Apr 06 2008
Board game birthday party
Last night we were out at our friend Chris’s birthday party, with the theme of Board Games. Helen and I decided do go as Guess Who? with a bag full of disguises.
Inevitably we didn’t start preparations until quite late in the day. We got some fake fur from Sarah, for facial hair, but didn’t have anything to stick it with. She suggested tit tape — alas, ten past six on a Saturday is the wrong time to shop for such things.
We started lowering the bar: first for toupee tape, then double-sided sticky tape. Just as were about to contemplate folding sellotape back on itself we struck gold. A little newsagents near us sells bags of ribbon rosettes for sticking onto presents. Each one has a square of sticky plastic sewed onto the back with a peel-off layer to keep it ready until use. So we bought a big bag of these for 99p and set to work, snipping them apart and sewing them onto shapes cut out of fake fur.
It seemed to work quite well, though when we got to the party and started peeling off the backing paper we found it was quite tough and ended up snapping the thread joining the sticky square to the fur. So we had a few moustaches that were staying in place more by willpower than glue.
My favourite look for the night suffered that fate, as my left moustache started to drift quite quickly. But they did wiggle in quite a satisfying and comic manner whenever I moved my mouth in a sort of chewing action. Ah, easy laughs…
Nick was there as Dr Black, the victim from Cluedo. That bullet hole in the forehead was very convincing. Something called scar putty I think?
You can also see the question marks we made for our t-shirts, modelled fairly closely on the Guess Who? style.
The hefty muttonchops were also quite fun to wear. You can see me here looking convincingly (well, convincing to a bunch of other drunk partygoers) Amish. I wore these home because they’re actually quite warm. And that’s Nick on the left wearing one of the eyebrows we never used, but as a moustache because the other eyebrow fell apart when we peeled off the backing.
Surprisingly the sticky material wasn’t very painful, even to take off. (I made sure I was clean-shaven before attempting any of this.) On another occasion I would be sure to get the right tool for the job. Tit tape or something similar is definitely the way forward.