I knew up front that Somindeo would need two costumes. One for the main part of the movie and one for the duel at the end, which we all referred to as the “reveal.”

Somindeo’s main costume is made out of brown wool our grandma gave us. Several people have mentioned that it looks like a monk’s robe. I will maintain a stony silence of the “that’s-not-what-it’s-supposed-to-be-sort.” I paired the robe with black pants, a wig and a penciled-on mustache. And any of you who are wondering, yes, that is a mullet wig. I thought it looked swashbuckling.

The second costume needed a first-glance impact that would draw “Oooohhhs” and “Ahhhhs” from the audience. I don’t think it ever got that far, but considering the materials we worked with, it turned out pretty good. Ready for this? The gorgeous red fabric isn’t fabric. It’s a mainly plastic shower curtain. I’ll wait a moment and let your initial shock wear off. To resume… Even though it looks great, it was awful to sew on! (shudder) We lined the collar with black felt, used the black pants again, and put on an interesting belt and sheath. We had to do the sword belt and sheath last minute, but I like the pattern we put on them. (You can read about the sheaths here.)

Once I had those two costumes wrapped up, I got hit with a curve ball. Somindeo needed to be in the prologue scene, but that meant he needed another costume. Back to the drawing board. By then, the black pants were a given. I just needed to come up with a top of some sort. I poked around in our materials and found an old, tan-colored blanket. I cut a hole in the middle for Jordan’s head, hung it over a floor lamp and cut the edge into fringe. Later we decided it looked a little plain, so we took the leftovers from Marelac’s vest and wrapped them around the neck as a collar. It needed a lot of adjusting. Poor Jordan was very patient with us.

In all, I think this is a good example of using what you have to make something happen. (Which is practically a motto around here.)

Or nightmares, as the case may be. If this chocolate box were to actually be filled with chocolate, it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of eighteen pounds of chocolate. Let’s not even go there, shall we?

The “chocolate box” received its name because it would house the sword of chocolate at a dramatic point in iSundae. I wanted to build something that was enough of a visual impact to generate some ooohs and ahhhs.

First I drew a design. I wanted the box to be as tantalizing as possible, with holes just big enough for a hand to go through, but not the sword. (That idea kind of flopped because I accidentally made the hole in the top too big. During filming, Stelen just reached in and pulled the sword out.)

Once I had my design, I began cutting the cardboard. I used a medium weight because it gave me greater stability, but none of those huge, annoying corrugation holes. The best part of this stage is that, whenever possible, I use a rotary cutter, mat, and ruler for cardboard instead of scissors. I just stick an old blade in and cut away. The worst part of the project is that I cut all 125 pieces hunched over on the cold, tile floor of our craftroom.

Once all the pieces were cut and mitered in the corners, I began the long process of hot-gluing the parts together. Just a tiny dab along the edge of the cardboard or it’ll show later.

Finally, everything’s together. It looks like a fancy cardboard structure. Two or three coats of black paint helped quite a bit, all done while hunched over on the craftroom floor.

A little addition of green velvet in the bottom, and a gorgeous prop is done. And so was I. A total of six hours on the floor of the craftoom, in one day. Thankfully, the prop turned out well worth it.