I am a big fan of Phineas and Ferb, so often while I'm working I'll have the Disney Channel on in the background. Somewhere along the way, a show called Gravity Falls started coming on following P&F. I used to just turn it off, but one day I was up to my elbows in bread dough so it stayed on. I believe this was the universe intervening and telling me I had to watch this, because it quickly became my new favorite show. If you haven't watched it, you absolutely should. Some day I'll write a post about it, but for now you just need to trust me.

Mabel is one of the main characters of the show, and one half of a set of twin siblings. She's silly, creative, and always finds the joy in any situation. I love her to death, so of course I had to cosplay her.

The nice thing about cosplaying Mabel is that she dresses like any normal 12 year old. No crazy elaborate outfit to try to replicate. She does wear a different outfit in nearly every episode, but they generally follow the same structure: custom sweater, a simple solid colored skirt, a headband (usually matches said skirt), white socks that go partially up her calf, and black flats. I chose the particular outfit shown to the right, with light-up stars covering a sweater bearing her name with a rainbow. Mabel's signature item is her grappling hook (pictured above), which of course was also a necessity for this project!

To find the base pieces, I tried a number of thrift stores in the area. Unfortunately the only piece of the costume I was able to locate this way was the pink skirt, but the bad luck of that balanced out with finding one that didn't need any alterations to fit the bill. I picked up a pair of flats from Payless, along with some white socks with a cute scalloped detailing on them. The wig is Luthien in Dark Brown from Arda Wigs that I brushed out to fluff it up a little bit and make the curls less defined. Mabel has long bangs that get tucked behind her ear that are parted to one side, so I'll take some heat styling to them to get them to lay correctly. The headband is just a regular old pink headband I had in a drawer that happened to be the same pink as the skirt. Win!

The sweater is where the meat of the cosplay came in. The basic shape is the most important, specifically super fluffed out neck. To me it looks like a cowl/turtleneck hybrid, so I looked for sweaters that were either already the right purple or white (so I could dye it) with that shape. I found a white sweater that seemed perfect: right neck shape, semi-open weave to make adding the lights easy, fit nicely all over. It was acrylic, which would normally be a problem, but Rit has recently released a series of dyes made specifically for synthetics. The good news: the sweater came out of the dyeing process the perfect color. The bad news: said dyeing process caused the sweater to irreparably stretch out. Back to square one.

I eventually found another sweater from a website called Lolli Couture which seemed to be a pretty good match. When it arrived, it was definitely much brighter in person than pictured, and it ran small, but it works. I created a paper version of the "Mabel" design and taped it to the sweater while I was wearing it to make sure it was scaled correctly before using the paper pieces as a pattern to cut the felt. While the felt is slightly see-through, I feel like it is opaque enough to not warrant the bulkiness that would come from doing a double layer. From the reference image it is hard to tell if the letters and rainbow are supposed to light up, so I have opted to take the easier route and not attempt to illuminate them. The felt pieces are stitched on, with the thread just barely catching the back of the felt so as to not show through.

The light up stars are individual pieces that were wired together. Each star is one half of a star-shaped plastic ice cube that has been filled with hot glue (to diffuse the light) and had an LED inserted. To achieve the colors, the LEDs were coated with sharpie ink prior to inserting them. The wires were worked into the weave of the sweater to get them inside before splicing them together to create a parallel circuit leading to a switch-operated battery pack in the back. It's not discrete on its own, but the hair is long enough to cover the bump it makes. The stars are a little delicate around the lead connections which makes putting it on and taking it off a bit of a challenge (hence the naked spot on my left arm; I need to reattach the star that's supposed to be there), but I'm going back and reinforcing those joints with solder and a dollop of hot glue.

I wanted a prop to go along with Mabel, and settled on doing the grappling hook over getting her companion Waddles. Don't get me wrong, Waddles is adorable, but the grappling hook will ultimately be easier to carry (though harder to travel with). The handle is made out of wood (all one piece except for the "trigger" block, which is separate). The barrel of the gun is PVC with one cap inserted inverted into the front end and the back cap inserted the "correct" way with a screw attached to it so that the grappling hook itself has something to latch on to. The absolute back is actually the cap to a Coke bottle. The cradle looking part coming out from the sides of the handle up the sides of the barrel is a thin piece of craft foam. The hook is PEX tubing that was formed with a heat gun, with thin steel tubing inside it for support.  The points are simply triangles of craft foam that were hot glued together.