered Emmy’s Batgirl cape so that it would attach from the shoulders instead of the neck for that very reason. I just imagine it getting caught in a door or on an escalator or having someone step on it and cringe. It’s also a matter of weight — if your cape is heavy, then you have all that pressure put directly on your neck all day… that can hurt. So please, please, think of your body when you cosplay and make it easier on yourself.

If you must, though, sew snaps to the back of the neck so that the cape is more supported by your shoulders instead of your neck. This also helps in that if someone steps on your cape, you’ll feel it on the nape of your neck before you feel it on your throat.

Icky.

- Jenn

So you wanna wear a cape?

(God, this new uploading system is balls. It took me forever to arrange them in the right order, because according to Tumblr, despite the pictures being both numbered and uploaded in order, they should just go where-ever they please.)

In this tutorial you’ll be learning to make a basic single-layer cape that attaches from the collarbones. It is patterned as a circle so that it drapes and flows, giving it a lot of body and “flow” when you walk. It has a hand-rolled hem on all sides to give it a clean, finished look without any raw edges.

It works for characters with “trimless” single-coloured capes, such as Superman, Mon-El, or Thor. I will be doing tutorials for trimmed capes or double-layered capes (or capes that have different coloured layers) at a later date, as well as a proper tutorial on collared capes.

What you will need:

• Basic sewing equipment (pins, tape measure, scissors, sewing machine)
• Sufficient fabric; a half-circle cape will take roughly 120”x60”, but ideally you just need a rectangle that is double in length as it is in width. You also want this fabric to be light-medium weight and made of polyester so that it is easier to care for and IRONS WELL. A tiny bit of stretch is alright, but be aware that the more stretch there is, the more your cape will desire to be as close to the ground as possible… and who likes a droopy, sad cape?
• An iron and ironing board.

To make things easier, you may also want:

• A flexible ruler makes life easier to do the curve of the neckline.
• A friend to help play “compass” with you.
• If you have the physical constitution of wet paper towel (as I do), you may want to pop an Advil, because you’re going to hemming for fucking hours.

Ready? Here we go.

Spread your fabric out on the nice, clean floor. Fold it in half down the middle so that you have a square. Then fold it diagonally, so that you have a “slice”; the third and fourth pictures demonstrate this, but you basically want to have something that will open up to be one piece. This is going to save you a lot of time pinning the bottom curve of your cape.

Once you have your fabric laid out nicely and the edges lined up beautifully, take your measuring tape and decide how long you need this cape to be. Josh here is 5’7” or so, and we cut the cape to 57.5”, this way the finished cape will land just around his ankles from the back of his neck.

Remember compasses? Not the kind you use to save your lost ass from the wilderness and find “North”, the kind you used in sixth grade math class like twice and thought was really cool but had no practical use for.  Well, now you get to do something Similar. Line up your measuring tape with that top “point” of your fabric, so it sits nicely in the middle. Have your friend put their finger on it, with enough pressure to keep it from sliding but still leave it room to “swing”. You’re going to use this to draw a large curve across the fabric, using whatever length suits you — if you want to cut a 58” long cape, then use the 58” mark on the measuring tape to pin across. You can see us doing this in picture six. 

Finish pinning the whole way across and then cut just below the pins. When you open it up, you have a big ass cape! (Picture seven.) But it doesn’t have a neck curve yet, and you’ll want to add that so it hangs around your neck nicely. Fold it up again in half (don’t worry about the pizza slice this time) and measure your neck to see how wide you want this neckline to be. We picked 20”, which means we needed to cut an arc that spanned 10”. Now, I’m impatient with math, so I just bent my flexible ruler into a curve and used my measuring tape to make sure it was equal distance away from the corner, but if you’re better at math than I am, you can figure out how many inches you need to “swing” just like you did to cut the bottom of the cape. (A 10” half-circle needs about a 6” swing, for the record.) When you’re done that, cut.

And now you have a cape!

But it’s not finished yet.

If you’re fancy, you may have something called a “rolled hem foot” that lets you do stuff like this easily, but a) I find those things more trouble than they’re worth and b) what am I, a wizard? I’m not fucking around with a foot when I can do it manually. You might be a wizard, though, so if you want to explore this magical sewing foot, you can read someone else’s tutorial here.

But if you’re cool and want to stick with me and learn how to do it manually, that’s cool, too.

Now, if you just folded over the edges once and sewed it down and called it a day, your cape might still be okay. But you don’t want fraying –– that stuff is ugly, and you’ll appreciate the extra work of doing a rolled hem, which is just a fancy way to say “fold that shit over twice.”

Picture 9 shows this pretty clearly, I think –– fold over the edge you want to hem once, iron it, and then fold it over again, so that the ugly raw edge is trapped inside. Pin it all. You’re going to want to pin it very evenly and close together, and TAKE YOUR TIME. If you rush it, you’re going to end up with an ugly, uneven hem, and it’ll bubble up in weird places because you’re hemming a big curve, here. This can be very tedious and take a long time, especially if your cape is huge. (This is why it is usually faster to just make a double-layered cape. UGH, HEMMING.) But the results are worth it; a single-layered cape with beautiful hems is gorgeous and usually less bulky than a double-layered one, so they fly better.

Once you have everything pinned (taking care to pin down the corners neatly, too) you can sew it all. Take your time and make sure the fabric is tight/flat when you sew over it, lest you end up with weird bubbles and misplaced hems. Stay close to the edge of the hem, so that you don’t end up with overhang.

Speed will only sabotage you.

Once you’re done sewing it all down, take out any remaining pins and give the whole thing a good ironing. This should smooth out any remaining warps in your fabric, as you’re using a polyester and they can be warped back into line a little with some heat. 

And then enjoy your cape. You earned it. 

Go race some airplanes.

So on Friday I told you how to make superhero boots. (By the way, 1800 notes? Thanks!) Today I’m going to show you how to make custom thigh-highs (or socks in general.) We’ll just call it the sock weekend.

Here I’m making Tomoe Mami’s thigh-highs. (I’ve intentionally made them in brown, as I didn’t like the purple.) Do you know how hard it is to find thigh-highs in the right color, with that pinstripe? Not to mention, not everyone fits into those “one size fits most” socks; my thighs never co-operate with the things and they end up around my knees constantly. As a result I’ve taken to making my own.

You will need:

• Standard sewing tools (measuring tape, scissors, pins, sewing machine.) I used a serger for much of it but it’s really not necessary at all.
• Sufficient amount of a stretch fabric; the stretch will have to run around your leg at the very least. I used about 30”x45” and had plenty of scrap, so you should be safe with a yard.
• Enough wide elastic to make bands that fit snugly around your thighs.

That’s really it.

Cut your fabric into rectangles, the widest enough to fit the widest point of your leg. I freehand this because you really don’t need that much of it. Put one rectangle aside and focus on the first sock. Sew up the length and across the bottom. You have essentially just made a large wine bag for your thigh.

Sexy.

Stick your foot in this Sexy Wine Bag. Start pinning it so that your wine bag clings to you more like a sock. Go down to your ankle; it’s way easier to do this in two parts. When you are pleased with the tightness, carefully take it off your leg without disturbing the pins. It’s usually necessary to make a few adjustments to the pins once you have it off, just so they’re laying flat/even. 

Sew up that fit you just made. You should end up with a sock that ends up with a club foot. (See picture. Laugh.)

Now do your foot. You may want to round it out over the toe so you don’t get little elf points. Doing the seam along the bottom of your foot is the absolute easiest, imho, because you get a better fit with less finicking, but you will also end up having the seam along the underside of your foot, which I know bothers some people. If this is weird to you, then do the seam along the side… you just might not have as good of a fit as you want without a lot of finicking if your fabric doesn’t have a lot of stretch.

Carefully take it off, adjust the pins for neatness, and sew again.

Trace this finished sock against your other Sexy Wine Bag and sew that one, too. If you’re super into it, trace the sock off on paper, too, so that you have a pattern you can reuse next time without having to do any pinning/fitting. 

YOU HAVE SOCKS NOW :) 

But these socks don’t have finished top hems, are let’s be real, are liable to fall down if they’re left all on their own. You could just fold them over and hem ‘em, but I like elastic in there for support.

Put on your socks (inside out!), make your elastic bands, and slide the bands on overtop your socks. Fold the top edge of the sock down over the elastic band and pin it in place. Go all the way around your leg –– be careful doing this, as it can be tricky to pin against the underside of your thigh when you can’t really see what you’re doing, but it’s doable. When you’ve finished pinning, take it off –– it should look a little weird, as the fabric is no longer stretched. No big deal; sew it in place, making sure you stretch the fabric out as you sew it. I like to catch the needle along the edge of the elastic just so it doesn’t roll/do weird things inside the casing. 

And then voila. You have finished socks.

Go kill Witches.

- Jenn

Look: these boots are very, very simple. Actually sewing them together is no problem once you’ve got it drafted. 

It is, essentially, a sock. A sock with a fancy cuff, with a sole glued to the bottom. It is also zipper-free. You are going to make a sock that fits over a shoe, and you are going to use a knife to peel off the edges of the sole, tuck the fabric under, and then glue the soles back in place so you have a nice, clean edge.

You will need:

• Spandex fabric in whatever color you need.
• Extra spandex fabric with the same amount of stretch for drafting your pattern.
• Pattern paper.
• A pair of ballet flats (or whatever shoe type you need.) Make sure you get the right “shape”; Supergirl’s boots, for example, have a pointed toe, and look out for sole color; we usually just go with black because anything else will get dirty/paint will chip. You also want to find one with an easily removed sole; as a general rule, the cheaper the shoe, the easier time you’ll have with it. We usually spend about $5 tops on our flats, haha. If you’re trying to do heels, be very, very cautious; if you damage the structural integrity of the shoe, you might be in some trouble when you need to walk on them. You also want to make sure they are as basic as possible; remove any bows and whatever possible.
• An exacto knife.
• Hot glue
• Usual sewing implements; pins, scissors, rulers, whatever. 

You can draft it yourself easily: take your scrap fabric and wrap it around your leg as I’ve pictured above in the pink, and pin it along the back. You want to make it snug, but not so snug that you can’t get your foot out of it either. POINT YOUR TOE WHILE YOU DO THIS. Additionally, wear the shoe while you pin it around your foot; it’ll need to fit over the shoe in the end anyway. Don’t worry about the bottom of your foot; it’s easier if you make the curve under your heel snug, and the front of your toes, but you’re not going to be closing off the bottom.

When you have it pinned neatly and evenly, trim the edges down. Leave enough excess for seam allowance along the back, and enough for tucking on the bottom. (Tucking into the sole, that is.) Take it off your foot and you should have some weird shape (like a mirrored version of the pattern I have pictured above.)

Now: if you trace that onto pattern paper and smooth out any raggedness you may have made in cutting, you have your basic pattern. Then all you have to do is alter the top of the pattern: a /\ point for Wonder Woman, a V for Supergirl, etc. Because we’re making Supergirl, here, you’ll want it to be in two pieces, as shown in the pattern above. Wherever you cut to change the design, be sure that you add seam allowance (as you can see on our bottom pattern.) Also make sure that the top edge of your sock is snug enough to your calf that you won’t have to constantly bend to fix them.

I’ve taken pictures of my and Christine’s patterns. Obviously, if you don’t want a seam down the front, you need to cut the fabric on a fold. You will need four of the top cuff and two of the “sock”; the top cuff is two-layered so it’s got a clean top!

Sew all the cuffs: in the last picture, that’s what they should look like. First, sew them all at the back seam. Then layer them together to sew the top seam, so that when you fold them right-side out, you have finished cuffs as pictured. Topstitch whatever you want.

Sew the sock’s back seam.

Sew the cuff to the sock. Be very careful about the corners, so that they are sharp. Again, topstitch whatever works.

Use the exacto-knife to separate the shoe from the sole. Don’t take the whole sole off — you don’t want to pop it out of alignment, or compromise TOO much of the shoe’s integrity. You just need enough opened that you can tuck the bottom edge of your sock into the space between.

Once your whole sock is finished, it’s time for the crazy part: put it on, with your shoe. Then, with the help of a friend or with the acknowledgement that your spine will hurt trying to do it to yourself, start putting the bottom edge of the sock under the edge of the sole, and gluing in place. We have found hot glue works best because it hardens/sets fast: anything else and you may be stuck sitting there wearing your shoes for HOURS trying not to ruin your work.

Now you have boots.

Go kick some supervillain ass, girl.

— A Quick Tip Re: Jingle Bells —

Let it be known that jingle bells are unholy terrors to have on your costume.

“But they’re so cute,” you say. “They’re all jingly on my costume and I think they’re just so adorable!”

No. They are not cute. They are negative cute. Your cuteness is diminished by the jingle-jingle of you walking every which way. For many people, those bells are headache-inducing.

For this reason, I implore you: if you have jingle bells on your costume, especially if they are larger than a pea, you should neuter them before you wear them in public. This goes especially for conventions, because dear god do I hate jingle bells.

There are multiple ways to “neuter” jingle bells:

1. The round ones with the four prongs (like so) can be pried apart so the little ball/ringer can drop out. You can then bend the prongs back into shape.

2. The completely sealed round ones (like so) can seldom be taken apart and put back together again without destroying them. But don’t worry, you too can be free of the unholy terrors: take a glue gun and plug some glue into the bell, and then roll the ringer over the bead of glue. Let dry, and voila; that bell will never blight my ears again.

3. The cloche kind (like so) can have its dinger clipped out with a pair of wire clippers or even nail clippers.

Everyone will thank you.

Sincerely,

Jenn, who was cleaning out her sewing stuff and had a big bag of jingle bells dump all over the ground, and DEAR GOD STOP RINGING, I REFUSE TO HAVE YOU ON MY COSTUME LIKE THIS!

Let me know if tumblr eats this one! I’ll upload it to our DA and link it back!