Where's Laura ?

They say working in a bookshop isn't glamorous, largely because it isn't but sometimes it can be fun. I'm sure most people haven't heard of World book day, I'm pretty sure I hadn't before I started working in a bookshop so I'll just assume you're as clueless as I was and give you a quick explanation. It's an event that was created to help celebrate reading worldwide. In Ireland and the Uk it happens on 6th March and for some reason in the rest of the world it's some time in April. 

Anyway they give out vouchers in all of the schools and then bring out a selection of books that cost as much as the vouchers so every child gets a free book. And as well as that there's usually some other book related events for the month of March and that would be where my ingenious costume comes in.

It was mentioned that some of the schools were having a dress as your favourite book character events which led to the shop I work hosting it's own, this Saturday. Now I don't know if we've let people know in enough time so there's the small chance there will be no children in but nonetheless I decided to put my thinking cap on and devise a costume. Technically I know I was supposed to dress as my favourite character from a book but to be fair it's been a long time since my favourite character has been anyone that a child would recognize so I opted for plan b and thought with only two days to throw something together and admittedly a pretty low budget (yep when you volunteer to dress up then you usually end up funding it yourself) I tried to think of the easiest costume I could throw together with the least amount of effort. It did not take me long to come up with Wally of 'Where's wally' fame. I already had red glasses and bright blue pants, how hard could it be, right ? all I needed was a red and white stripped tshirt plus a bobbled hat and eh voila I would be very easily confused with the cartoon man himself.

I was soon to find out that while stripped tshirts are everywhere ( luckily for me I went looking when stripes were back in fashion) the hat was another story. I can categorically say ( having checked virtually every clothing store both here in Waterford and in Clonmel) that there are no hats that are white with a red bauble and a red band unless I was willing to pay €22 for an arsenal hat and somehow hide the club logo ( I wasn't). By this afternoon I might have been starting to panic a little, I had looked in so many places and I wasn't really up to the effort of coming up with another recognizable costume so I got creative. I found a  plain white hat and a red hat with baubles and I bought them both. I then cut the bauble off the red hat and tried to work out how to attach it to the white one. Most smart people would suggest sewing it on but I was without a needle and thread (and too lazy to go back into town) and you haven't seen my attempts at sewing which are woeful at best. So I had to think outside the box, my original plan was to staple it on and that surprisingly was less than successful which is a shame because that would be the easiest option. Fortunately my next plan worked because I had no other backups. I made a small hole in the hat and tied a hair tie around part of the bauble, then attached to another one and secured it inside the hat, like a pro. Okay maybe not like a pro but it will do the job.

You can see the finished effect above. Try not to hate. Now all I have to do is hope I am not left wandering around the children's section tomorrow on my own in costume. It could be a disaster but then again it will give me something to blog about.