It's not girly!

Hey there :)
So I thought I'd post my costume masterpiece of this year... Doug's 'Green Man' outfit.
Ok, so it started out as a tree, but Doug and I both got teased about how girly and dorky his costume was going to look, so I decided to make him the masculine personification of nature... Or something like that.
Anyway, please ignore the mess in the back-ground... this costume was finished amid decorating and cleaning, and I couldn't wait to take pictures.
It started with just a pair of dark brown pants and a green shirt from D.I. that fit him well enough to work with. I had some spare green fabric in my quilt and blanket bin, and was able to cut out a large enough circle to span his shoulders to create the 'yeoman hood and cape'... that's what it's called if you look for the pattern anyway. It's basically just a circle almost 40" across with a hole cut in the middle for the head. Then, so there wasn't a ton of extra fabric flapping around that I'd have to cover with leaves, I had him put his hands on his hips and tailored the fabric to fit snug around his arms, but allowing him enough leeway to move.
After I got the 'cape' the size and fit I wanted, I started hot gluing the leaves I'd been collecting off of clearance racks for a month or so onto it. I started at the bottom so that I wouldn't have to fuss with layering leaves under other leaves... Doing it from the bottom let me layer leaves on top of eachother.
The sleeves were pretty simple... Just strips of green fabric attached to the ends of the shirt sleeves cut into 6 tassels, and kinda wound/braided around his forearm. I'll probably try to come up with some kind of cuff for the wrist so the ends aren't dangling around annoying him...
The pants were really easy... I found another pair of pants with the color and texture I wanted at D.I., and cut them into small diamond shapes. I layered them the same way as the leaves, but instead of doing the whole leg, I did the bottom and intermittently towards the top, tapering off the higher they went.

I found a tutorial online for making your own masks at home (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBelIutha-8), and that's how I made this one for Doug. It was basically layers of tin foil molded to his face, then cut out and covered in a few layers of paper mache, then painted. It took a long time to do one this intricate, but I love the result!

So there it is, Doug's not girly 'tree' costume... I think it turned out pretty good :)