A Silly Little Artist

Ingredients

Cardstock, ruler, masking tape

Black leather for the uppers, given to me for free! Unsure of more details because of that.

Red and black thread

Leather needles for my sewing machine

Grommets and grommet press

Shoe lasts (I ordered mine from Sorrell Notions and Findings—technically they were for cowboy boots but these are what I was able to find in my size and shipping from within the US)

Insole, midsole, outsole, and heel block leathers (also from Sorrell)

3 oz. shoe hand tacks

Hole punch

Pricking iron

Beveling tool

Variety of sharp blades (the one I found most helpful was a flat chisel-y one)

Hammer(s)

Contact cement

Black leather dye

Black Edge Kote

Old Couch Fabric and EVA foam (for a test shoe)

Shoelaces

Procedures

Notice that Willy Wonka’s shoes have the trademark W on them, and figure this is the perfect opportunity yo give making shoes a go!

Spend a lot of time struggling to find materials and resources. Eventually stumble upon this tutorial series and this shoemaking supply supplier. Depending on your shoe size, you may have better luck sourcing lasts.

Get your lasts and be very excited about them! Create a pattern using the tutorial series mentioned above, and then whip together a “shoe shaped object” to test the fit. (It is too big, and the second one is also too big even after some adjustments, but it’s OK and stays on well enough. Due to supply issues I knew I was ordering a slightly bigger last, so oh well.)

Cut out your pieces for the uppers. Stitch in the Wonka “W” on both, then skive, glue, and stitch the uppers together. Also punch holes and add grommets for laces! (Note: I’m pretty sure his shoes in the movie do not have laces but that seemed… riskier and harder to make for a first pair of shoes, so laces it was.)

Cut out your insole using a variety of blades including a utility knife, xacto knife, and that chisel knife mentioned above. It will take forever and also be kind of rough, and ALSO destroy your wrists if you’re not careful. (Some suggest using a bandsaw on soling leathers but I didn’t have one and was too impatient to borrow one, so knives it was.)

Last the uppers, and have to re-do it multiple times due to your inexperience (in hindsight this may have been what destroyed my wrists as I did this the same day as cutting out the insole piece). Worry that there’s not enough excess and then breathe a sigh of relief when it works.

Glue the upper to the insole, then slice and until as needed. Glue the midsole piece on, and be very excited about how it’s looking! Enjoy hammering the crap out of things as you try to get the contact cement to contact.

Cut, form, and attach the outsole. (I also dyed it black.)

Finally, build the heel by cutting the heel block pieces approximately to size, gluing them onto the stack (and, in the middle two layers experiment with adding nails), and then cutting them to shape. Dye the whole thing black, burnish the edges, remove the last, and enjoy!

Ingredients

1 dress shirt that fits really well

1 thrifted paisley shirt that I wasn’t expecting to find

Black thread (both regular and embroidery)

2 buttons

The Process

Get impatient waiting for the opportunity to buy paisley fabric and decide to make a pattern for once. Take a dress shirt you like and notate the measurements of all of the pieces.

Throw out that pattern when you find this shirt at the thrift store:

Note that it is larger than your usual size BUT fits really well lengthwise and in the shoulders. Also note that it’s not quite the right colors but it IS probably going to be cheaper to buy this secondhand and alter it than it’s going to be to buy the exact correct fabric. Feel confident that you could maybe dye some of the tan parts blue to make it match his canon shirt a little better (spoilers: you cannot).

Bring in the sides by seam ripping everything and then putting it back together but smaller. I sewed the sleeve back in along the shoulder first, then matched everything up and sewed down the length of the sleeve and side, taking it in by some on both sides. This did make the armhole a little smaller but not enough o make it not fit.

Decide that what this shirt really needs is vents on the sides and fitted cuffs. (In some shots you can see that he’s wearing his open.) Loosely follow this tutorial using the material you had to cut off of the ends of the sleeves to make them your size (it will be JUST ENOUGh material so be careful!!!)

Try to make buttonholes on the cuff using your machine, but face difficulty because of the bulk of the seam allowance inside the cuff. Manage to seam rip all of that back off without ruining the fabric, then hand sew buttonholes instead. Add buttons.

Cut about an inch off of the collar so that it doesn’t rest on your face when it’s flipped up. Think about curving the edge but decide not to because then it’ll look stupid if you wear it later as a normal shirt instead of buttoned all the way up with the collar standing up. (The collar was double layered so I just cut off the top, folded the edges in, and topstitched along the edge.)

Ingredients

1 3-foot-long clear acrylic tube (7/8” diameter)

1 wooden ball with a flat bottom

Package of glass beads with no holes, sold as faux nonpareils

1 wooden dowel with a 5/8” diameter

1 wooden dowel with a 7/16” diameter

Cold porcelain clay

Black, white, and silver acrylic paint

Gloss varnish

The Process

Find this lovely tutorial while looking for references and inspiration from other cosplayers. Appreciate that it gives you a sense of direction, but note that it’s not a 100% accurate prop.

Find a clear acrylic tube (the hardest part for me—I got mine online from Canal Plastics), and wait eagerly for it to arrive.

In the meantime, continue to search our resources because it’s somewhat difficult to see the full walking stick in detail in many shots. Debate whether it has lines running down its length or if that’s just how the light is hitting the clear tube. Find definitive proof via a listing for a rehearsal/stand-in cane—huge thanks to @wwillywonka for suggesting Propstore as a place to hunt for references!

When the clear tube comes, realize it’s a little too long, because the actual prop is stated to be 37” long, your tube is 36” long, and you are about a foot shorter than the actor the original was made for. Cut it a few inches shorter and break your girlfriend’s dad’s motosaw blade in the process.

Test some ways of adding the lines to the length of the tube using the piece you cut off. Carve 6 spiralled lines into the clear acrylic tube (I used my dad’s Dremel with the cutting wheel attachment, very slowly and carefully). Plan it out really carefully using tape and still mess up one of the lines. (P.S. If you do this part, please please please wear appropriate PPE! It is going to send plastic shards EVERYWHERE!)

Cut a 4-ish inch piece of that bigger wooden dowel to use at the end of the tube. Glue it in place using superglue. This will both plug up the bottom of the tube and be a more sturdy surface to be touching the floor later on.

• Carefully sketch out and then paint the swirly bits on the wooden ball for the top. Be very scared the whole time because painting clean lines is hard. Cover the whole thing in like four coats of gloss varnish. (I used a sponge for the first few, then rubbed it on with my fingers for the top layer so it was super smooth.)

Cut the smaller wooden dowel so that it fits inside of the clear tube. This will fill up some of the space so you don’t have to use so many beads. Fill the tube with beads. I used a funnel to avoid getting these all over the carpet. (Spoilers: I still spilled them all over the carpet, but for entirely different reasons.)

Seal off the top with a piece of tape as a temporary measure.

Glue the wooden ball to the top, sealing the beads inside. I used a generous glob of hot glue first, using the wooden dowel in the center as support, then also used some Shoe Goo around the outside for an extra seal.

Make one batch of very doughy flour-and-glue based clay thinking it’s a different recipe. Use this to sculpt the details under the ball on top and also on the bottom. Take those back off later that week because the clay cracks too much.

Make a new batch of clay—cold porcelain this time—and use that to sculpt the details again. Make enough so that when it cracks you can fill those parts back in this time!

First big lineless marker drawing I’ve done in a while, and also the first one I’ve done with a full background in…. Maybe ever? Mostly Copics with a little bit of colored pencil to lighten up some spots.

Ingredients

1 sheet of nickel silver

2 nickel silver scatter pin backs

silver solder

flux

a propane torch, plus other tools for soldering jewelry (happy to share what I use but it is beyond the scope of this post! LMK if you want that info!)

sandpaper at a variety of grits

polishing compound and wax

rubber cement

printed copy of the Wonka “W”

The Process

Decide at midnight on New Years to make a Willy Wonka cosplay, and try to figure out where to start. Realize you have sheet metal in your closet that you can use to start on the pin!

Trace over the Wonka “W” on a photo of the candy bar wrapper form the film. Print this out at the size you want the pin to be (mine’s like 3 inches x 1.5 inches or so). Use rubber cement to adhere this to your sheet of nickel silver. (Actual silver will also work, in theory, but it’s expensive so I didn’t do that.)

Cut this out with a jeweler’s saw, then remove the paper and glue.

Sand the surface of both sides, starting with a lower grit and working to a high grit, being careful to remove as many scratches as you can before moving on to the next grit. (This step not pictured.)

Wait several weeks for it to warm up enough for you to solder outside (optional), then re-prep the back of your pin and solder the pin backs on.

Re-sand the whole pin, then polish it! I used my dad’s Dremel for this. Be careful not to scuff up the sides in the process (keep the metal spinny parts away from your project and also your hands!) I also buffed it with some wax for protection.

Every Trip is a Quest, Except When It's Not

The place to go--for all involved--is Wonka's factory, and the questers are the five children. Their challenges/trials and reasons to go are different, though: for Charlie, the challenge is in actually getting there, due to his family's situation. He is unable to buy chocolate bars like the other children are, and for a period of time his family is far too hungry to really worry about the contest going on. One he gets to the factory, though, there's not much in the way of trials or challenges for him. For the other children, it's the other way around: they buy Wonka bars in excess (except perhaps Mike, as he is too absorbed in his TV program during his interview to really give any information related to the contest), but then are tested within the factory, where they ultimately fail. The outcomes for Charlie vs. the other Golden Ticket winners are also different--Charlie emerges with changed luck, a future that's no longer surviving day-by-day, and as the winner of the factory itself, and the other children and their parents emerge having learned lessons re: their flaws (greed, selfishness, being impolite and disobedient, etc.).

Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Communion

Food is a huge deal throughout the story, and not just because it's about a chocolate factory. The Bucket family struggles to afford enough to feed the household, but continue to display acts of self-sacrifice, sharing, and--well--communion. Mr. and Mrs. Bucket give (or try to give) their share to Charlie to help him grow. Charlie tries to share his prized birthday chocolate bar with his family (although they refuse).

Even when there's not enough to go around, the family does their best to give to each other, which contrasts with the other parents who have plenty and do very little to parent their children. (Mr. Gloop, for example, refuses to attempt to save Augustus from maybe drowning because he does not want to dirty his jacket; Mr. Beauregarde encourages Violet to keep chewing the magic chewing gum even after she has been explicitly told to stop.)

Charlie's inability to buy chocolate for himself is also one way he's alienated from the experiences of the other children in the book (both the Golden Ticket winners and others mentioned in the first few chapters)--it is an experience he is unable to share with them save for his one bar a year that he makes last for months. (There are also other ways that he is marked as different than the other children, but I'll discuss those later.)

Mr. Wonka sharing his river chocolate with the Buckets--and only the Buckets--is another sort of act of communion. It is a show of goodwill, and also foreshadows the ending in which Wonka shares everything with Charlie and his family through giving him the factory. This action also sets up the following scene in which Grandpa Joe is the only adult to defend Mr. Wonka while the other children's parents scream about how crazy he is.

Hanseldee and Greteldum

While I didn't really identify any direct allusions to fairytales in the book when I read it (although it's been a while since I've practiced looking for that kind of thing), the story itself reads as sort of a fairytale: a kindhearted protagonist is rewarded for being good and honest, and the naughty, selfish children in the story are punished (with a clear moral message given when they are, in this case through the Oompa Loompas' songs). The whole thing is set in Wonka's personal fantasy world-turned-reality, and has a sense of whimsy and impossibility about it.

It's More Than Just Rain or Snow

The story is set in the winter, and it is mentioned to be a particularly brutal one. Right before Charlie finds the last Golden Ticket, Dahl takes the time to describe how the winter turns bitterly cold, with lots of snow (which ends up being the only way Mr. Bucket is able to earn a little money). The whole thing highlights the Buckets' living situation, but also how cold (literally and figuratively) and uncaring the world is towards them until their luck changes with finding that last Golden Ticket. When Charlie interacts with characters other than his family before entering the factory, they never seem to notice (or care) about his obvious malnutrition and poverty other than a couple of people gossiping right before the children enter the factory. (It is mentioned several times how thin, bony, and clearly gaunt Charlie is, and that he does not have a coat, and also Wonka notices right away and comments on it while they're in the boat.)

By contrast, Wonka's factory is warm and inviting (at least to Charlie), even when the other children end up in peril and are ultimately rejected.

More Than It's Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

All moments of violence/misfortune in the story are character-caused and meant to highlight the "bad" children's fatal flaws. Augustus and Veruca are two versions of greed and gluttony, ignoring the warnings of the adults around them and ultimately falling (into a river and the garbage chute, respectively). Violet is similarly disobedient, and her constant gum chewing is a symptom of her larger bad manners and generally impolite, brash nature. Mike thinks of nothing but TV, and is ultimately harmed by it.

Flights of Fancy

Charlie literally flies away at the end with Wonka, and is given freedom from his previous situation. His family is given this same freedom, but ironically they are forced into it unwillingly when Wonka, Charlie, and Grandpa Joe push everyone into the Great Glass Elevator at the end.

If She Comes Up, It's Baptism

Augustus is the only one who really follows the strict formula of being immersed in a liquid (although in this case it's chocolate and not water), coming back up, and being much changed, but ALL of the children are changed and reborn in their experience at the factory. Augustus, Violet, Veruca, and Mike all "come out in the wash" and are seen leaving the factory with various degrees of change--both physical and in how their lives are going to be from that point on. (For example, Mike's parents vow to throw out the TV set as soon as they get home.)

Charlie, too, is essentially reborn and given a new life (albeit in a different manner than the other children)--he descends into the factory and emerges into a life completely changed, in which he and his family will always have enough to eat, and in which he will live in a completely different world than the one he's known (Wonka's world vs. the world outside).

Marked For Greatness

There are a lot of ways that Charlie is explicitly marked as different than the rest of the children. Because of his family's financial situation and the harsh winter that the book takes place in, he is noticeably far too thin, and does not have a winter coat. He is the only child to bring just one guardian, and also the only child to bring a grandparent rather than a parent. He and Grandpa Joe are the only ones who do not contradict Wonka while discussing the Square Candies That Look Round (and are delighted by the wordplay), or really argue with him at all throughout the book.

He's Blind For a Reason, You Know

The whole tunnel scene highlights a kind of blindness in the other children in adults--throughout the book, the other four Golden Ticket winners and their parents continually show an inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to see what Wonka sees--they criticize and question the usefulness of various rooms in the factory constantly--and this scene makes it literal. They go into the dark, and while Wonka is incredibly enthusiastic and excited about the whole ordeal, the parents scream about how crazy he is. Grandpa Joe is the only adult to defend Wonka. The other parents are unable to see what Grandpa Joe sees in Mr. Wonka, and unable to see the whimsy, joy, and humor Mr. Wonka sees in his world. (This is also perhaps a factor in why the other children are not chosen.)

~*~

Is eternally 44 (or at least until an Author decides to change his age) because he briefly shot through The Void while hurtling through Interdimensional Space.

Willy Wonka’s more impossible abilities–across all his interdimensional selves–are a product of The Candy Man’s existence/influence, as The Candy Man is responsible for all candy-related mayhem and powers across the multiverse. Being a cosmic horror, The Candy Man can also break the rules of whichever reality he is actively influencing (e.g. he has powers beyond what is allowed under Erscoga’s power cap) and grant that power to anyone he lends power to.

Willy has definitely created things in Erscoga that he should NOT be able to do under the power cap, but he and Nalitie just kind of sweep them under the rug and pretend not to notice. Dukermin also does this, apparently. 

The Candy Man granted him the ability to shapeshift into various confections (Gary the Bracelet, who’s one of those candy necklace type bracelets, and into chocolate in the latest Sharknado event). 

He is demi-romantic and asexual.

He has an Integrity SOUL with undertones of Perseverance.

He is ALMOST never barehanded.

Willy is the one who created the VR room, not Nalitie. It was originally an attempt at re-creating the Television Chocolate-turned-interdimensional portal he had in his original world to try to get back to his universe.

Sometimes he goes in there and simulates his universe, his old factory, and his family, and it’s almost as good as being able to go home. Nalitie has found him doing this on more than one occasion but pretends she doesn’t know because she thinks bringing it up will bum him out. 

He has so far not been able to return to his universe because there are so many timelines–the books, the now THREE movies, and countless AUs and fanfictions make it difficult. He also didn’t think to try at GCL until he found out that’s what the refugees were doing, but he’s low on their priority list as his dimension is likely still stable OR was deleted a LOOONG time ago due to how long he’s been here.

He is also—perhaps unsurprisingly—responsible for the idea of “couch that blasts off into space as transportation.” 

He has a candy lab that was originally in the kitchen but has since moved down to the basement.

He also has a main store location in Verdanaville, where he sells a somewhat downscaled stock of things he used to sell back in his universe. He recently opened a second location on Bensel, and plans to open one store on each planet with exclusive specialty items unique to each planet.

Willy Wonka and Old McDonald came up with their unusual plants (candy-growing plants and meat orchard) around the same time completely independently, but both of them think the other stole from them. (Neither realized the other was working on a similar idea.) Both have a corkboard of the other in the basement theorizing how they could have done this. This is why OldMcdonald is so touchy about his corn and constantly shoots at Nalitie and Co.

Some items at the Bensel location: candied produce of many varieties; a variety of sugarcane in which the sugar is already processed inside, like giant Pixy Stix; plants for home gardens which grow various kinds of sweets; regular produce that has been altered to taste like candy but still provide essential nutrients

The Termata location is the closest to his Earth store, with his classic line of candies.

Other Plans:

Lux: luminescent rock candies of a variety of flavors, edible candles, chocolate fireflies (like his chocolate birds but they light up)

Dunkel: gourmet varieties of extra-dark chocolate, Dunkelian-accessible varieties of his normal candy lines (made out of or with extra Darkness)

Aeuton: collaborations with the families in Sugar Bunting to create a variety of super decadent tortes, fudge, and lava cakes.

Pluto: THE place to get monster-safe varieties of his candy line. (Some monsters can eat human food, but not all can. All monsters can eat monster food, though.) Also features a line of candies themed around Earth’s solar system since that’s where Pluto is from. Store is surrounded by spectacular ice sculptures that–unlike the glacier–never melt. (He’s also been putting work in with Alphys to make the glaciers resistant to melting using his never-melting ice cream technology so that someday they can heat Pluto further in different zones for warm-climate monsters.)

Coloria: Everything is iridescent or otherwise very colorful. Includes several varieties of candies that can be used like a dispersive prism.

He is secretly the glue that’s holding poor Erscoga together while its queens run around putting out fires. 

He perfected Nalitie’s Breadless Bread recipe and has been making a LOT of it. He’s also figured out a way to miniaturize Bread while retaining its value (monetary and nutritional), so he carries around thousands of Loaves in his wallet at any given time.

He finally worked out all the kinks in his Magic Chewing Gum, and has been giving it out to the refugees who haven’t yet converted their home currencies into Bread.

He made many more Universal Translators and DunkelVision goggles, like, a long time ago. Nalitie would know this if she ever stopped panicking in the Vent Hole to talk to him. 

Between selling that magic gum to GCL and making Breadless Bread and his candy store sales, he’s, like, loaded. He is the only reason Nalitie’s household is able to afford their groceries and house renovations since Nalitie is famously broke and Christine and Steven have their own additional expenses to worry about.

Nalitie has told him pretty much all of her backstory, because he noticed right away that she was NOT the person he married in Ask Erik! (Aside from the fact that she was suddenly 13, which happened to people sometimes in Ask Erik!, she also became a lot weirder and a lot worse of a cook.) 

He is the only one of the original household who stayed after Nalitie replaced Thea. 

After this happened, they started sleeping in separate rooms and taking on more of an awkward friendship kind of relationship, despite Ask Erik!’s history and general acceptance of marriages with age gaps modern Americans would find horrifying (see: Log_Lady and Erik, Harrow and Raoul, etc.). 

Once Christine, Steven, and Dave moved in, they moved back into the same room, but had bunk beds for a long while, pretty much until they moved to Erscoga.

Ingredients

One pair of polyisoprene surgical gloves which I got from a secret source (asking my nurse very nicely) — these are probably not super accessible unless you happen to frequent a hospital often, sorry. I am unsure whether or not you could dye nitrile gloves, which are the more common type of disposable glove you can find, you’ll have to do your own experiments to find out!

Half a bottle of purple RIT DyeMore

A splash of black RIT DyeMore (color named graphite)

The Process

Realize that Willy Wonka’s gloves are a VERY dark purple—almost blackish purple in some lights, but a brighter purple in others. But definitely not dentist/doctor’s-office-purple or the more common blue.

Acquire gloves, and make sure they fit by wearing them around and being obnoxiously excited about it.

Put enough water on the stove that the gloves—when submerged—can move around freely. Add a splash of dish soap, half a bottle of purple dye, and a splash of black to the pot once it’s hot. (I probably could have done less black.)

Once it reaches almost-boiling, add your gloves and start stirring!

I let these go for just under half an hour, cause after a while it seemed like nothing more was happening.

Take them out and rinse according to the dye bottle’s instructions (inside AND out, and also make sure to get the cuff unrolled!)

Dry and enjoy!

Ingredients

Whole milk

Heavy cream

Dark/Semi-sweet chocolate chips (choose your favorite)

Brown sugar (or other sweetener of your choice)

Cocoa powder

Cornstarch

Salt

Instant decaf coffee

Directions

In a small saucepan, combine milk and heavy cream. I don’t measure, unfortunately, but knowing my pot I thiiink it’s somewhere around or just shy of two cups of liquid I put in there total. It was probably between 2/3 milk and 1/3 heavy cream and like 3/4 milk and 1/4 heavy cream. IDK. Measure with your heart.

Add a few handfuls of your chocolate chips, then set it heating on medium to medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. We’ll come back to it later, just get it starting to warm while you mix up the next part. I also added like a lump of brown sugar at this stage.

While that’s heating, in a small bowl mix like… a tablespoon or so of milk and/or cream with a spoonful of cornstarch and 2-3 spoonfuls of cocoa powder. Whatever feels right. Mix this into a thin paste. (It won’t want to mix at first, but it will eventually!)

Once the milk in the saucepan is hot, start whisking it until the chocolate you put in there is totally melted and the mixture is mostly homogenous.

Add your cornstarch-cocoa powder-milk mixture, whisking continuously while you do so. The constant whisking from this point on is super important to avoid lumps.

Continue to whisk the hot chocolate until it just starts to bubble/boil and seems like it’s thickening up, then remove it from the heat. I continued to whisk mine for like a minute after to make really sure I didn’t have any cornstarch lumps because ick.

Stir in a pinch of salt and a pinch of instant decaf. (Cinnamon is also very tasty!)

Pour into a mug and add marshmallows, whipped cream, and other toppings as your heart desires.