Before River Peak Apothecary, Beardsgaard made some beard friends with the fellows at Merlin’s Beard. We liked the cut of our collective jibs, so we made some beard stuff together in a trilogy of scents: Odin (get it here), Gandalf and Claus named after the epic beards of vikings, wizards and Santa.
We built scents off of characters and ideas. Might as well make them In Real Life. And soon, Brian the Shop Artist will be illustrating these scenes in even more awesome detail.
When we needed to find ourselves an Odin, there was no other client in our minds except Jason. He just happens to look a crazy amount like Travis Fimmel, otherwise known as Ragnar Lodbrok on the History Channel show Vikings. A perfect fit.
So down to All Dressed Up Costumes we went, where Beardsmith, who wears approximately the same pants size, found some assorted coverings and furry things, a giant sword and an eyepatch.
Then a quick trip down to the dam at the Batavia Riverwalk where we took away Jason’s shirt and smeared him down with river mud to dull down his very colorful, very asian full sleeved tattoos. Nice tattoos, but definitely not on theme. We drew more than a few lookie-loos during this process.
As this was happening, of course, the owner of the costume shop just happens to be walking by with her giant dog, because that’s the kind of happenstance that occurs every damn day around this area. We somehow managed to not get the costume wet and filthy, but we sure did send Jason home to his wife that way!
We are thrilled with how they turned out, because Jason is obviously a superhero pretending to be a mere mortal. Even though he was a bit nervous (our enthusiasm can be a bit overwhelming), he killed it and we cannot thank him enough for going along with our weird plans. They tend to work out in the end.
Huzzah, one IRL shoot down! Gandalf will be shot as soon as the leaves start to shed, for Claus we’ll need snow of course, and we are incredibly excited to bring those characters to life with other clients. Because we have so many great beards to choose from. Our jobs are so awesome sometimes.