You'll see every kind of costume at the Montrose Crawl - store bought, hand made, painted on, etc.  But to be a finalist for the grand prize?  For that, you need to think outside the box.  Or do you?  Let Zoltar The Magnificent, a 2008 finalist, show you the way!

"If I've learned one thing from making big costumes that you have to carry for a few hours, it's that you have to be comfortable. Chafing up your arms or exhausting some muscles is more of a pain than painting over some unneeded holes. The big box for my costume already had little handholds, but they were too high to be comfortable, so I cut some lower. Those weren't low enough, either, so I cut a third set."
"This is dumb. I duct-taped the edges of the box together, but the tape kept coming off, so I had to glue it down. Honestly, gluing on tape?"
"I was going to paint 'Zoltar' on top of my costume (from the movie Big), and I actually started, but then I realized/remembered that I'm horrible at painting, and it looked really bad. So I wiped off the paint and spray painted over it. Instead, I got some construction paper, found a picture of a Zoltar machine online, selected just the part with the word 'Zoltar', made it big, and printed it out onto the construction paper. I also flipped the image before printing so the face-out side was all red, without the dark center and lines."
"The crystal ball I had ordered online had two problems. First, it was pretty small; only 3 inches around. Second, it was really heavy; it actually was a crystal ball. I decided to keep the base, which had lights that pointed up into the ball and lit it up, and instead make the ball part. I bought a 6-inch syrofoam ball, hollowed it out until a lot of light went through, and then glued it to the base. It actually worked out pretty well."
"I had to go and buy a few things like the styrofoam ball that I hadn't originally intended on using. Searching for a hobby store near an airport named 'Hobby' doesn't work very well, though."
"I chose a Zoltar costume because I hadn't seen one before, even looking at lots of costumes people had made online. However, after I started making it, I came across a website of a guy who had actually made one. I'm glad I did, though, because the box was a little too short for me to stand in comfortably. If I wanted to just stand somewhere, I had to either bend over a bit or stand straight with my head actually lifting the box off the ground a bit. He had used a small box around his waist and PVC pipe to hold up the upper part of his costume. I didn't need to do that, but the pipe would be useful to get the box off the ground a bit and make it much more comfortable to stand in. However, the total height of the costume would be over 6 feet, and I only had 5 feet in the back of the truck to fit it in."
"I could have just left the back door open, but I decided a safer thing to do would be to buy some smaller pipe that would fit inside of the larger pipe. Then I drilled a hole through both of them and put a bolt through the hole with a nut on the other end. That way the big pipe ended at the bottom of the box, at 5 feet long, so it would fit in the truck, and when I took the costume out, I could slide the small pipes into the bottom of the big ones and bolt them in place, making the costume around 6 feet tall and comfortable to stand it."
"He had also mentioned a lot of people didn't get the movie reference and asked for a palm reading, so I studied that a bit. It turned out that everybody I met knew it was from Big and nobody asked for a palm reading, but I guess now I know the basics of reading palms in case I ever need it."
"I also made a bunch of fortune cards to give out to people. I made 30 different sayings and printed them on business cards. The Halloween pub crawl was only for adults, so I decided to make them a little naughty. Then again, we were basically walking around in public, so I didn't want to make them too blantant in case someone threw theirs on the ground and a kid picked it up. For example, this one said, 'Save water. Shower with a friend.'"
"My costume, Zoltar from the movie Big. Now that I look at it, it doesn't look that great, especially considering how much I had to paint and cut and tape and glue. Then again, most of the fun came from interacting with people, not looking at it. I'd make them put their hands on the ball (which lit up different colors, although you can't see it here), make a wish, and then I'd give them a fortune card. Most people really got a kick out of it. Also, it helps that I'm not shy. A lot of people would look and laugh but not want to do more than that, so I went up to them and convinced them to make a wish and have some fun. After a while, word got around about the fortune cards I was giving out, so people would come up to me just to get one. I'd make them go through the whole 'making a wish' routine, first, though."

"Unfortunately, I didn't win the grand prize. The woman with this Bender costume from Futurama did (seen here with her friend dressed as Jack from Jack in the Box). Then again, even though I didn't win, at least I got to the finals and lost to a costume that was really well-made. (At the Exotic Erotic Ball in San Francisco, I didn't even make it on stage because they ran out of time, and I and a few other people who also didn't get on stage had much better costumes than the winner there, which was extremely disappointing.) Like I said before, I think my costume was the most fun and interactive out of all the other costumes I saw. I even gave people souvenirs to keep in the form of fortune cards. It probably just didn't look good enough to win the overall contest, and it definitely wasn't nearly as polished looking as the Bender costume. The organizer dressed as a ninja told me to definitely come back next year, though, so that was nice to hear."
"It's kind of a shame that after all the hard work and fun that everything just goes into the dumpster, but that's how life is. I don't have anywhere to store it and it would be lazy to re-use the costume again next year, anyway. Plus, I didn't win the grand prize with it, so I have to make something better."
"I did get a $20 certificate to Brasil for winning one of the individual costume contests, though, and more importantly, it was a really fun night."