Halloween 2021: Shang-Chi

Apr 7

Starting when the kids were young, we’ve always done family costumes every year. We talk about the next halloween starting the day after (or even day of) Halloween. It’s a constant topic in our household.

In 2021 - we had nothing! The wasn’t a huge blockbuster with new character. In September, we finally had a unanimous decision. We went to the theater and saw Shang-Chi… we LOVED it! It has an Asian cast and a white character that I could go as!

If you’re ever on a Zoom call with me, you’ll see these pieces spread around my room. I love the way they turned out!

One of the things I loved about these projects is that I get to use different skills that I’ve gathered over the decades and put them all together:

3D Design and Printing
Sewing
Foam Fabrication
Woodworking
Painting and finishing

YING NAN

Bought

Necklace, sandals

Made

Earrings (by Sarah)
Top and bottom outfit

This was my first time using a dress form. It was fantastic! AND it allowed me to work with pieces in place, without having Lauren subject herself to some light stabbing. I think the most complex part of this costume was the pattern, since one did not exist… After ruining the first few yards of fabric, I reached out to a friend who has made tons of costumes (renn fairs and such) for advice. She sent me a page from a book she has (which I have since bought) and that cleared everything up!!

Turns out I had been doing it wrong!

Previous lessons applied here. USE A PIPING FOOT! It makes binding rope or cording into fabric edging SUPER easy. they cost like $8 and will save you from crying.

This costume has a LOT of piping - and if you look close enough you can see that it’s actually a cord in the pipe. Luckily, just before this, I had sewn all the piping for the dragon chair. The end of the sleeves are just a ½” +/- ½” rolled hem. It’s not super even.

Lauren tried it on, was super happy with it. I showed her a couple Thai Chi moves for posing and then she asked, “where are the pants?”

I forgot about pants. So I made some pants (with a pocket!) and now her costume is not pants-less ;)

Overall I loved the way this costume turned out.

XIALING

Bought

Top, pants, wig, shoes

Made

Rope knife (yes, that’s what it’s called)
Necklace pendant

With the purchased items for this costume, there wasn’t too much to build. We were in a time crunch after all - so if we could buy something, we did (record scratch — more on that later). Over the years, we always found that one of our costumes ended up being more purchased than produced, that’s this one this year.

I LOVED making the rope knife and pendant necklaces. They both followed essentially the same process.

3D model the parts
3D print them (using new SLA printer)
Prime & paint (Child 2 painted the pendants - you know - so they would look better)
Clear coat
Aging/Weathering - always do this after the first clear coat

SHANG-CHI

Bought

Pants, shoes

Made

Shirt
10 Rings
Necklace

I’ll skip the necklace, since I just made two of them ;).

For the ten rings, this was so soon after the release that the only thing available online was a garbage kids toy. There were a few 3d models online, but I wanted to create my own. There was one issue I had with these… you have to

Be able to get them over your hand
Fit them tight against your skin

These are diametrically opposed goals. The solution was to model a hole through each half of the ring. Like a long curved bead. After modeling and scaling them to fit child 2’s skinny arms, I printed them and painted.

To solve the usability issue, I put a dab of superglue on the end of a 3” piece of shock cord. Then threaded it into both halves of each ring. So now the rings could separate to get over the hand and cinch down on the arm. One of them was a bit too cinchy and had to be re-glued. NBD - Shang-Chi was complete.

OR SO WE THOUGHT!! “If we could buy, we did.” We ordered the shirt a month before we needed it.

And it never showed up.

So the day before halloween child2 and I took a trip to Joann fabric to get the materials to MAKE THE SHIRT.

I bought a simple chinese shirt pattern on Etsy and modified it to be correct for the costume. Took a few hours of time - and it came out just fantastic! Good enough for Halloween, for sure!

Also, the purchased one showed up the following day. We returned it.

RAZORFIST

Bought

Wetsuit top, pants, boots

Made

Sword-fist-thing
Insignias
Chest piece w/ shoulders and collar
Belt/Girdle

For this guy, there was 3d design, printing, woodworking, sewing, painting…. EVERYTHING! The sword base is 4 inch plumbing fittings that I cut and added 3d printed (SLA) embellishments.

The base of the blade combines some woodworking and 3d printing (FDM) and transitions into a wooden blade. To cap it off, I used electroluminescent wire (EL Wire for those search inclined) and hot glue to make it look like the blade is glowing.

There are 4 insignias, one on the chest, one on the belt, and one on each side. They were designed in Blender and 3d printed on the SLA machine. The finish for these is black spray paint and bronze rub and buff - one of my favorite finishing techniques!

The belt is made from EVA foam with a large belt snap buckle on the front - onto which I glued the insignia.