Happy Halloween!
Today, I pretended I was Vin from the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. It was the most excited I had ever been about a costume. I re-read the first book in the series, The Final Empire, just so that I get into Vin’s mindset and browsed several Mistborn fan-sites to refresh my knowledge of the world.
I did my work like a diligent kandra.
Preparation
One of the best things about being Vin was that there was a lot of freedom in making the costume.
There were only a few illustrations of her on older book covers and, besides the mistcloak, the rest of her attire was pretty nondescript in the books. Using my resourcefulness, I think I was able successfully mesh what I already had in my closet (except for the mistcloak and red belt) to create my costume.
That being said, my one regret is my mistcloak.
I bought the two pieces of grey cloth for my mistcloak and one strip of red cloth for a belt for only $3.50, and although I pride myself in being frugal, I wish I spent the extra one or two dollars on some damn ribbon. In my defense (against myself), I made the mistcloak before re-reading the book and realizing how flowy and extensive the cloak should be. So, it wasn’t too shabby for something coming from my memory (and 3 bucks).
Making the Costume
Making the mistcloak was extremely easy.
First, I draped the cloth over my shoulder and put a pin where I wanted the ribbon-like part of the cloak to start. Then, I laid the cloth out on my bedroom floor.
Using the first pin as a guide, I continued to pin a straight line across the material (fig. A). (To be honest, I could’ve gotten away without doing this step, but it made feel like a true DIYer so I went with it.) All that was left to do after that was to cut a bunch of strips, about 1-inch wide, from the bottom of the cloth to the boundary I created with the pins (fig. B). This part took about 45 minutes since I was working slow and taking many *Cheetos breaks. I even became Cheetos Scissorhands at one point (fig. C).
Every allowmancer needs their vials of metals, so I took some unused blood specimen tubes from my brother (fig. D) and painted them with random yellows, greens, and browns (fig. E). (Don’t worry, they were totally clean. I don’t want hepatitis.)
fig. D 
fig. E
It didn’t matter that it looked like I smeared stool on the tubes (sorry, that was gross) because they were hidden by my belt when I wore my costume.
*Not sponsored by Cheetos, although that would be awesome.
Impersonating Vin (And/Or Being A Kandra?)
Here’s how the whole costume turned out:
Like I mentioned before, you can’t see the vials. It’s also hard to see the coin pouch I tied to my belt strap and the black, vest-like details on the shirt I was wearing in the pictures. I also seriously wish my cloak had more oomph and I maybe had a glass dagger or two. This costume is a product of my miserly tendencies.
In the end, no one knew who I was.
It was okay though because I still had fun swishing my mistcloak around and pretending to be a protagonist 🌈.
Belle Can Read 