Well that seemed to go well. Most people liked it, hopefully will have some photos of the event along shortly...

Actually if you have some photos of the event you wouldn't mind posting or linking from here, please drop me a line on facebook or in the comments below. I don't actually have any, since I was stuck inside the costume all night!

Have to say it's a lot harder to see out through that muslin cloth than I'd hoped! Visibility was ok as long as it was shaded from direct light, but when illuminated it just turns into a foggy white view of the world. Like wearing a foggy diving mask. If this costume gets used again, I think that bit will be replaced with something better!

I tripped only once, on a pothole I didn't see at all. Benders head fell off, and I dented the bottom of the torso when I brought my leg up sharply to recover balance. That also kicked the top of the torso up so it hit me in the lip! Unexpected costume hazards indeed! The head was mostly undamaged - his antenna rod came a bit loose, and eventually fell off after the skate. It's glued back in place now. The torso also bent back into shape, more or less, so there are no obvious ill-effects now!

And here it all is, ready to go.

Gloves are sewn on to sleeves, paint is dried out. The torso door is drawn on with black marker pen - I wasn't about to try and make a working door!

I thought of doing something about feet to make my skates the right color - they are black and white. Could have made some sort of cloth boot to cover them over, say, with the leftover material from the gloves. But I don't want it coming loose so I can trip on it. I'm a pretty decent skater, but I don't need that! I already can't see my feet while wearing the costume, and Bender doesn't wear skates anyway - so fine the feet can be the wrong color.

First wearing. Ok the first obvious problem is that the sleeves arent staying up and it's revealing the skin at my wrists. Kind of spoils the effect a bit. So next idea was to half-stitch the gloves onto the end of the sleeves. Half stitching would mean the gloves keep the sleeves up, but I can still get my hands out if I want to. The beer bottle is, of course, important.

At this point I decided to go completely overboard with the sewing and actually make some gloves. I hadn't found any the right color or, ideally, with only three fingers. But I had found a grey fabric the right color at the haberdashery shop where I got the hat-brim wire. So £6 later I had 1m of material and proceeded about making up a glove pattern. This was a bit fiddly, but after some messing about and an hour or two stitching I had two gloves ready.

The inside of the head is padded out with some cut styrofoam material that had formerly been used to pack a TV or something. I made it fairly tight so it grips onto my head a bit. The head is top-heavy and needs to remain on even when skating over the rough roads of central London!

Time for some painting then, since after a looong time all the papier mache had finally dried. About £15 worth of acrylic paint from the local art shop, £1 worth of paint brushes from the local pound-shop, and this was the result. Not bad huh? I finished up doing two coats because I had to mix black and white to get grey, and the first time it came out too dark. I could have got away with one coat though if I'd been more careful right at the start.

At the advice of the shop I used the paint undiluted, so it was really quite thick. But this also turned out pretty cool - acrylic paint dries with a texture and finish that looks and feels almost like plastic (it probably is a polymer I suppose). This means the costume is a little bit water resistant after painting, which is cool. Not that water is going to be a problem of course, we don't skate in the rain.

The teeth have been drawn on a piece of muslin(?) cloth with a black marker pen. The cloth is glued into the mouth using ordinary craft glue. The cloth is very sheer, and you can see through it reasonably easily. The idea is that I look out through benders mouth. When the costume is worn the top of the antenna is about 30cm taller than me. I'm 1.86m. If you add on 10cm or so cm from a pair of skates Bender stands over 2 meters tall. Yeah!

I also added an extra collar under the head (not visible) so it will sit nicely into the hole of the neck.

And this is the result after sewing (yes sewing!) the first few rings into the tracksuit pant legs. I can tell you now, I'm terrible at sewing, so this is really rough work but it seems to have come out ok.