Costume Talk: Beanstone Cowboy for Krewe of Red Beans

I feel like I need to preface this by saying I hate those diy posts that are like this is how you make a blah blah blah and then the instructions are idk just make it look like this. I'm sorry to say that this post is kind of going to be like that. I have good reasons though and that is I made this after I made my bean eggs and ham costume so it was a mad dash to get it done from start to finish. Also, it's basically just me frantically gluing things and hoping it works out in the end. Story of my life.

Anyway, these were my inspiration photos for the suit. I was super into the nudie suit/rhinestone cowboy look and I figured Andy would be ok with it because Texas.

It's kind of overwhelming to look at these designs and create something similar. I decided my easiest and best route for success would be to make bean "appliques" that I could make in mirroring designs to glue on both sides of the suit. I also thought that once the appliques are attached I could then add in lines or swirls of beans to connect the designs to each other making it look like a more intricate and cohesive pattern.

The way I started was by cutting out triangles and semi circles out of felt and then gluing beans in varying patterns to each applique. Trying to mix up the size and color of beans I was using so that they each looked different. Once it was a for real sprint to get this thing done my friends Amanda and Maya helped make bean appliques. We also added in a variety of rhinestones as well as silver painted beans to the designs to add some shine and pizzazz.

Once I had about 7 or 8 pairs of appliques I started to arrange them on the jacket and glued them in place. At this point it was really coming together and it was easy to then start adding in more detail like bigger rhinestones to the lapels of the jacket. I also decided I wanted to bean a design around the front buttons so I traced out diamond shapes in white pencil as guides.

I wasn't able to add anything to his pants until a couple of hours before we walked in the parade so there are no process shots of that happening. But the way I started was that I knew I wanted it to be along the side seam of his pants. For this I actually did measure out the spacing between the appliques since it would be hard to eyeball it and make them even. I did the first piece 5 inches down from the end of the pocket and then spaced the next two appliques 3 inches apart and then connected those with a line of lentils and rhinestones. I worked with the shape of each applique and built out the design. For the semi circles I wanted to make it look like a sunburst so I added 2 inch pieces of tinsel pipe cleaners and then capped the ends with rhinestones and lentils. For the diamond shape applique I added tear shaped rhinestones at the corners.

Can we all agree that pipe cleaners are the most underrated craft supply. They look so good on this outfit!

The other thing I did to his costume that morning was bean the phrase "hey good lookin' what ya got cookin'" on the back of his jacket. It was a toss up between that and beaning in a scripty font Beanstone Cowboy. But the Hank Williams phrase won because Andy actually did cook red beans and rice and we served it along the route!

The bean design above the quote was all Andy! We spent one night hot gluing red beans together and watching King of the Hill and after about an hour he was like ok I'm done. Which I thought was for the night but he meant no I'm done hot gluing forever. So I took over his costume which was fine because I kind of assumed that's what I was going to do anyway.

ALSO, my sister Hannah is an artist and illustrator and the past couple of years she's been doing custom Christmas cards where you can get your faces illustrated by her to send on a card. Super cute and fun so I wanted to do it but I was so extremely late on getting the ball rolling that I was like can I make sending Mardi Gras cards a thing and just get you to illustrate us in our costumes. The answer was yes you're my sister so I'll do it and it turned out FANTASTIC. Since we already knew Andy's costume and that we were going to serve red beans and rice out of a gold grocery cart in January she was able to illustrate it. It was soo much fun walking in the parade and seeing our friends and it clicking with them that we looked like the card we mailed to them!