This summer when Suicide Squad came out, it crossed over into the Batman universe with characters like Harley Quin and the Joker. The premise of the film was super villains joining forces to complete a mission that could save the world…sounds more pulled together than the film’s execution of the story…but visually it was still a treat.

I am not really into super heroes that much…but the year before I did a simple Tomie costume, a character from a manga series by Junji Ito…so I couldn’t resist making another Japanese inspired costume when I found out there was a Japanese hero in Suicide Squad: Katana!  Forget Harley Quin, one of the most done of female costumes of this year, but the character of Katana; a deadly and strong willed woman of honor who has superior samurai skills was the way to go for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The back story on Katana is is that she was originally the daughter of a great samurai, who while being trained in the skills of fighting, also won the hearts of two brothers.  They both sought her out, and in the end, she chose the more honest man to marry and have kids with…leaving the rejected brother to be jealous and turn even more evil. There was a dual between the brothers and Katana’s husband was killed by his evil brother, and the children died in the resulting fire.  After she lost her husband and kids, Katana became a force for good, using her magic sword (who still possesses her husband’s soul) to fight evil as a means to cope with her tragic loss.  Katana has worked with Batman, Birds of Prey  and for the movie Suicide Squad she was Rick Flag’s body guard.  Anyways, enough about her back story, let’s take a look at my costume.

I made this costume mostly with clothes I already had.  Such as a white tank/top, tight black jeans/pants and a black bomber style jacket. I pinned it in on the bottom to create a cropped effect.  I also already had the sword from a previous costume (Kyo from Black Bird) The only thing I actually bought was the white half mask, the red sash, and gold metallic paint for the flowers.  I painted the red dot on the mask with red nail polish and reshaped and cut the eyes to resemble Katana’s mask more.  Then I painted gold petal shapes on duct tape and then cut them out and stuck them in a flower pattern in the bottom right corner of the jacket. Then I looped the long red scarf around the arms of the jacket and pinned in place.  All in all, this costume only cost me $10 for the scarf, paint, and plain white mask! I had everything else!  But it was really fun getting to be Katana for a day on Halloween.

What DIY costumes have you made in the past that was both cheap and made use of things you had?