This year, I had three big Carnival opportunities to costume: the Krewe du Vieux parade, dancing with the Nawlins Nymphs in Le Krewe d’Etat and, of course, Mardi Gras Day. Those of you who aren’t familiar with these phenomena should read Arthur Hardy’s handy-dandy Mardi Gras Fundamentals before you head into this post. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Coldest and wettest Mardi Gras Day since the 1890s.

1. Krewe du Vieux Parade 2014

The Mother Krewe’s theme was Where The Vile Things Are, while our subkrewe Krewe de C.R.A.P.S. came up with The Guv At Twerk. Our float was pure genius, with a behind rigged to twerk against “Robin Thicke” and wonderful artistry on the side panels. The costume plan was for all 65 of us to dress up in multi-colored fluorescent tshirts with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal as Miley Cyrus along with hats designed to depict various bayou fauna such as pelicans, alligators and crawfish. The critter hats are cute, but in my opinion, there was just too much going on with that costume. For one, it violates Maitri’s First Rule of Costuming*: Look fabulous and immediately recognizable. If onlookers cannot figure out what’s going on with your costume in under five seconds, especially when you are walking by quickly in a group, you’ve lost them.

So, I decided to simply Miley it up with a handmade copy of the infamous VMA-awards onesie, blonde hair, foam finger and the tongue. Kudos to my husband, D, for reproducing Twerkin Teddy (yes, really) with multi-colored swatches of adhesive fleece. D, meanwhile, abandoned this year’s costume suggestion altogether and walked the parade as New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator Rob Ryan. (It would have been criminal for him not to do so. He looks so much like Ryan in that wig, a couple of people on the route began chatting Saints defense strategies with him. Talk about instant recognition.)

Love that gold tooth.

2. Nawlins Nymphs

Every big New Orleans Carnival parade is required by City Ordinance to place a marching band, dancing krewe or some other kind of on-foot entertainment between the float trucks. The Nymphs are a three-year-old Carnival dancing krewe, comprised of approximately 50 women who are engineers, scientists, lawyers and businesspeople by day, that performs five or so choreographed dances over the course of the six-mile Le Krewe d’Etat parade. Some of the women are also spouses of the all-male d’Etat dance krewe, the Dancin’ Dawlin’s. This year’s Nawlins Nymphs theme was NOLA Shades Of Grey, so we were dressed in a man’s white dress shirt with silver tie, fishnet stockings, grey hair, wire-rimmed granny glasses and silver-sequined Chuckies. I am guessing the idea was to satirize the book Fifty Shades Of Grey (which I refuse to read on literary grounds) with a play on the word grey.

Not a lot of costume construction required here, but my eye makeup and hair turned out nice. It was kinda comforting to know what my hair will look like a few decades from now. Kinda.

My geo-ladies and me at the parade staging area.

3. Mardi Gras Day

We always say we’re going to start working on next year’s costume as soon as possible, but that’s like saying we’re going to get a headstart on taxes or Christmas shopping. It never happens. The same was true this year, but I am very proud of us for staying up only until 3am on the Thursday before Fat Tuesday to get most of our pieces together. The big roadblock is the theme: If you decide on a theme this year and have a better idea later in the year (or on Lundi Gras), you have to start all over again. At any rate, D and I decided a month in advance that we were going as The Absinthe Fairy and The Day After Absinthe (I’d wear a lot of green and he’d dress as Death, essentially).

As you may know, I make a new Mardi Gras Day mask each year and, somehow, a whole bunch of purple snuck into this year’s mask and what Absinthe Fairy wears purple, I ask you.

But, the sparkly purple was so pretty!

Thus, the Mardi Gras Day Absinthe Fairy was born and D became Ash Wednesday Death. Following that, it hit me that I don’t drink absinthe (anise + anise in liquor = yuk) and was going to take a bottle of Chartreuse as an offering to the annual secret rendezvous of the Mystick Krewe of Chartreuse on Mardi Gras Day. Remember Maitri’s First Rule of Costuming? The Mardi Gras Day Absinthe Fairy Walking Around With A Bottle Of Chartreuse definitely violates it. And, so, I became The Mardi Gras Chartreuse Fairy and D remained Death. Yes, it was all just an elaborate plan on his part to walk around in a large black monk/sith robe under which he could wear whatever he so pleased. For the first time, I sewed a costume component, i.e. the apron of masks I wore over the tutu. D’s robe, however, took the most construction and sewing of the season, using a variation on Rebel Legion’s Jedi Master Robe pattern.

Darth Mardi Gras

We were all set to ramble through the Marigny and French Quarter in the sunshine, until 35 DEGREES AND SLEET WTF404NOTFOUND showed up on the weather report, which forced us to add more clothing (read: thermal underwear) at the last minute and explains the umbrella and wet robes in the picture at the start of this post. Oh, well. Mardi Gras must go on. And it did.

Here are the full Krewe du Vieux 2014 and Carnival 2014 photo galleries.

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*My second and third Rules of Costuming are “You have to be able to go to the bathroom with minimal costume removal” and “Always allow for Carnival pudge.”

Are you a wine cork saver? Looking for something creative to do with them besides as dust collectors in an attic or large glass jar or wicker basket? Here you go.

All you need is a florist’s styrofoam ball in any diameter of your choosing and a glue gun. Spray paint the styrofoam ball (oh, go ahead) so that the green doesn’t peek through. Once dry, start hot-gluing away!

Some tips:

• Don’t use a larger styrofoam ball if you think you will run out of corks. Alternatively, you can put the project on hold until you acquire more corks. I have a couple of unfinished Death Stars waiting for the right corks.
• Feel free to shave down the base of a cork or two to make them all fit.
• Sometimes, the hot glue will peek out the base of the cork, once pressed down. You can (spray)paint over the dried glue later.
• If giving one away as a present, I pin a loop of seasonal ribbon to it (see bottom-most picture) before sticking the corks on.

D made this much lighter version of the BeadedCheesehead™ for our friend, Amy. She likes the color pink.

Yesterday, I made this pair of cluster earrings and fixed a pair of drop earrings. Cluster or grape bunch earrings, as I like to call them, are stunning and dress up even the most casual outfit. I’ve long wanted a pair or five, but have only come across cheap plastic ones or expensive pieces in colors I don’t quite like. Many years ago, I purchased a bag of these beautiful blue-green and orange glass beads in different sizes at the Bead Shop in New Orleans and saved them for the right cluster earring design and tutorial to come along.

Enter Rings and Things’s How To Make Cluster Earrings. The instructor goes through each step down to what head pins and tools to use. A lot of the labor is in making the individual grape pieces, and I found that long fingernails are not suited to dealing with wrapping wire onto small glass balls. Drying your fingers constantly helps. Note that I also departed from the formula by using glass balls of varying diameters making the end product look more like a real grape bunch, with larger beads at the top and smaller and smaller ones towards the bottom (and a large bead at the bottom for effect).

If you have a bunch of loose beads that you don’t know what to do with, you might try fashioning them into cluster earrings.

As I get older, my allergies have become more unpredictable. I had to change out the posts on the drop earrings shown below after they caused some lobe inflammation, despite their being labeled as “hypo-allergenic” when I first purchased them. Corrosion over time may also be the culprit. Drop earrings are super-easy to make, as long as you have high-quality chain, and look great with an up-do and sleeveless/strapless blouse.