For those of you who know me, you all know that I am huge advocate for public libraries. This is where I give a shout out to my good friend, Courtney, who revived my love of reading and introduced me to the amazing digital collections of (most) of our public library systems. She's also a poet, and you can check her out on Twitter @WordPerv and Instagram @wordperv79.
The Friends of the Arlington Public Library do an annual literary themed ball, and this year's theme was Darkly Ever After. I love a good theme event and a good costume and had recently finished Marissa Meyer's Heartless, which is the back story of the Queen of Hearts, so I settled on the Queen. Here are a few components of my outfit:
- Card fan collar, featuring the Queen herself
- Light up heart scepter
- Red hair extensions
- Stick on heart accents
- Heart costume jewelry ring
- Heart gemstone necklace and earring matching set
- Plastic crown that I modified for a Queen of Hearts costume when I was in college (yes, I still have it and that costume over 10 years later)
- Queen of Hearts clutch, which is a $3 white clutch I bought at JoAnn Fabrics and drew the Queen card on with pencil and colored Sharpies
- Red fingerless gloves
- Various costume makeup
- Black ball gown I already owned, embellished with the heart accent stickers
- Red shoes I already owned
I talked my good friends, Kim and Dave, into joining me for the ball. Here I am with Kim rocking her Dark Red costume. She cleverly put together some components she already owned and then added the new mask and red hair extensions.
Speaking of hair extensions, this is the first time I have used them and I love them. They add effortless fun to an outfit and are hassle-free. In high school I used to bleach and then dye crazy colors into my hair. I wish these had existed at the time! My apologies for the poor lighting, but I was trying to capture the epic red swirl bun that Kim worked her magic on.
At the ball we had some literary themed cocktails, plenty of appetizers, live music, dancing, a raffle, and some seriously epic costumes. Unfortunately none of us won anything, but we had a blast. Especially in the photo booth!
Dave joined us as the Dark Hatter. His fresh out of the bag Amazon purchased outfit was a win! Let me also introduce you to our new friend, Dusty the Skeleton Pony.
Here's the only full length shot we got. Dave already owned those shoes, and they are perfect!
My good friend, Nils, is an amazing professional photographer and a wonder at photo shop. He threw this together for us so we could have a Johnny Depp cameo :)
The Queen retires for another day! Support your public libraries and READ!
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