Halloween Prep: Sadako and Her Well

Yes, Aina is a ghost this year! Now that she is old enough and brave enough to do a scary theme,  she’ll be Sadako-coming-out-of-the-well this year… Yep, that Sadako from Ringu. And if you haven’t seen the movie, this youtube shows the scene with the well (and including the one with the TV, so beware!).

It was sooo much fun brainstorming on how to make the costume with her. She’s got so many ideas…

So basically there were three things to make in this costume:

1. Long-haired girl with long white dress
2. The wooden bucket for collecting candies
3. The portable well so that she can walk from house to house

Long-haired Girl with Long White Dress

This was the easiest part. Aina had a long straight hair at resembles a ghost to begin with, especially when she was too lazy to comb and tie her hair. So the “Long-haired Girl” part came with the kid.

As for the dress, Aina had many white dresses, so we were just going to use those. She’d use my cotton on long sleeves cardigan on top of her dress to sport that floppy wrist look, the typical Asian ghost look…

The Wooden Bucket

This one was pretty much Aina’s own project. She was in charge of the bucket. We got a flower-pot-shaped papier mâché from a local art store, and painted it with brown acrylic paint. Then, using brown sharpies, she drew the wooden grain and plank lines. The black metal ring was actually a black duct tape.

After all the painting and the taping was done, Ari helped made the handle, using a thick wire, and wrapped with leftover fabric and duct tape.

Aina got herself a fake wooden bucket!

The Portable Well

This was the part that Aina most excited about. Since we wanted her to walk around carrying a well, we had to make the well light and easy to carry. We brainstormed many different ideas, like making a well out of styrofoam, or a cardboard structure, but we decided to go with a collapsible well using hula-hoops and fabric.

First, we painted stone patterns on a fabric. Originally, we thought we would have to draw everything, including stone textures, on the plain grey fabric. But we were lucky to find a grey fabric that looks like a concrete. All we had to do was making the outlines of the stones. To make it easier for Aina, we first drew the stones using white colored pencil. This way, Aina could just fill it up with the paint. Oh, we used a special acrylic paint that can be used on fabric… Since we’re not planning to wash the well, we didn’t need to test the paint’s staying power.

After the paint job was done and dry, I sewed the fabric together to make a cylindrical form, and attached the hula-hoops at the top and bottom of the cylinder. Attaching the hula-hoops turned out to be more challenging that I thought it would be, hee hee.

So, while Aina and I were busy painting the big fabric, Ari constructed the top of the well using cardboard. This part would sit on top of the hula-hoop, and connected to the harness. It would also cover the top hula-hoop making it look more like a real well. Aina also helped painting it grey to match the body of the well.

 

Now, after the well body and the well top was done, it was time to connect them to the harness that would be worn by Aina. We didn’t take pictures during this time, because… I’m not sure why. I guess we just forgot… oops.

Basically, the harness is made out of a very thick nylon bead thread. The thread starts at the shoulder, going through the well top, sewn into the fabric, looping the hula-hoop, back out through the well top again, and on to the shoulder. We did the looping on 4 different points. On the shoulder, we sew a padding made out of fake leather so that the thread wouldn’t dig into Aina’s shoulder. It was like wearing a really big overalls.

And this was the final costume… Soooo Creepy!! I still get freaked whenever she comes to me in that costume and hair like that…

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The complete photos are in The Making of Sadako Costume photo album.