Like most people, I wanted to do something extra special for Halloween and I have always been a fan of making my own costumes for fancy dress events.
It was actually through the brilliance of this site that I saw the processes some people went through to create a ‘Mystique’ costume, one of my all time favourite Marvel characters. I guess what I kind of did was a ‘pick and choose’ process between different elements and found a process that worked best for me. Of course given the nature of Mystique’s scaly form, a degree of creativity and initiative is vital!
The body:
I decided to start with the base of the costume, I wanted to have a full length body suit that would give me full movement and creativity with the addition of scales. I’ve also done an Avatar costume before when I painted my body fully, however wasn’t very comfortable as I couldn’t comfortably touch anything indoors! I found a cheap blue morphsuit from a local fancy dress shop. I began by cutting the hands and feet off of the suit. I began the process by selecting a blue metallic material to act as the starting point of the scales. I bought one meter of this fabric from Amazon and that was plenty for my needs!
Drawing squiggly shapes on the fabric, cutting them out and then sticking them onto the suit is a very time consuming task, which I probably did over a 3 week period in my spare time. I then decided to add royal blue sequins to jazz the suit up! This is definitely the hardest part of the costume making process, just because it did become tedious, but when it’s done it is very rewarding.
For the face and hair:
I started with the hair, having shoulder length dark hair I needed to use two small cans of temporary red hair spray. I used the first can as the base, combed my hair and then using strong hair gel, generously covered my head. Give this a few seconds to dry and when you apply the second can, it is very effective and the color is vibrant! Then I applied the liquid latex on my face, again it was difficult to meticulously follow the original scale pattern on Mystique’s face, so I pretty much just left it to my own interpretation. If you want the scales to really stand out, then reapply the latex a few times for the desired effect. Next step, one the latex is completely dry, place your eye contact lenses in, this is something that MUST be done prior to painting the face to reduce the risk of anything coming into contact with your eyes.
After this, generously apply blue face paint, royal blue works perfectly. Since my hands and feet were exposed I painted them too, and decided to keep my feet exposed for the costume and wear blue flip flops. Using dark blue eyeshadow, I completely covered the eye area, which is fantastic as it really makes the yellow eye contacts pop!
And that is pretty much it! Of course you can use the same eyeshadow to go over the scales on the face to make them more prominent, but I have after layering them considerably, it wasn’t necessary!
This is without a doubt the best costume I have ever made! And the experience of wearing it was so much more rewarding knowing that I had made it! You certainly get a lot of great conversations with people who are interested in how you did it, which was really nice. I even had some people question whether I even made my costume, which was quite funny! So if you have the time, then go for it!
Related costumes:
Sexy Homemade Mystique Costume from X-Men 
Cool Mystique Homemade Halloween Costume 
Coolest Homemade Mystique Halloween Costume 
Creative Tim Burton’s 9 the Movie Costume 
Supervillainous Magneto and Mystique Costumes 
Epic Handmade Killer Croc Costume from Batman: Arkham City 
Awesome Homemade Hulk Halloween Costume 
Homemade X-Men Mystique Costume
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