I am a Jersey Girl, born and raised. I love my home state so why not use it for inspiration. NJ is a state which receives a lot of mocking. Despite all the mocking, I truly do love NJ ( including the smell near Newark Airport). So I figured why not be the whole State for Halloween and celebrate NJ but also mock all the things I love about it.
To make this New Jersey costume, I used foam core board and my base for the shape and poster board for the top and I traced it using a projector. I then cut out, both shaped and traced the counties and then added major roadways ( route 80, 23 , 46 and of course the Garden State Parkway and NJ turnpike). I then started poking holes for lights ( what is a costume without lights) after securing all my lights I then used industrial strength glue and attached the poster board to the base foam core board. Then I went CRAZY! I went to the craft store and spent seriously three hours in the scrap-booking section. I was grabbing things that reminded me of NJ for each different county and was getting more and more excited. Seaside heights has real sand on it with a Ferris wheel and I added flames because the boardwalk recently caught on fire and I have Atlantic City with cards and a roulette wheel but I put a “sorry we’re closed” sign on it because of all the recent Casinos closing. Paterson, NJ was adorned with pills and needles. Newark had an airplane gun and a cop car with working lights on it. It also had all the jersey shore characters in a dump truck named Karma. Everything I placed on the costume was geographically as accurate as possible. You can also find many famous faces on my costume.
My head piece was made from a head band lights I wired into a box and duct tape I printed pictures and made light of some recent events in NJ.
Chris Christie and his bridge scandal.
There’s a real housewife of NJ. I made her the real prison wife.
The Ebola Nurse who did not want to be quarantined.
Everyone I came across loved it. They thought it was the most original costume they had ever seen and could not believe the amount of detail. I would go up to people and ask them where they wanted to go in NJ and they always got a kick out of it.
I would say I recommend the shore but right now seaside is on fire. Some guy came up to me and told me he has lived in me for 25 years .
I truly love this costume. I enjoyed making it and had even more fun wearing it. I feel I deserve to be a winner. It is as original as it gets, not some idea you find and say ‘I can make it better’ and say it is yours. I truly made my costume from the ground up and I used the Wonderful State of NJ as inspiration.
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