Hallowe'en! We've Got Trouble...With Tribbles!

As you may or may not know about me, I LOVE dressing up, and I almost always dress up for Hallowe'en. 

This year, I came up with the costume idea back in December 2016 when L and I visited Seattle, and checked out the "Star Trek" exhibit at the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP), here. 

"But these tribbles were so cute when I first picked them up....ah! He's biting me!"

 I bought my Star Trek Communicator badge there, and I've worn it frequently in my everyday outfits. When I originally bought it, I thought, "I must be a Star Trek Redshirt for Hallowe'en". What's a redshirt? Here (Wikipedia).

And then I realized - while chatting with a coworker about how we could both be redshirts - my company colour is red. It wouldn't take much to get my whole office (three of them in BC) to play along with me. All you had to do was wear a red shirt (or sweater, or jacket, or dress) and black pants (or skirt). Easy!

"Where are they all coming from? These Tribbles are breeding like rabbits! Ow!"

 I made "Wanted" posters ("I want YOU for the [my company] Redshirts") featuring a picture of my boss (in a red shirt, of course), and printed silly pictures of the Star Trek redshirt meme, and plastered them all over the offices. I also made paper communicator badges and cut them out (the most labour-intensive part, for me). Today, everyone who wore a red shirt got a badge, stuck on with a loop of scotch tape. It was so easy, and tons of people participated.

"Help! They're smothering me! Help!"

 There were a couple of people who wore actual uniforms, including a mustard captain's outfit, and a vintage blue dress version (worn with a purple wig, nice!), and a few coworkers had phasers and made sound effects with their phones. I pretended to be eaten by these fuzzy tribbles all day - the clients were highly amused when I greeted them in the elevator! "The office is overrun!"

What can I say? I'm a nerd and work with a lot of nerds (I work in IT). Here are the regular poses, so you can see that I actually do have clothes on.

 In a fortuitous turn of events (although boo, I liked this sweater), I discovered a moth hold right in the middle of the chest. Once I found that, I did not feel bad about cutting up my (formerly) good sweater.

• Sweater - Lord & Taylor, thrifted; last seen here (3rd outfit) in January with red and wine
• Skirt - Danier Leather, thrifted; last worn here with pink suede on my birthday weekend
• Boots - Lucky Brand, swap from Cat; last seen here (2nd outfit) with my picador skirt a few weeks ago
• Coat (not shown) - Danier Leather, thrifted; last worn here yesterday

I have my contacts in for these pictures, but they drove me crazy, so I took them out after a few hours. I couldn't read anything!

I did a flip curl at the bottom of my hair, and tried to bouff up the back of it - sort of a 60s look. Same with the make-up, doing top lid heavy winged eyeliner only. Classic Trek!

 I had considered doing only a little bit of fake blood, but having the shirt distressed sealed it - I dripped blood down my legs (I ripped my nylons there), and on the backs of my hands and wrists, and around my neck/cheek. By the end of the day, it had mostly peeled off, leaving a red stain (I'm sure it will fade).

 Aside from the fake blood and the tribbles, this is a pretty simple outfit. I have to be able to work in my costumes! I dealt with catering, deliveries and general running around the office in this. I dropped a few tribbles along the way, but they got brought back to me. "I think this is yours!"

The stuff:

 Pretty much Starfleet regulation boots.

I bought all of the "tribbles" while out shopping on the weekend.

The two brown ones are from a pair of earmuffs (vintage, thrifted for $8.00). The rest are those pom-pom purse charms that are popular right now. I picked up all of these at Ardene's for under $25.00. The 6 in the centre (black/white/blush) came as trios, on chains, so the chains allowed me to loop them through my hoop earrings, and attach safety pins to them.

On one of the black ones, I hotglued a hair clip so that I could attach it in my hair. On some of them, I hotglued a strip of ribbon over a safety pin, and the big fluffy white one got a hair clip that I didn't like glued on to it. All remove able from my clothes - I pinned the puffs on my arms once I got to work.

• Earrings - 10th anniversary gift from L
• Star Trek badge - MoPOP gift shop

I bundled up the sweater and all the tribbles into a bag and put them away in the Tickle Trunk - maybe I'll do this again another year? I have been known to repeat costumes. When you have a winner, you have a winner!

In case you're interested, here are my previous years' Hallowe'en costumes since I started the blog in 2008:

• A regular outfit (2008) - here - seriously, most boring Hallowe'en outfit ever, considering I was a shambling office zombie the year before.
• A vintage, slightly Gothic look (2009) - here - better! Yvonne wore that vintage dress to our party last weekend!
• The Mad Hatter (2010) - here - Awesome - I won my old company's costume contest in this.
• In a vintage dress (2011) - here - I was pretty new to my job and nervous about dressing up.
• Hitchcock's "The Birds" (2012) - here - One of my best costumes. I still have all the birds, and that suit, so I might do it again one year.
• The Mad Hatter again (2013) - here - different job, no one's seen it! I made it a bit different, added the teacup and saucer, got a little weirder, hee hee. 
• Lydia from "Beetlejuice" (2014) - here - L was Beetlejuice, and we threw a Hallowe'en party at home that year.
• A "Grim Fandangal" Dia de los Meurtos look (2015) - here - An easy look to work in all day. 
• Imperator Furiousa from "Max Max: Fury Road" (2016) - here - So fun clomping around in this all day! L's cultist outfit is great too.

Happy Hallowe'en, my friends!