DIY Life

There's no doubt about it: Indiana Jones is cool. After waiting almost twenty years for the fourth installment of the Indy series, the buzz is beyond buzzing. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, although it is not my favorite of the series, has every ingredient you have come to expect and love about an Indy movie.

So what's this got to do with DIY-ing? You can capitalize on all the movie hype and make your own Indiana Jones costume. Will you be perceived as cool, too? With lots of leather items and some electrical tape, how could you be anything but?

You'll need brown and black electrical tape, rope, a light brown and a dark brown leather belt, jeans, a fedora, and just a few minutes of your time. There are details about how to make a Indy-style shoulder bag and a whip using rope and electrical tape. Add a few key clothing items and your costume is complete.

So wear it to the movie, don that costume on Halloween, or just put on those duds and venture to the grocery store. You'll be Indy-cool, and that much cooler because you made it yourself.

Iron Man gear is all the rage these days, thanks to the popularity of the new hit movie. We recently went to my nephew's fourth birthday party, and as a gift, he received an Iron Man mask and an arm attachment that shoots discs. Ah, the weaponry a four-year-old apparently needs....

If you've got an Iron Man buff in your household, why spend the money on a store-bought mask and arc reactor when you can build one yourself? Details after the break.

The advantages of full skirts are obvious. They spin and twirl in a delightful way, and have been in style for the last few summers, usually in the form of a ruffled peasant skirt. Even when they aren't fashionable, they can be useful for all kinds of dance (salsa, flamenco, swing, modern, belly), as well as for costuming.

If you have basic sewing skills, they're incredibly easy to make. There are two popular ways to create a very full skirt: make a circle skirt, or make a gored skirt with wedge-shaped panels.

To make a circle skirt, in the most simple terms: draw, on fabric, a circle the circumference of the intended wearer's waist, then another circle as far outside of it as you want the skirt's length to be. (If that doesn't make much sense, think of a "bull's-eye" pattern.) The result is a typical circle skirt. The interior circle is the waist, which will need a waistband, and the exterior circle is the hem, which will need to be finished.

Getting the best possible results is a little more complicated than that. For more circle skirt tips and tricks, as well as everything you need to know about gored skirts (and a few useful pattern links), please join me after the break.

Some video games take years to become classics and enter the popular consciousness, but Portal, the puzzle game from The Valve Corporation's Orange Box game bundle, seems to have taken only a few months.

With online memes popping up like "The cake is a lie" (referring to a promised in-game incentive that may or may not actually exist), and the game's clever, catchy closing theme, "Still Alive", it would be difficult to have been active on the Internet in the last few months without bumping into multiple Portal references.

There's a hole in the sky through which things can fly, as they say at Aperture Science, Portal's setting. Please join us after the break to see what people are doing in tribute to this ground-breaking game, with special note taken of the improbably-endearing "character" known as the Weighted Companion Cube.

But beware... there are plot spoilers just ahead. There's cake, too. All you have to do is pass through the portal.

It's been over a week since Halloween. For days, you've been nagging your roommate to take down that ghost decoration they put up in the corner of the living room, near the ceiling. The trouble is, said roommate (who is usually pretty good about washing the dishes and not using all the toilet paper without buying more) claims not to have put up a ghost decoration anywhere in the house.

Meanwhile, the ghost stares at you balefully, waves its arms around, attempts to make spooky noises, leaves ectoplasm stains on the walls, and is starting to gather dust. You think you may have a bit of a problem on your hands: you're not afraid, you're annoyed. So, who you gonna call? There aren't many actual exorcists in the phone book, let alone Dr. Peter Venkman. (Does he even count as an "actual exorcist"? I mean, have you seen the man work?)

My prescription: get a copy of Ghostbusters and run it incessantly on your DVD player this weekend. At the same time, visit the Ghostbusters Prop Archive, a site dedicated to building all sorts of replica props from the film. Make a point of lingering on the pages for Proton Packs and Ghost Traps: print out a few plans, make some notes, and, most importantly, let your uninvited house-guest see you doing it. Periodically make calculating glances in his direction. Munch on marshmallows.

If your ghost is a reasonably bright ghost, he'll put two and two together and head for someone else's apartment. He doesn't have to know that you're not figuring out how to build real ghost traps, right?

If you just want to make some costumes and props for Ghostbusters cosplay or fan films, the GPA would probably work for that, too, I guess... because I'm joking about the exorcism idea. The site has all the detailed information, screen grabs, and building suggestions you could possibly need to make your project a success. There's even a small shop full of elements that may be difficult to find: knobs for the goggles, belts for the uniforms, etc. Get busting!

Rayguns are pretty cool: they have an immensely interesting and arcane look, but they're science-fiction enough to not be able to hurt anyone in real life. They've got style and flash. No retro-futuristic heroine or hero should ever be without one.

Disney licensed an inexpensive plastic toy "Sound Phaser" in conjunction with their movie Meet the Robinsons; it looks a lot like a classic raygun. In need of a prop for a "steampunk vs. cyberpunk" Halloween party, Craftster user TheBon gave a steampunk makeover to one of the raygun toys: after adding a paint treatment and gears, she has a neo-Victorian masterpiece to rival these $690 models from Weta.

If you would like to make one of your own, you'll need the gun itself, along with several kinds of spray paint (including a primer meant for use on plastics), painter's tape, detail paint, gears (clock parts will work), and a few other supplies. Can't get your hands on that particular gun? Here's a different execution of the same idea.

Halloween being Halloween and kids being kids, it seems inevitable that there will be plenty of people going as Harry Potter and friends this year. It's difficult to walk into a costume shop these days without tripping over witch hats and sorcerous accessories (and pirate gear, but that's another story).

In spite of this mass availability, there are plenty of things you can make for yourself. One of the coolest costume accessory tutorials out there is this one for a Harry Potter wizard's wand, which looks great and is made with paper, two kinds of glue (Elmer's/PVA/school glue and hot glue), paint, and gilding. It can be done in well under an hour, plus a bit of drying time. If you're feeling especially ambitious, you can also try this "magical" ultraviolet LED Lumos wand variation, which can be used to reveal secret messages written with UV-reactive materials. And if you're not a Potter fan, this project might be useful in conjunction with my article about making your own fairy wings.

Everyone knows that the best way to win a costume contest at Halloween is to make your own gear -- and be good at it. The costume that's custom tailored for you, and detailed by you, is going to be so much more impressive than something that you can buy off the rack for fifty bucks. Careful selection of appropriate accessories, whether you made them or not, is one way to take your look the extra mile.

Instructables user Honus has gone more like the extra marathon, with his article detailing How to make a Green Lantern ring -- including a glowing version. You'll learn to make several different styles of the Green Lantern's ring, by creating a "wax pattern" (an exact model of the item you want to make, only in wax), a rubber mold, and finally, a resin ring, with optional instructions for including an LED so the ring can glow.

It's a revision of an article that was initially about silver-casting, and those instructions are included, as well. (The author explains that he rewrote the article because most people don't have access to silver-casting equipment, whereas it's pretty easy to cast resin at home. I'd like to see a version of this article written for metal clay, which is somewhere in between in terms of difficulty: it shrinks when it's fired.) Overall, not only will you learn to make an extremely cool ring, you'll also learn a lot about the basics of jewelry design... and maybe come one giant leap closer to the costume contest prize.

Looking for something to sew for a Halloween costume? Wondering how well the costume pattern you've chosen is going to work out for you? Look no further!

San Francisco's Greater Bay Area Costumers Guild was started in 1990 by a couple of people who... well, they just really love to create costumes. The group provides members with costuming resources, places to wear costumes in the form of themed special events, and a group of like-minded enthusiasts. The focus seems to be mostly on historically accurate costuming, with some other stuff that's just for fun. Some members sew professionally; for others, it's a serious hobby.

(They're not quite the same thing as cosplay, which usually involves dressing as a specific character or person in a detailed recreation of an existing film, TV, anime, or stage costume; however, you'll see a bit of cosplay here and there on their site.)

One of the GBACG's most interesting projects is The Great Pattern Review. Read more about it, and how it can help you with your Halloween plans, after the break.