Since I keep letting my kid pick what cosplay we will do for NYCC (I seriously need to stop doing that I think…), I’ve been making Silent Hill Nurse outfits for us.
I used black tea to stain the bandages and nurse costumes. I steeped them for about an hour and I left the bandages rolled up so the color would be uneven to give them a more rusted/dirty look. I unrolled them to dry, though.
Once the bandages were dry, I made plaster gauze with flour and water and wrapped the strips around styrofoam heads. It took them FOREVER to dry. I had to bake them on the lowest temperature in the oven for about half an hour to get them hard enough to see if they fit around our faces.
Protip: Don’t leave them near your dog. They smell like bread and they may try to eat them.
As for the nurse part, I put the tea stained jackets in the dryer for 20 minutes after they line dried to make sure the stains set. Then I took them outside with a bottle of fake blood and just squirted it randomly on the fabric.
I’m sure my neighbors were thrilled to see my “bloodstained” driveway…
I’m giving the masks another day to dry until I get to painting them and punching a hole in them so string can be attached. When they’re done, I’ll post pictures of those. I made them without the back of the head (I saw a lot of tutorials online that were covering the whole head and all I could think of was getting overheated and having to take them off every five seconds).
I got the nurse coats and hats from Amazon with my Swagbucks points (that’s a referral link) and the bandages from the pharmacy. This is the first year I’ve gotten this crafty with a costume so I figured I’d post this in case anybody wanted to give it a try. I’ll be posting pictures of us in them of course.
