ringwraith

RINGWRAITH on a Budget

"They are the Nazgul, Ringwraiths, neither living nor dead."
-Aragorn, FOTR

Costume start date: Don't know...worked on it here and there
Costume completed: Oct. 31 2003
Page last updated: Nov. 6, 2003

One of the best things from LOTR to dress up as is ringwraiths. It's just sooo much fun! It's also soo annoying! So keep in mind if you're planning to dress up as one: The long robes to trip on, a hood that was completely annoying (lol) combined with the sheer piece of material that restricted my vision almost completely, and also made it harder to breathe with that stupid piece of fabric covering my whole face.... But it was all worth it :0) It's incredibly fun to be a ringwraith, one of the *scariest* creatures in middle earth. (Heh I should go as Sauron! THAT would be fun.) And after a bit I DID get used to the breathing-thing, and could see better. :0)
Anyway, here's how we made our ringwraith costumes for our film (a quick, cheap, and easy way). We also wore them on Halloween. :0)

Materials Used:

* about 7 yards of this cheap ($1 yd) black fabric at Wal-mart (we made this costume for our film so it isn't *exact*. We couldn't afford 50 yards of fabric each! (they actually did use that much on the real ringwraiths. Imagine being them! lol. I would love it :0)
* leftover gray fabric I had for the belt
* 1 yard of this sheer material for the face covering
* black gloves
* a visor I had already (baseball hat would work too.)
* silver posterboard, sharpie, staples, glue, tape -argh, the gauntlets!
*silver shoelaces (for my shoe "covers")
*black pants and shirt (to wear underneath) we had already
Total cost of this project: about $10!!! yay!

I had my sister help me with this, and vice versa, which made it that much easier. This was a very easy costume to make, pretty much all we did was take 5 yards of our black fabric, fold it in half -it's now a square, and cut a hole at the top for our neck -basically, a poncho.
Then, while I was wearing it, my sister helped me mark where I would cut the sleeves-seperating it from the fabric. Then I took it off, laid it out on my floor, and cut the sleeves evenly. Then I sewed them together, as well as sewing the sides closed almost all the way down. (we left it open a bit for horseback riding). We did NOT intend to make this costume "perfect", it was just a quickie thing for our film- shortcuts don't show on camera at night!
For the "hood", we took the leftover 2 yd square and draped it over my head while I was wearing the visor. We marked how far in we'd attach the sheer fabric, then I took it off and sewed the sheer material to the hood.

The gauntlets were the hardest part of this project. I would have LOVED to be able to make them out of real metal, or anything better than posterboard for that matter, but I was VERY restricted on money and time. So I made them out of silver posterboard, drawing each individual piece then first stapling-VERY bad idea- then taping and painting over it. Argh! This was sooo annoying and took awhile (a lot of my afternoon on Halloween!) They came out OK though. (Good enough for Halloween!)
And lastly, I made shoe "covers" out of the silver posterboard to cover my sneakers. I attached them with silver shoelaces and...tape. Though they were made from posterboard, they looked kinda cool sticking out of my black robes :0)

Accessories- using leftover black fabric and a silver shoelace (hee hee) I made a drawstring bag for Halloween that I could tie to my belt. This came in handy for small things like wallet, cell phone, and candy :0) Plus, it blended in with the black robes. :0)
Our swords were the ones we made for our film out of wood.

Here are some pics:

my shoe "covers" (hee hee)

NOOO!!! Aragorn!!! (lol)

My sister and I
NOTE: I'm the short one (lol). I'm 5'3" :0)
(And that purple thing on my belt is a flashlight. Not a very "ringwraithy" color huh?)

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