Inopinate – October 29

This is going to be a bit of a twist. SPD’s primary purpose is to show off our triumphs in personal style. But who says we can’t have a little fun here and there? So, at ET’s encouragement, I am making an exception to give you my Halloween costume for this year’s party at work.

From Style Per Diem

Costume – Facebook Wall: I would have loved to do this with a dry-erase board so I could keep changing my status and let people keep updating my wall. But I have no room to keep a whiteboard in my already cramped apartment, so I favored the disposable cardboard instead. 

I knew I would need felt pens and color pencils. After some deliberation, I also picked up dark blue construction paper for the global nav. In hindsight, that was a great idea, because negative-coloring the lettering would have been a royal pain. I also made a second trip to the craft store to get a white ink pen. 

Once all the materials had been bought, the only decision I had to make was how I wanted to approach the profile picture. One option was to hang the wall around my neck with a photo glued in the profile picture position. But I was already going with a relatively low-effort costume, so I decided to take it to the next level and cut a piece out of the cardboard in the shape of my face. Again, in hindsight, this was a crucial point in the project. I miraculously managed to get the shape and size right the first time. Had I gotten that wrong, it would have been difficult to recover from. 

The rest was easy. I opened up my profile page and went about replicating all the UI elements the best I could. I was determined not to turn it into an architectural drawing, so I did not bother much with measurements and proportions beyond what looked acceptable to the eye. For my photo album, I used arbitrary pictures from magazines. My total effort was 4-5 hours over a course of four days.

Accessories: I carried a blue felt pen with me and asked people if they wanted to write on my wall. By the end of the day, my mostly blank wall had been filled up with messages. Success!