Halloween Costume - Google Style!

Bookmark this post:

I'm reading: ~

I looked all around both online and offline for a unique costume, one that no one has thought of before. With the all of the talk of the iPhone cosutme, I thought I could come up with something as equally as clever. I looked through my closet and did not see anything too inspiring - then I saw the T-shirt that Google had sent me a couple years ago.

The T-shirt came from my Adsense Account Rep and I thought, "now this is something I can use". I proceeded to put on the shirt, attach a cape for effect and mask and go as "Super Google".

Nope - not interesting enough, but I was inspired...

I went through a phase of decorating my kid's T-shirts with images I found online using iron-on templates. "What if I printed off Google's search results page and put them on a T-shirt? Brilliant!Wait, what if I put it on a full set of coveralls? Bravo, now we have an idea!

Now, what to Google - why, Halloween, of course!

It seemed simple, create an image of the search results page and iron it onto the fabric section by section. It took a few versions of the creating the right image to the right scale, but I had a finished version of the image. Printing it off, on the other hand was not so easy. I tried using Photoshop, since I thought it would automatically print the image in its entirety, all 14 pages of the image. But it did not work. I tried GIMP and a few other photo editing products, but still no answer.

I did a Google search and low and behold, the answer came to me - someone else had the same issue and found that little 'ol MS Paint was the solution! Now I was in business. I printed off the 14 sheets of transfer paper and went to start ironing. Unfortunately, it was very late at night and I did not realize I loaded the paper incorrectly - all the images were now on the wrong side of the paper. OK, print the whole thing again, this time on the correct side.

The first sheet went on very well, but I soon found out that there is a reason the material needs to be as flat as possible. A heavy cotton overall does not have very many flat areas to it. Zippers, pockets and internal layers all caused me a huge amount of grief.

I finished the front and then proceeded to so the back. I put a towel between the overalls and the floor to unsure the overalls stayed perfectly clean and did not get any dust. The back went much smoother as there was less layers to deal with. I was very impressed with myself, until I lifted the overalls off the floor. Again, being late at night, I did not consider the heat from the back being transferred to the front, thus melting the film from the front area to the towel - I mentioned it was late, right? Luckily, the towel pulled off, leaving the images behind - whew...

I was happy with the results and I now I know what to avoid if I ever make a costume like this again! What started out as a quick 1 hour project, took me into the wee hours of the morning, but it was worth it!

Bookmark this post:

I'm reading: ~