Dollar Store Showgirl

--> Is there any part of this country yet left untouched by the magic of the dollar store? Be it the national Dollar Tree chain, the Crazy Dollar Daze! aisle of your local Legitimate Shopping Concern, or (my personal favorite) the random-mix-of-objects-involving-a-stunning-variety-of-languages-on-the-labels emporia that make up fully 89% of all retail establishments here in Brooklyn, these off-price-wonderlands are truly the costumer’s best friend.
  
Falling firmly as I do on the “It only has to look expensive” side of the fancy-ass-stripper debate,* I make frequent use of the dollar stores in my local habitat when crafting even the most classic costumes. Not to say that I don’t haunt the Garment District like a colorblind, bling-obsessed ghoul; but there are few projects wherein I fail to make use of something purchased for $1.08-with-tax, and more than a few that have been entirely created exclusively from an eyebrow-raising collection of off-price objects. 

Being such a frequent visitor to the half a dozen or so of the dollar stores of which I am most fond - The One With The Red Awning, The One Where The Radio Is Always Too Loud, The One That Doesn’t Have Votive Candles, The New One**, the DII (actual name) and The Other One – I’ve found that there are certain objects that I pick up over and over again, to wit:

The Most Useful Items The Dollar Store Has To Offer To The Professional Striptease Artist

• Sun Visors: No longer the exclusive property of old ladies in Florida grocery stores, the classic sun visor when inverted is the perfect base for most showgirl headdresses: lightweight, sturdy, comfortable, cut-able, glue-able, and often padded for comfort in just the right place, these seasonal buggers are worth their weight in Swarovskis. Since they disappear in the fall I snap them up by the dozen in the summer months. (As an added bonus, many visors now feature Engrish slogans and delightfully nonsensical illustrations!)

Actual visor slogans: "Sweet Day", "Say hello to the snow" and "Seeing you makes me h-" (rest of word hidden by feline Martin Scorsese.) (But I think we all know what it is.)

• Those Lacy Elastic Headbands You Put On Baby Girls Before They Have Enough Hair For Actual Barrettes And Stuff: Coincidentally, these innocent objects look a hell of a lot like garters – but at a much lower price than the average costume shop/stripper store/bridal salon charges for ten inches of frilly elastic, if the bachelorette party in the third row doesn’t give it back after the show it’s not the end of the world. Actually, I deliberately use these a lot as toss-into-the-audience pieces … whether or not you choose to remove the occasional pink teddy bear decoration first is a matter of personal taste.

And while we’re on the subject of stuff you don’t have to worry about getting back from the audience … 

• Cheap-Ass Pantyhose: Personally I like a good stocking peel during a floor show, though I’m crap at keeping track of where the damn things end up. Just snip the legs off these babies (leave about half an inch of control-top to keep the tops from rolling) and you have single-use, disposable stockings. 

It's a tropical wonderland.

• Fake-Ass Flowers: I love fake flowers; I always have. If I could, I’d cover my living room with the them, floor-to-ceiling - but since living in a shared space makes that less than ideal I’ve settled for covering costumes with them. There is certainly a time and a place for well-made, super-realistic blooms (Amber Ray’s gorgeous hair accessories, for example), but sometimes it’s a matter of quantity over quality and you just need a shit-ton of inexpensive plastic flowers to glue to stuff. When you snip off the stems the petals tend to come apart, but as long as you sew or glue all the layers together, dollar store flora are perfect for huge impactful splashes of color.

• Curtains: Although I’ve done it as a deliberate challenge***, I wouldn’t recommend using discount-store curtains as the base for sewing projects: they’re itchy, they’re stiff, they tend to unravel at seams, and usually they smell funny. But occasionally they’re just the right amount of gaudy, fringey or translucent to be incredibly useful as trains, veils or drapes.

Holy crap so much shiny.

• Holiday Decorations: Obviously, the dollar store is one of your first stops when putting together holiday-specific acts; but in the last few years my local Bastions of Cheapness have started featuring holiday ornaments and decorations in colors and degrees of blinginess that make for fabulous costume pieces any time of year. We’ve just entered the season of Glittery Things In Aqua, Turquoise, Hot Pink & Lime and I’m already stocking up on random ornaments, bows, stars and birdies to accessorize with in coming months. The Christmas and Easter seasons are great for bright colors and shiny or feathery things; New Years is lousy with glitter; Thanksgiving is perfect for stockpiling fake fruits and leaves; and Halloween – apart from the obvious creepy-themed items – is the time to bulk-purchase crappy boas (cut them up and use them as trim), cheap gloves, and light-up decorations that can be stripped for parts.

What are these even supposed to be? An awesome goddamned costume, that's what.

• Hula Hoops: Virtually useless for actual hooping (or so I’ve been told by those that hoop), cheapo hula hoops are perfect for building lightweight ‘skeletons’ for fabric structures, and can be used for hoop skirts and panniers in a pinch (or when steel boning isn’t available).

Dollar-store sewing challenge #1. Ingredients: Curtains, tablecloths, lace runners, hula hoops, bedsheets (bloomers), craft ribbon, party-favor beads, curtain tie-back tassels.

Behind every good headdress is a great visor.

• The Craft Supply, Jewelry, Hair Ornament, and (depending on where you live) Quinceañera-Favor Aisles: Although many of the items in these aisles aren’t useful on their own, they can provide great pieces for the base of projects: Styrofoam balls, clips and clasps, foam sheets, googly eyes galore, random bows and glittery things. 

• Party Tablecloths (Not technically a costume piece, but the single dollar-store item I purchase most frequently): The responsible stripper brings a tarp to cover the stage when making a wet, oily, painty or glittery mess; the fashionable, responsible stripper picks up a tablecloth from the dollar store party aisle in a color or pattern that compliments her or his costume. Bam.

Dollar-store sewing challenge #2: One more visor-based headdress, plus a curtain gown. (Bonus: attaching the two is a "flapper chain," aka the thing that makes your toilet flush. Hardware stores are just as much fun as dollar stores.) Photo by Francine Daveta

Ingredients: visor, flowers, sheer curtain. Photo: Emerson Vinyl

Several cautionary notes:

• While dollar-store nail polish is an excellent craft item, use it (and all discount cosmetics) advisedly on skin, hair and nails: that shit can burn, stain, or worse.

• Many items obtained at the Palace Of Low Prices retain a corresponding odor, something reminiscent of sugared petroleum. It's advisable to air such items out for a while before using them, and don't store them in closed bags or containers.

• Three tenths of the balloons in any given bag purchased in the Hey Ain't It Cheap! store will have factory-installed holes. This is to keep you on your toes. Plan ahead and buy an extra bag or two.

• Though fine for use as props, never never never eat anything from the dollar store.

•••••

* With frequent forays into the “let the costume serve the number” and “a two-thousand-dollar costume doesn’t automatically make a great act” camps, plus a permanent alliance with the House Of Not Every Costume Needs To Look Exactly Like Everyone Else’s.

** It’s been there for 8 years now.

Photo: Francine Daveta

*** I tend to craft as a grief-management mechanism; following the death of a close friend recently I found myself in desperate need of a project but with practically no materials at hand, and with no chance of getting to the Garment District before everything closed for the weekend. After a walk to the neighborhood discount store, $25 in curtains, cheap underwear and craft trim (plus some scraps from the studio fabric bin), and 10 hours of Dr. Dre on Spotify, this was born. (Ironically, the hair flower is one of Amber's actual legit pieces of art.)

In My Atelier

The 15 Most Useful Items In My Very Swanky & Very Well-Appointed Atelier

--> In addition to the ecydiastical* enterprises, I'm a professional seamstress & costumer and a lifelong crafter - and consequently, I've found that some tools and items are simply indispensable to me. You can spend a lot of money on the 'professional' version of pretty much anything (and there are some things that, ultimately, you do just have to pony up and pay for); but there are a lot of things I use constantly that cost little to nothing (especially to anyone with a frugal New England background and/or mild hoarding tendencies). Here's my list of the 15 most useful super-cheap costuming supplies I use every day:

• Disposable Chinese-takeout chopsticks - I hoard these like the treasure that they are. Useful for most gluing projects (wet or hot**), a lot of painting and mixing, stirring dye baths, propping up things while they dry and - in a pinch - as the stick for various commemorative pennants.

And since I live in New York and we get a lot of takeout ...

• Disposable Chinese-takeout containers -The sad loss of those fetching little folded takeout boxes of my childhood did result in one good thing: cheap storage for a variety of odds and ends in the form of plastic takeout containers. (They're also terribly useful as easily-cuttable bases for hats, headdresses, and various other construction projects.)

• Alcohol prep pads - At under $5 a box, these little babies are totally worth having on hand. I use them chiefly for cleaning stray glue off of tweezers during large-scale crystalling projects, or for getting the goo off of any tool (or body part) when it becomes, well, gooey.

• Every single Ziploc baggie of every size and description that enters my life - The tiny ones are great for separating out a couple of buttons or half a dozen googly eyes; the large ones make a handy rain hat or temporary shelter. Seriously, though, pretty much every object in my studio (and costume storage room) gets sorted into its own baggie at some point; with so many things around all the time I find it's the only way to keep everything (relatively) neat and - most importantly - quickly findable.

• Spare comic book backing boards - For some reason I ended up with a butt-ton of these. They're a convenient size to store and a great balance of flexible/cutable but also sturdy. I use them for catching drips from my elderly glue gun, stiffening headdresses, packing up pasties for shipping, and - well, all my small-piece-of-cardboard needs. (Which are legion.)

• Clear nailpolish - Just the cheapest 99-cent version will keep the cut ends of cords and fringes from unraveling; seal in paint or glitter in small areas and keep it from chipping; make things a little shinier and protect the backs of kinda-scratchy things from catching on fabrics and trims.

• Black nailpolish - I actually raid the nailpolish drawer a lot for craft projects, but I find black is the color I use the most. Is that silver snap, magnet, zipper pull or fastener glaringly bright and hideously non-matching? Hit it with some appropriately-colored nail polish (a thin coat won't affect the grabability of most snaps or magnets) and it disappears. (This is also a great way to get rid of printed-on logos and labels on the bottoms of shoes.)

While we're raiding the beauty supplies ...

• Emery boards - Which is what my grandmother always called nail files. There are times when you need a big he-man-sized piece of actual sandpaper, but more often than not (shaping the ends pf plastic boning***, for example) just a cheap nail file will do.

• Darice gems - Living where I do I can't always find these chain-craft-store acrylic crystals, but when I do come across them I stock up quite literally by the bushel. Personally I use just acrylics on a lot of my costumes, but even if you're of the Swarovski-or-Nothing School of Bling it's worth having a bag of multicolored, multi-sized acrylics on hand for quick projects. I adore Darice: the colors are super bright and they're the shiniest acrylics I've ever found (and the silver backing tends to bubble less than other brands when in contact with the more toxic glues and epoxies). Plus they're, like, $12 a pound. A POUND - at that price, you could fill up the bathtub just for the hell of it.

• The silver straight pins that men's shirts are packaged with - Okay, this might be where my own personal Crazy starts to show, but I actually prefer these pins to any that I've ever bought in a sewing-supply store. They're longer, sharper and they don't bend as much ... and salvaging them from The Man's shirt purchases before he throws them out makes me feel delightfully Dickensian. (Yeah, I'm probably crazy.)

• Dollar-store electrical tape - But specifically the cheap-ass dollar-store version, which is sticky enough to stick, but not so actually effective as to stick forever. I keep a couple of spare rolls on hand specifically for wrapping my fingertips while I'm batching pasties: hot-gluing 200 pairs at once tends to burn the crap out of your hands (and ruin your manicure), no matter how careful you are (and I'm not very careful), but gloves either melt (latex) or make you too clumsy (rubber). I wrap up my fingertips in crappy electrical tape, and if they get too covered in glue I just peel off the tape and re-wrap.

• Måla kids' drawing paper roll from Ikea - This shit is the the bomb, yo. It's way cheaper than the exact same thing in an Expensive Fancy-Ass Art Store (only $5 a roll), it's sturdy enough to draft durable sewing pattern pieces (I tend to not like actual 'pattern paper;' I also tend to re-use patterns until they disintegrate) and it's decent enough paper for actual sketching.

• Clamp lights galore - My personal combination of weird apartment ceiling lights and insomnia means that I work a lot in the middle of the night in very bad lighting. These lamps are around $6 each at every damn hardware store in the world and they're great for general lighting or for focusing on a small area for close work.

Speaking of hardware stores (which, by the way, I adore) ...

• Aluminum drywall t-square - Because sometimes you need to draw 4-foot-long straight lines and right angles. Seriously.

• LED Headlamp - Did I mention the bad apartment lighting? This is genius for really close-up work: strap this fucker to your head and you get an instant spotlight on whatever you point your face at. (The added bonus is that you look like a total idiot: The Man once caught me sitting on the living room floor in the middle of the night, wearing sweatpants and my headlamp, watching Futurama and gluing crystals with disposable chopsticks, and immediately dubbed me 'The Next Dita.' Glamour!)
 

... Like I said, there are plenty of times when cheaping out costs you more money in the long run (If you sew a lot, get a decent ironing board and invest in a good pair of scissors) or when you really do need the actual tool actually created for the job. But over the years I've thrown out enough optimistically-purchased items in favor of A Folded Up Piece Of Paper to have learned that ultimately, you just need to use whatever damn thing works best for you.


* Look it up.
** That's what she said.
*** Heh. "Boning."