Faerie costume: Complete

I meant to post this a few days ago, but here’s the picture of me in the completed water faerie costume at the Ren Fest last weekend.

Now to get started on my Dragon*Con costumes….

I also posted some pictures of downtown Nashville in the Nashville folder and photos from our Memorial Day cookout.

Faerie costume: Days 5 and 6

I’ve been working on the wings the past couple days, so here’s some new pictures. I’ll be finishing it up tomorrow night. I still need to go over with paint on the opposite side and do some touch-ups where it got smeared a bit.

Day 5 picture:

Day 6 picture:

Faerie costume: Day 4

I will have you know ahead of time, that in the making of these photos, I dropped my camera and did something to the lens. This is why the left half of the photos are blurry. In trying to fix the camera, I am pretty sure I broke it for good, and now it will take no pictures…..so that sucks.

I basically finished the dress today. I sewed the overlay skirt together and made the hems of both skirts jagged. I attached the pearl strand, but I’m still trying to figure out a way to keep it taut. I will probably loop it through something on the wings to keep it in place.

I have my elf ears on in these pics, but forgot to fix my hair to show them.

I don’t know when I will have pictures next, considering my camera is now broken.

Faerie costume: Day 3

I went to Joann’s yesterday and bought fabric for the base of the dress, as well as a bunch of stuff to decorate the wings with. I can’t start the wings yet, since the light blue stockings I ordered haven’t come in yet. I did, however, get my elf ears in the mail. I began work on the dress. I’m using a pattern for the basic pieces and modifying it.

Here’s some of the random stuff I bought:

The pieces are ready to be sewn:

Progress so far:

I still need to make the hem of the skirt jagged and hem it and add the sheer overlay. I also need to add loops for the pearl strand to go through, and then that is it for the dress. I wish those stockings would hurry up; I’m so ready to start work on the wings!

Faerie costume: Days 1 and 2

I thought maybe some people would be interested in following one of my costumes from beginning to end. So, I’m going to try to keep this updated on the progress of my faerie costume. So far I have bought: 3 yards white silk chiffon, turquoise acid dye, 5 light blue clip-in hair extensions, glitter lip gloss, shimmer eye shadow, 2 pairs of large light blue nylon stockings, elf ears, and some body jewels. Not all of this has come in yet.

I pretty much started on the costume last night. After pricing silk chiffon, I determined it would be cheaper to buy some white and dye my own. So this is what I did last night. However, I am used to dying polyester blends that don’t take dye very well, so I was very surprised at how well the silk took dye after only about 2-3 minutes in the dye bath. I had cut the fabric into two sections and wanted one piece (the larger piece) to be a lighter color. But after only 2-3 minutes, it was already too bright.

So after doing some googling today, I learned that I could lighten the silk by heating it up in a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide. So I did this tonight and was pleasantly surprised at the results. After about 30 minutes of cooking on the stove, my two pieces of fabric now look like this (they used to both be the color on the right):

Now the lighter piece of fabric nearly matches the color of the hair extensions, which is what I was wanting.

My next task: take a sample of the lighter fabric and buy the main dress material (something not sheer) that is close to that color.

A few quick updates:

The videos from MTAC and Brina’s shower are now up, as are photos from both events.

Some pictures of our costumes from last weekend are up in the cosplay section, but more will be coming since the official photos haven’t been posted yet.

Samantha has talked me into doing a faerie costume for the Tennessee Renaissance Festival, so I will apparently be working on that instead of taking a break from costumes for a month like I had planned. I drew up a preliminary sketch, and hopefully it won’t be too time consuming.

I need to take my bridesmaid’s dress for Jason and Becka’s wedding to be altered, as I don’t trust myself to take in a fully lined bodice on a dress.