Halloween 2010

  We had such a hard time deciding what to be this year for Halloween.  I wanted something different.  Finally we settled on a sea fairy / ocean princess, with a wave inspired ruffled dress, and coral wings.  I love the blue-green color palette and the natural aspects, and Hannah loves the girly, glitzy elements.

I wanted a dress inspired by ocean waves.  It is mostly a coffee filter dress.  For the frame of the dress, I dyed a yard of broadcloth in RIT and sewed a little A-line dress with an elastic top.

I used 4 packages of coffee filters (640 filters to be exact….and I used ALL of them).  I dyed them in batches in the same RIT dye bath ( a mix of the royal blue and teal boxed powders), started with the darkest, and then would dump some dye out and add more water to make them progressively lighter. 

I started at the base and hot glued the filters (folded into triangles) all the way around and worked my way up the dress, leaving about 2” between each row.  I wanted the waves to be a little more white capped….but the dress got heavier/longer the more I added (although it is not a heavy costume), so I had to take the top up a little bit to compensate….which meant the top isn’t exactly what I envisioned.

She loves all the ruffles, and thinks it looks like a princess dress.  I added a piece of ribbon to make an empire waist, then added two glittered sea ferns and a sand dollar (I painted champagne).  I added two pieces of ribbon to make halter straps to ensure the dress stayed up. 

All of the glittery pieces on the costume came from Christmas picks.  The watery blue ferns (the ones on the waist and in her hair), and the sea green ferns (on the shoulder of the dress and in her hair), were both from JoAnne’s (super inexpensive, less than $0.35 per pick, and I only needed 3)

For the wings I started with the green dollar store fairy wings.  (they are actually pretty sturdy for $1, and it meant I didn’t have to buy/make the base of her wings) Josh spray painted them blue, and I hot glued the tops and bottoms together so they wouldn’t look so much like butterfly wings. 

The “coral wings” are actually Christmas picks from Hobby Lobby, I had to do a little “creative editing” and remove parts of them, but the rest I hot glued to the blue wings.

For her little headpiece (a tiara or crown to her :)), I snipped off a long branch from each wing and wired together a little circle.  I hot glued a few of the ferns, and then sea shells.  I also found a small Christmas spray from Hobby Lobby (for $1) that matched the wings, and I cut stems off of it to wire to the headpiece for filler.

Hannah loves how girly this costume is.  She insisted on wearing her “princess shoes” (aka dress up shoes), because they would “be perfect”.

She even wanted to wear a few “sparkles” on her face.

And last, but not least here are a few pictures from “Trick or Treating” for the family…. She wasn’t quite so sure about walking up and ringing someone else’s doorbell…….

But after she realized she would get candy….she was fine!  :)

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!

Please join Sarah at Thrift Decor Chick for a Before and After Party