Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck costume from The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring

Hobbits are best known for their big hairy feet!  To create the appearance of hairy feet for my Merry costume, I decided to make two "foot toupees", hairpieces I could simply adhere to the tops of my feet with spirit gum.  It would take a long time to make finished hairpieces, but it would cut down my make-up application time immensely!  Under Judy's tutelage, I learned how to create hairpieces, using wig lace, a ventilating tool, and loose acrylic hair.  Ventilating a hairpiece is actually latch-hooking, on a teeny, tiny scale!  Once I had proper hair coverage, Judy helped me to cut and "style" the hairpieces. I was very happy with the way the hairpieces turned out, and they were very fast and easy to use!  Once the hairpieces were adhered to my feet, I used stage makeup to create the appearance of dirty, sunbrowned feet. Before I wear the hairpieces again, I will probably do some more trimming to thin them out and make them look more natural.  However, they showed up quite well in photographs, and looked great from a distance!  :)

Alas, my initial attempt to cast my ears and create custom-fit foam latex hobbit ears ended in failure.  I managed to successfully cast my own ears and create a pretty good hobbit ear sculpt, but the Ultracal cement was too brittle, and my molds broke irrepairably before I even had a chance to pour the foam latex. For BayCon, I used Woochie "demon ears."  I really lucked out that I was able to find these at the last minute.  I like the demon ears a lot, since they don't look delicate or "elf-like" at all,  The shape of the ears is very hobbity! However, I'm not quite ready to give up on making my own out of foam latex, and I will definitely be trying it again soon!

EARS UPDATE! Carolyn, our wonderful Frodo in One Ring Circus, kindly agreed to create some custom latex Merry ears for me, based upon my original casts.  You can see the result of her hard work in the photo below.  I think she did a lovely job, and I was very pleased to wear my new ears at Comic-Con 2003!

Photo courtesy of Paul Savage

Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions concerning this or any of my other costume projects! Click here to return to the Merry Brandybuck The Fellowship of the Ring costume index.