Becoming the Grey's characters proved to be a long and tiresome process during the week before the Halloween celebration. My roommates worked on their costumes throughout the entire week unlike the girl scouts who established a set time to finish their costumes. Luckily for me, I live with all the Grey's wannabes so I was able to document most of their efforts while making the costumes.
I'd have to say the biggest task was the dreaded name tag. While I was working on homework in my room, Kellie and Sara bursted into my room, plopped on my bed, and got to work on the name tags. They told me they didn't want me to miss out on this endeavor for my blog. I was very appreciative of their willingness and helpfulness during my blogging period. So, I put away my Sociology homework, got out my online journalism notebook, and got my camera ready. They both had their computers open, connected to the Internet, and ready to design the eight name tags needed by all our roommates. This task, of course, was not very easy especially because Sara and Kellie were working on it together. They tend to never see eye to eye, which always makes things more difficult.
Sara comparing the name tags on the show to an image of the logo on eBay
Sara found the Seattle Grace Hospital logo on a shirt that could be purchased on eBay, and compared it to the name tags the characters wear on the show. It was identical, except for the fact that the font was teal instead of navy blue and the background was navy blue and needed to be white. She took extreme measures. She opened the logo on Kellie's computer in the paint application and magnified it in order to see where the navy blue was. She then started meticulously erasing all of the navy blue with the eraser bit by bit to make the background white. This process, of course, started to frustrate Sara. "Why couldn't the people on eBay just make a white t-shirt?" she asked us while working on the logo.
Sara working on erasing all the navy blue from the logo
After 10 minutes of staring at the computer screen trying to get every little navy blue spot between the letters, Kellie suggested trying to find the font and redesigning the logo themselves. At first, Sara was not satisfied with just making the name tags Arial because she wanted them to be authentic. But then she realized that the paint option was going to be extremely time-consuming and almost impossible, so she opened Pages on her Mac and started copying the logo.
Sara making the Seattle Grace Hospital logo on her computer
While we were all piled on my bed, Kristy came in with an official patient form from the hospital she works at. Sara joked saying, "You being a nurse comes in handy for the costumes and also if we were going to die or something." These forms were going to let us put our doctor skills to the test on Halloween, because we were planning on filling them out for fake patients. While Kristy talked about her day at nursing, she compared it to Grey's. "You know how people on Grey's get excited when bad things happen?" she asked us. "Well, it is really like that!"
Kellie looking over the patient form
While Sara perfected the logo, Kellie looked up the characters' pictures on ABC.com and e-mailed them to Sara. The teamwork was just impeccable. Then Sara added the picture under the logo and put their name and title below the picture. She also found a barcode on Google images and pasted it at the bottom of the name tags, so they could be scanned when "we went into work."
Sara putting the name tags together on the application, Pages
After she printed them off, I helped her cut the name tags and put them into the laminated holders. Everyone was extremely impressed with Sara's creative abilities. Half-jokingly, Kristy complemented Sara saying, "The effort you are putting into these name tags is just leaving me gasping for air."
The finished name tags
To make the patient forms more official, Sara cut out the Seattle Grace Hospital logo and taped it over the other hospital's name and then made copies of the form. We went to Staples and decided that five copies for every roommate would be enough to fill out.
Making copies of the Seattle Grace patient forms
The week flew by and suddenly it was the day before Halloween in Athens and everyone was running around trying to get everything together for the big event. I felt like a chicken with its head cut off. When the groups decided to work on their costumes dictated what I did with my day; I had no say of what my day consisted of. Because we had yet to find a suitable pager, Sara and I went to Walmart hoping to find something we could decorate and call the "sparkly pager." In an episode of Grey's, Meredith wins a competition and in return receives the "sparkly pager," which gives her dibs on all the good surgeries. My roommates really wanted to make the pager, so we could fight over it in the street like the interns do on the show. With Sara's creative wheels spinning, she picked up a Tic Tac container to substitute as the pager while getting ready to check out. We bought the gems with adhesive backs to bypass the messy glue and tape. After the Tic Tac container was unrecognizable and covered in gems, Sara colored the top black and wrote the number 9-1-1 on it. "It is just so pretty and we will also have mints all night," Sara said after putting the finishing touches on the pager.
Sara smiling while decorating the Tic Tac box
The finished "sparkly pager"
It was the night before the famous Halloween celebration, and most of my roommates were getting ready to go out for the night. Kellie, however, had a different agenda. She borrowed a friend's curlers and was testing them out to see if she could get Addison's beautiful, loose curls.
Kellie spraying a section of her hair before putting it in a curler
Down the hall on the third floor, Kristy was also working on her hair to make it look more like Meredith's. Except she was going a couple steps further than putting her hair in curlers. She had bought light brown hair dye,which rinsed out after shampooing, and was applying it to give her blonde hair a darker tint like Meredith's. Even though Kristy did not care for the look on her, the hair color looked almost identical to Meredith's sandy blonde hair.
Kristy applying brown dye to her hair
It was finally the day of Halloween, and unfortunately I was not around most of the day to see all my roommates get ready because I was with the two other groups. I did get home in time to capture Sara spray-painting her sister's hair black like Cristina's hair. Sara kept most of the spray-paint on Kim's hair except for the layer of black on the top of her ears. The spray-painting went surprising well, expect for when I tried to take a picture of Kim, which caused her to back up against the white wall, leaving a smear of black paint. However, it was easy to clean up and wiped right off.
Sara spray-painting Kim's hair black for her character
When I went downstairs, everyone was anxious and ready to start the party. My roommates dressed the part down to their shoes, jewelry and undershirts. Kristy, for example, wore her Chucks and a maroon shirt under her scrubs like Meredith. The final step, which was almost forgotten, was applying the fake blood that Sara had insisted on buying. She was the only one who opted to use the fake blood, because my other roommates wanted to look "cute, not gruesome." So, Sara, Kristy and I went on the side deck where Kristy practically finger-painted Sara's scrubs with the realistic, fake blood, which concluded the process of becoming the Grey's Anatomy characters. There was nothing left to do but celebrate, fill out the patient forms, and fight over the "sparkly pager."
Kristy flicking the fake blood onto Sara's scrubs
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