Reenactor armed with a wand

Now this little tid bit isn't exactly hobby related, but at the same time it is. After all painting up historical, science fiction, or even fantasy figures is just letting out the little boy, or girl, in us out to play for a bit. So today I took it a step further. Several weeks ago my daughter invited my Wife and I to my granddaughters "Mingle with the Muggles seventh birthday party". So I say to myself, "self you are a very artistic person, and I know you can make this event something special with your artistic talents". Well I won't tell you what I said back (cause then you'll just think I am crazy for having a conversation with myself) but that statement made a lot of sense. So off to the races my imagination went.

First to set this story on the right path I have to explain that my six year old granddaughter (now seven) has been reading by herself the Harry Potter series. A month ago we started reading together "The Sorcerers stone". I would read a chapter and then she would. When my turn came to read a chapter there have been several times when she's had me hold up to correct me when I have mispronounced a word. This truly amazes me and I always get a good chuckle out of it. We are now reading "Chamber of Secrets". But this time she reads along with me while I read it out loud. I think she likes me doing this because I make all the different voices and she gets a good chuckle out of that. Anyway on to the where and why my imagination went in the direction it did.

My granddaughter likes the characters Harry, Ron, and of course Hermione. While my favorite characters are Dumbledore, Hagrid, Snape, etc. Though Professor Snape has to be my favorite as he is such a complex character. So now you know where I am going with this.

Over the weeks I collected the clothes (costume) I would need and came up with several ideas for makeup etc. I needed to do something special that would pull off the illusion that I was in fact Professor Snape and not Papa. My family has never seen me without a beard, nor have they seen me hairless. The easy part here of course is shaving all that stuff off except for one problem, I am a blue eyed, fair skin, red head and something would need to be done about that.

All I needed to do was put on a couple of coats of paint, do a bit of layering, and then an easy dry brush to touch it off. Except that is in the painting world. So I turned to my Wife and had a discussion with her about makeup ideas. I must say without her help I probably would not have been able to pull this one off.

Now the last thing I needed was black hair. Obviously I don't have black hair so I started to browse that evil Amazon market place to look for something that wasn't too expensive and yet would pass to make me look similar to Professor Snape. Some were too short where others would make me look to Gothic. In the end I settled on (would you believe it) a Micheal Jackson wig. It was just a tad short on the actual length needed but I think you'll agree when you see the pictures below it was pretty close.

So after weeks of prepping, making sure I didn't accidentally say anything or leave anything lying about the house for them to see and ruin the surprise, I successfully pulled off the Professor Snape impersonation today. So well in fact I will leave you with this:

As I walked into the party I spotted my granddaughter with her friends and stopped just short of all the partyers. Waiting until I was noticed and hushed whispers started to float around the group I knew the time was right to approach my granddaughter. With a nervous giggle, she slowly backed up toward her mother who also had a look of awe on her face. As my granddaughter bumped into her mother and could go no further I slowly approached closer and her nervous laugh continued. I started to lean a little closer and that's when she looked into my eyes and at that moment recognized those unmistakable blue eyes of her Papa and shouted out Papa and embraced me with a giant hug. It was at that precious moment that she shouted out Papa that her mother actually spit out her food she had stopped eating and said Oh My God, with a laugh and was beside herself in disbelief.

This is exactly the reaction I had hoped for. Mission accomplished. If you've read this far thanks for doing so and enjoy the pictures;)