NOTE: This is a repost from 2015, so keep that in mind while you are reading as I didn’t make any changes to the original content and may make reference to various things that are out of date.  I am continuing my series of reposting various old handmade Halloween costumes until this year’s Halloween costume makes it’s debut.

It’s that time of year again, and planning has been underway since August.  This year’s costume plan had some small twists and turns until finally arriving at the plan.  First, I had been planning to do the costume with two new people (new to my costumes, not my life in general).  Then, my original costume partner returned and so he had to be incorporated as well.  We threw tons of ideas out there (and they shall remain secret as I may want to use them in the future) until we finally settled on the plan: Clue cards!  Of course, all my homemade costumes need a twist and this year I decided that we’re actually going to be ourselves as the characters from the game and use objects and rooms around us as the weapons and rooms.

Step One: Planning

 
Of course, every good costume starts with a plan.  This year’s plan was as simple as this sheet of loose leaf you see above (however one major change was my “weapon” – fabric scissors sounded way too violent and we did want this to be lighthearted – however each object was related to the person in some way).

I pulled out my copy of the game (which I actually didn’t even realize I had!) for reference:

Once planned out, I made a rough prototype just so the participants could get the basic idea:

We decided on large sheets of cardboard for the main card, with the card itself drawn on white paper and then cardstock for the smaller cards.

Step Two: Find Two More Participants

Your traditional Clue game is for six players and so we had to find two more.  We had the three girls and one guy.  Of course, it wasn’t completely necessary that it be three girls and three guys but for aunthenticity’s sake, we asked guys first and found two takers.  Thus we had a pretty traditional Clue game going, other than the fact that we were actually using ourselves as the game pieces.  Then it was all about assigning the colors (we also went traditional there: the three women were red, blue and white while the three men were yellow, green and purple).

Step Three: Making the Suspect Card Fronts

Once it was time to start construction, by far the most important thing was the get the card fronts correct.  These were the centerpiece of the entire costume – almost every other step needed to take a backseat to this.  My prototype ended up coming in handy, as I had free-handed the circle pretty evenly so I used it to trace all the other card fronts.  However I took greater care with the lines and actually measured them out evenly.

Once I had one perfectly done card, the rest were easy.  I used a window as a light box and just traced away:

And then there were three (well technically all six are in this photo – that one that isn’t colored is hiding the other two unfinished one):

And then there were six, and this is when I really started to get excited about this year.  I was incredibly happy that I got all of these to be lined up just the right way, as I really wanted them to be uniform:

I downloaded a Clue-esque font (I couldn’t find an exact one) and made some labels, and glued them on to each poster.

The card fronts received their labels and were then mounted to cardboard sheets.  I found this strange glue/paste on Amazon that ended up working really, really well.  It’s intended for scrapbooking, I believe, and so it spread easily and the paper smoothed out nicely on it.

 

Then it was time to cut the holes which was probably the most annoying step (and I am very grateful I only had to do one of the fronts myself!).

And with that, the card fronts were done!

Step Four: Making the Suspect Card Backs

This was an easy step: trace the circle, then glue a Clue logo to the top.

Did this to six sheets of paper and that’s that.  These were then mounted to the backs of the suspect cards.

Here’s where I ran into the only problem I had during this process.  It turns out that drawing the circles before attaching the sheets was not the way to go.  The traced circle didn’t line up.  And so I had to take a second set of white sheets of paper to attach them to the back.  I ended up just taping them, as they didn’t need to look as neat as the front.

Above you can see the new plan, complete with the kid of messy looking back (but like I said, the front is really what counts here).

Step Five: The Room and Object Cards

Each suspect card front had an attached object card and room card. These were made smaller than the cards and cut out of cardstock.  I found a Clue label online and printed it out, then cut them down to a slightly smaller card.

On the backside I drew out the design from the game card and printed labels.  I did this similarly to the card fronts by measuring the lines and then tracing.  I wasn’t crazy about how the gray came out, but it’s definitely workable.

The front was glued to the back, and then the labels glued on.

To polish it off, I found photographs of the objects and pasted them to the centers.

The room cards were incredibly similar, but had no design other than the actual photographs of rooms around the building (which were quickly taken with my phone and then ordered on Shutterfly).

I ended up doing a small design on the cards just to give them a little interest, and I was really happy with how they came out (and glad I chose to take real photos of the locations rather than try to draw a crude copy).

The backs of all of the object and room cards was a printout of a Clue card, simple as that.

Step Six: Final Assembly

With all the little pieces made, it was time to assemble everything.  Everyone got their card front as well as an object card and a room card.  I played around with the layout for a while, afraid to commit to it, but eventually I went with the plan from the prototype/drawing.

  
  
 

Step Seven: The Outfits

For each person’s individual outfit, everyone was given free reign, more or less, as long as they 1.) used their assigned color and 2.) dressed as though they were attendinga cocktail party.  As previously stated, girls were red, white and blue; guys were yellow, purple and green.  For my own costume, I chose a red cocktail dress that I never get to wear (and I’ll admit I bought red shoes to go with it…).

I borrowed some vests and ties from the costume room at work for the guys and we ordered boas and hair clips for the girls.

Other than that, outfits came from everyone’s own closet.

And as I didn’t know where to to put this, here’s the little extra case file I made.  I actually had a co-worker who was unrelated to the costume choose a suspect, object and room at random and place them in – even as I’m typing this out, I don’t know what’s in that folder (but I will announce it at the end of this post):

The Final Result:

And here we are!

  
  
  
Did we win?  Yup!  My third most creative costume win in the last five years (won in 2011, we were cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, won in 2013, did not win in 2014).  Time for a well-deserved weekend off and then planning for next year.

As for whodunnit?  Well it was… Magro with the high heel in the auditorium.

I am very thankful that I have such great friends who will let me take off and run with these projects.  If it’s one thing I know I do well (regardless of win or lose), it’s put together a costume and I love when I have willing participants.