Black Widow Build Walk-Thru

With the exception of a few modifications, almost the entirety of my Black Widow cosplay was purchased pieces. You may or may not choose to be more hands-on if you're making your own. So this walk-through is going to largely be a collection of links, with a few notes on the pieces and modifications.

Catsuit

There are patterns out there for making bodysuits, but at the time when I was working on my Black Widow cosplay, I had sewn a grand total of two costume pieces using patterns. So instead I found a really good catsuit on Amazon from Leg Avenue which fit me surprisingly well considering it wasn't customized to my measurements or anything. The fabric is not so thin that you feel like everything's hanging out, though it is still on the thin side so it's not warm at all (I spent like five minutes outside wearing it on Halloween and I was shivering, but I also get cold easily).

If you are interested in making your own catsuit, McCall's patterns has some in their cosplay line.

Wig

I bought the Leslie 2002 from Amphigory in #130 and curled it. I've already posted a tutorial on the method I used for curling my wig.

Belts

I got my Black Widow emblem belt on Ebay. Unfortunately, it is no longer available, but there are lots of options on Etsy.

I got a second, plain black belt for holding my holsters at Value Village. People usually go with a utility belt for this one and I may upgrade at some point, but for now I got this. And on that subject...

Holsters

I got two matching holsters, one for each leg, on Amazon. As far as I know, you can only buy them separately, which is a bit of a pain, but they're the real deal so they're good quality.

Little side note, given the slippery nature of the catsuit fabric, I found the thigh straps of my holsters kept sliding down whenever I walked. I haven't actually gotten it and tried it out yet, but I'm going to be experimenting with garment tape, the stuff you use to keep dance costumes and strapless gowns up (colloquially known as boob tape), to get them to stay in place.

Gloves

I have really (and I mean really) tiny hands, so finding fingerless leather gloves was a challenge. I finally found these gloves by Warmen on Amazon. If you don't have tiny child hands, I'm sure you will have a much easier time finding ones that actually fit without opening up twelve different tabs of Amazon results.

Widow Bites

Here's where things got a little more hands on. Black Widow's Widow Bites (or bullet bracelets/cuffs) are not something you can just find on Amazon. That being said, I bought this costume bullet belt on Amazon and used this excellent tutorial I found on Pinterest to make mine.

Guns

I got a pair of prop guns from a local costume store and spray painted them black, making sure to keep the orange safety caps unpainted so they'd be convention safe. If there isn't a year-round costume store near you, I highly suggest scoping out Halloween stores when October rolls around, even if you're not starting a cosplay for a while. If there's something you know you'll need that will be hard to find any other time, hit up Spirit Halloween and stock up on those props.

Boots

There are so many possible ways you can do shoes for Black Widow. Lots of people do boot covers to make them screen accurate. You can wear combat boots (which was my original plan). The shoes I'm wearing, however, are from Sorel because we sell them at the store I work at and I got a good discount. The wedge heel makes me a little taller (which helps with the intimidation factor, especially when you're only 5'2") and also puts a little strut in my walk, a necessity for being Natasha Romanoff. Of course, Sorels are expensive, so you by no means have to follow my lead. I just happened to get some really good boots that double as a cosplay piece.

And there you have it! Black Widow is a cosplay that calls for lots and lots of separate pieces, which can add up (especially when you're buying everything instead of making it yourself), so you'll want to make sure you budget accordingly. You'll also want to make a checklist of all the items so you don't get to comicon and discover you're missing something. And now for some final result pictures, all the more necessary because I put no progress pictures in the rest of this post (note: I'm not wearing my wig in the following pictures because I had my hair red at the time and hadn't yet curled the wig).

Happy cosplaying!

Curling My Black Widow Wig

This method is good for lightly curling any wig. It uses heat, which technically the tag for my wig said not to, but it's very low heat and not for long so it's not problem.

I got the Leslie 2002 from Amphigory in #130 for Natasha. It wasn't quite curly enough for my taste, so I set about searching for how to curl wigs. After a lot of hunting and not a lot of luck for non-heat-resistant wigs, I sort of combined methods and came up with this.

What you need:

• Wig
• Styrofoam wig head
• Wig pins (to hold the wig to the stand. I just used extremely large sewing pins)
• Large clips
• Bobby pins (the flat kind)
• Dual setting hairdryer
• Hair spray

Pin the wig to the stand in the general area of the temples. You don't want to sliding around when you're trying to work with it. Put the stand on a counter at a comfortable level, preferably someplace you can sit down. This'll take a while. If you've got one of those clamp things to hold the stand in place, even better.

You'll want to start with bottom layers, so pull aside the top layers and clip them back out of the way.

Now for the hard part: pin curls! Take a small to mid sized lock of hair (depends on the size you want the curls) and twist it around one or two fingers until the coil is tight against the scalp. Carefully slide the coil off your fingers, making sure to keep it pressed flat against the scalp, and pin it down with a bobby pin.

Repeat this until you've got a whole bunch of them. You can do as much of the head at once as you like. I had a shockingly small number of bobby pins so I was only able to do it in chunks. 

Once you've finished pinning, it's time to break out the hairdryer. Set it on low heat so it won't over-melt the fibers, but put it on a higher speed because otherwise it will take literally forever. Hold the hairdryer close to an individual curl and hold it there until the fibers are warm, almost hot, to the touch (not too hot because then they'll start melting). Repeat with each coil.

Once you've heated all the curls, wait until they cool. Once the hair is cool to the touch, you can remove the bobby pins. Gently tussle and place the curls as you see fit. Then lightly hairspray the curled section to set.

Repeat all of this until the whole wig is curled. You may want to carefully tussle and scrunch the hair a little while the hairspray is still wet to perk up the curls. Also, I don't know what will happen if you use the hairdryer too soon after hairspraying, but I recommend waiting until the hairspray is dry to use any more heat just so you don't accidentally catch your wig on fire. Because that would be unfortunate.

And there you have it! A freshly curled wig! I did soft, casual curls for Natasha, but you can do your curls however you need, just varying the amount of hair you coil and pin down. 

Good luck and happy cosplaying!