Home » Character Costumes » Animated Character Costumes » Princess Mononoke Costumes » Coolest Handmade San from Princess Mononoke Costume

Coolest Handmade San from Princess Mononoke Costume

This year, I created a handmade San from Princess Mononoke costume. I purchased a purple dress, white turtleneck, and beige turtleneck from the thrift store. I cut the white turtleneck into a tunic that can tie at the sides, the purple dress into her raggedy dress, and the beige turtlenecks sleeves to create the shoes. I had to stitch the sleeves around a pair of shoes and in order to hold them up, I wound a piece of leather around my ankle.

I made the gaged earrings and the wolf’s teeth on the necklace out of Sculpey. The bead and tooth necklace is sewn to the white cape I cut into a wolf’s shape. Then sewed a clasp onto the cape so it would be easy to take off. The head and arm bands are strips of leather glued together with a Chinese coin at the seam. I got the knife from a store, but had to alter it greatly. I painted it white, made a new handle out of Sculpey that I painted brown, and added the design on the blade with Sculpey that I painted red.

The last thing was wrapping some red foam paper around the handle. The part that took me the longest with this handmade San from Princess Mononoke costume was the mask/headress. To get the semicircle shape, I papier mached half of a balloon. After drying, I cut off the ragged edge and the two eye holes and the mouth hole. Next, I added a layer of mod podge to harden the mask a little more. There are parts on the mask, around the mouth and eye holes (beige circles) and again around the eye holes (the white figure eight), that are three dimensional, which were created using Sculpey again.

I painted everything and then glued the white fur head piece onto it. The last thing to do on the headress was attach the ears. The ears are made out of red foam paper that I folded and stapled. I cut the bottom of the ears to form tabs that would be easier to attach. I folded and sewed the tabs onto the fur, so they would stick straight up. After that, I formed triangles on my face with tape and filled them in with red face paint.

Last, but not least, I smeared blood on my face to recreate the scene where San sucks blood out of her wolf mother’s wound.

Handmade San from Princess Mononoke Costume

Handmade San from Princess Mononoke Costume



Coolest Homemade Costume Contest 2023

3 thoughts on “Coolest Handmade San from Princess Mononoke Costume”

  1. I think that for one….your hair is wrong for the outfit. It needs to be more loose and down like hers is in the movie. Also the blood around the mouth looks sloppy. it would look much better if you didn’t do it and just did the face paint next to the eyes and on the forehead. Last thing, the cape, it seems like you would want to double over the fabric so that it was furry on both sides. That is just my input on how you could make it better.

    Reply
  2. Don’t worry about the detraction from that previous commentator. You did an amazing job and deserve a positive response for it. I’m half considering using the design next year. I hope you don’t mind.

    It is very striking and the work you put into it was well worth it.

    Well done!

    Reply
  3. My daughter just got done doing the mask and she tried 2 different ways before she got it the way she wanted it. She is a very particular kind of person and likes to do her very best. We, her parents, think she did just fantastic. We looked at yours as well as many many others so as to see how others have done and what worked and what didn’t. It sure was fun! Is the knife …or actually, dagger suspposed to be that skinny? We made ours fat…or the blade was wide.

    Reply

Leave a Comment