Currently she is in a pile on the floor in my room. But I did it. I test patterned doing the dress as a single piece and I am going to try and do that for the final version- seam lines were great and the skirt was full without being too full. At least for the lining. I don’t think I want the same skirt fabric under the bodice sequins….

Super fun, so fun. However I was terrified. I think N. and A. may have picked up on stress but it’s not just a worked-in-to-fatigue stress it was a “I feel ugly and ungainly and stupid” stress (not part of the other aspect of wearing big hair, big make up and what was essentially a pageant dress!) But it was all relieved when we got to the carpark and I heard a muffled “OH MY GOD!” from the back of a people mover. And then someone said “awesome cosplay” so I mentined the CNZ facebook page. Pimping the community at every opportunity.

And then at the cinema foyer… teens, tweens and little girls just came flocking. I’m not saying my costume was amazing or I was but it was wonderful to be part of making people smile. And wow, do people love Elsa. So much. Having her as an accidental antagonist rather than villain was a good move.

Anwyay, so I’m very happy, one of my materials has arrived 🙂 Hopefully it’s a cooler shade than on the site but if not I deliberately got matte sequins to be able to get some overcoating.

But seeing Elsa in full cinema scale rather than on the tv or computer in the various releases (love the snow fight tv spot!) it’s pretty clear Elsa is very definitely shaded to the green side of aqua and its really closer to a duo tone than interference. SIgh. That is hard to get in sequins. Very hard. Her cape seems t be darker on the inside than outside, which I think is more a marker of how light reflective the ice particles are (and looking at them… It would be best to use scattered sequins than anything else as the cape needs to be super light and also those pariticles are large and at least evenly spaced and scattered. So I may be breaking out my giant frame of doom.

It should be easier than Glinda’s bubble dress for me though. The issues with that were two fold: I had to cut the petals individually to know I had enough and to easily store the various pieces. This made pining to net on the frame and use of the frame tricky. The other was the randomness of the size and shape of the sequins. I can do rows of beads and sequins quickly, it really is easy when you have the same shape to guide you, the difficulty is when the shape goes against the base shape you are working around! But as I’d be using all the same shape then tension of the thread and muscle movement is pretty repetitive. So much easier.

But then I will want a very different net. Possibly. It does look very sheer in photos and it is very light. It’s also durable. Which is vital- the hem of my gown is shredded, so the final gown will also get a handy dandy facing that will overlap slightly (pretty sure like the Eleanora di Toledo gown..) so the very edge is protected and the facing can be removed for washing. Like a balyeuse for 1870s dresses 🙂 Which were made from super delicate laces and sheer linen/cotton so good for washing but made liable to shred on cobblestones!

Anyway. My wig was also a good test practice 🙂 While the marketing media for Elsa has her with a quite warm super pale blonde she has had a blue rinse in the movie 😉 So I’ll give my wig a spot of tlc so I can use it for another costume and see if I can find a wig and matching wefts. Her braid is super full. Definitely needed two wigs. Sadly because I didn’t have a chance to condition my wigs they wound up very matted on the underside where the wig sat against my cape.

And that’s another thing! I should be putting a bridal tulle over everything. The reason why? The sequins will snag my hair, wig and any other fabric. My hair got totally tangled in the diamantes on my Black Diamonds costume and I also was lucky my gloves came up as far as they did to protect my arms from sequin rash 😉

So lessons learned: Yes to having a separate support layer (but with the hips better shaped) yes to the wig style but with softer wig hair! (the acrylic rinse made it all a bit crunchy- but easy to wash out 🙂 ) and yes to having a costume that is child friendly 🙂