Elsa The Snow Queen – Photos

February 11, 2014April 16, 201461 Comments

I’m absolutely blown away at the amount of feedback I’ve gotten on this costume – though I make costumes because I enjoy it, It always thrills me to know that other people like my work.

Today I had planned to post the first installment in a new project, but since there seems to be so much interest surrounding Elsa, I will post these instead!

I had been rushing the final bits of this costume with hopes of photographing it in the snow….which didn’t really work out. All the snow ended up melting, but a week later Long Island got yet another snowstorm, which provided excellent Frozen photoshoot conditions!

Though the snow was beautiful, and reminded me very much of scenes from “Frozen” it didn’t end up being the best for taking photos in. Since it was a storm, it was very overcast, and without sunlight there was nothing to reflect light onto the hundred thousand rhinestones. The details I worked so hard on are almost invisible.

I did take photos the next day, this time with sunlight, that show the details off a little better. Those are still unedited, but should be posted in a week or two. I posted a little preview on DA here.

Although these don’t show my hard work, I think these are really gorgeous photos, and I wanted to share them.

For detail shots of this costume I would suggest checking out my forth the making of post here.

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The Making of Elsa – Frozen – Part Four

February 2, 2014April 16, 201459 Comments

This has been the a very difficult and unusual post to write. Usually I pick costumes that are challenging, but relatively quick once I figure out how to make them. This was the opposite – It was a easy, but very, very time consuming. It’s also not a very interesting process, so I’ve padded the post with a lot of photos.

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If this if your first time visiting my blog I would suggest checking out my previous posts about this project, they can be read here, here, and here!

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Immediately after seeing the movie I knew what I wanted to use as embellishments. From prior experience with rhinestones, I knew that they shine in a way that almost looks like freshly fallen snow, producing a much prettier and sparklier look then anything else.

They can be used closely together to create designs, farther apart to create a gradient, or applied individually. This meant that I could use them to create the sparkles on the cape, sleeves and bodice, and since they would all share the same embellishments, it would made the entire outfit look more cohesive.

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I have decided that I won’t bore you all too much with explaining the types of rhinestones, glues and applicators that are available.If I did, this post would be around five thousand words long. But if that sort of thing does interest you, you are in luck! I have created a separate post on my tumblr that can be read HERE. It answers a lot of the questions I’ve gotten, and has information and tips on everything related to rhinestones.

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Moving onto talking about the costume! I originally purchased seventy thousand rhinestones, which didn’t end up being enough, so I made another order several weeks later. In total I used a little over a hundred thousand rhinestones on the entire costume, ninety thousand were 3mm stones, and ten thousand were 2mm stones. Seventy percent of them were clear (silver/white) stones, and the rest were a light aqua color.

This picture shows around half the stones I ended up using.

I also bought six tubes of E6000 glue from amazon, a set of syringes (glue applicators), cotton swabs (rhinestone applicators), and a bit of fabric glue. Once I had all my supplies I was ready to get started!

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In my last post I talked about drafting the patterns for the designs. Once I finished drafting the designs, I did something very important – I taped wax paper over top of them. The glue I used for the majority of this costume is E6000, and the chemicals in it make both sharpie and printer inks run, which can leave permanent stains on the fabric. Like this…

If that doesn’t happen, you will still be screwed since there is no good way to get paper off of dried industrial strength glue. The wax paper creates a barrier between the paper and fabric which fixes both of these problems. When I ran out of wax paper, I used plastic wrap and found it worked well, but was tricky to perfectly smooth.

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This is what my set up looked like when I was working on the large designs. The whole thing laid out flat as I could get it with the space I had available, with the edges weighted down by mugs and jars.

Thanks to a wonderful christmas gift, I had the ability to watch netflix while doing this.

(though I ended up running out of shows I was interested in, oops)

As I said earlier, the process is very easy, it’s just slow. You have to spread the glue over a small space, usually a square that’s no more then two inches by two inches (any larger and the glue will dry before you can get to it) or a line that is less then ten inches long.

Then use a wet Q-tip to pick up rhinestones and deposit them where they need to go.

I estimate that this back bit of snowflake ended up taking forty hours of work.

And though this seems pretty minuscule, just the sections pictured below is around 10~ hours of work.

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Eventually, I had enough of this finished that I could take it off of the paper.

It didn’t look like a whole lot at this point. But I was happy because this meant I could move on to adding the snowflakes. In my last post I talked about resizing them to fit properly, and that process continued on and on until I had enough snowflakes for every panel.

This is the front panel – this photo shows how easy it was to see the pattern through the fabric.

And the (tentative) layout for the side panels.

In total I embellished fifty snowflakes, and here they all are (well, half of them, since the cape is symmetrical)

The process of embellishing snowflakes was very similar to the main design, but instead of spreading the glue with a brush I used syringes, which allow for very precise dots and lines.

Not long after I started I ran into the issue of fabric not staying in place properly. It tended to wrinkle or move while I was trying to apply stones, and it became very frustrating. So I taped two pieces of foam board together and covered it in wax paper. Since it was foam, I could pin through it, and pin my fabric in place so it stayed taught.

Back panels (almost) done!

The front panel almost finished.

The side panels…

And then I was (almost) finished with all the snowflakes!

So I got back to focusing on the main design. We happened to get a snow day, which meant my view got way prettier and more inspiring then usual.

It also distracted me. Some much so that I ended up dragging my dress form into the snow for some fancy WIP photos.

Though it looks relatively close to being done, I had to put twenty more hours into it before it was actually finished. At this point I was so tired of the project that I stopped taking photos. (oops)

And though I don’t have photos of it completely finished just yet, here it is at 99.9% done. In total I spend around 170 hours on the cape, 168 of which were spend embellishing.

It was super time consuming, but in the end I’m happy I did it this way. It’s always been a dream of mine to make something really sparkly and wonderful, and i’m happy to say that it’s come true!

Upcoming posts: Making 17th century bodies, Making a Grey dress, and the final post in The making of Elsa!

The Making of Elsa – Frozen – Part Three

January 11, 2014April 16, 201439 Comments

Time sort of slipped away from me and I didn’t quite realize how long it had been since my last post, oops!

I’ve been busy with projects throughout the past few weeks. My primary focus has been Elsa but I’ve also been working on a bunch of mock ups and original designs, some of which are historical based and others that are somewhat casual. I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t worked on something for at least an hour – it’s been great.

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Most of my precious hours of productivity have been eaten by Elsa. This costume has been such a huge undertaking, even more challenging and time consuming then I had originally expected! But I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to make something really detailed. It’s always been a dream of mine.

So that’s what I’m going to talk about today. I originally planned on only having three posts about the making of Elsa, but I’ve given up on that and will be happy if I end up with five. I have tons of photos and information to share about this, and I don’t want to scrunch it down.

You can read my previous posts about this project, here and here.

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This particular post is on the drafting process for the cape/train. I will talk all about embellishing it in a later post (I actually hope to make a video on the process but I haven’t gotten to it yet)

For Elsa’s shirt and cape (or as some people have been calling it, her train) I chose to use stretch mesh. It’s a material that looks like tulle, but feels much softer and stretches in all directions. Sadly it doesn’t drape as nicely as chiffon or organza, but since it’s stretchy it will work better for the shirt.

I won’t even have to worry about adding a zipper, or hemming anything since it doesn’t fray!

I purchased eleven yards of stretch mesh, one yard for the bodice, and ten yards for the cape.

I cut the ten yards into three chunks, two that were three yards long and one that was four yards long. Then I pinned them very roughly onto my dress form to make sure I had enough length.

It doesn’t look like much, but I was actually really happy with it haha. I had plenty of length, and I could tell I had enough fabric for the volume I wanted as well.

I knew I wanted my cape to be six panels, with a seam down the back. So my next task was cutting each length of fabric in half, so they could create two panels. Instead of cutting them in half the way you would expect, I cut them diagonally so I could save the length.

Then I pinned the longest panels onto my dress form. I made sure to adjust my dress form so it stands at my height, plus a few inches to account for the heels that go with this costume.

I repeated this with my other pieces of fabric, and then I had something that looked a little like this:

Now I was ready to start shaping it! I pinned all the panels together and trimmed one side down until I liked the shape. Then I took it off my dress form and used the side I had trimmed as a pattern for the other half. In the end, it looked like this.

(sorry for the messy background)

The whole thing got sewn together, and then I was ready to start figuring out the snowflake pattern! I must admit that I took some artistic liberties here. I really loved how the cape looked in the movie, but when I began sketching out the snowflake pattern in real life, I realized if I made it accurate, the pattern would be very blocky.

And I don’t think of Elsa as a blocky character. She’s all smooth and shiny and sleek. So, for obvious reasons, I wanted it to look smooth and shiny and sleek. I tried to keep the shape of the snowflakes similar to the way they are shown in the movie, but softer and with more detail.

I laid the cape flat on a giant sheet of paper, then traced around it and marked out all the seams.

I used a ruler and french curves to draw out the giant snowflake.

Once I was finished, I taped wax paper over the entire design, and pinned the cape over top of it. Since the fabric is sheer, the design is easy to see through the cape. This way I have a guide for embellishments.

Now moving on to getting the smaller snowflakes onto the cape!

I started by going into photoshop and figuring out (roughly) where the snowflakes should go, and what size they should be.

I decided to conquer these panel by panel so I wouldn’t get to overwhelmed – right now I’ve just started, so I only have one panel complete. Luckily that’s enough to make an example out of.

I laid my cape piece over paper and traced out the area I needed to add snowflakes to. Then I used my guide to draw out circles in the rough areas where snowflakes needed to go.

I measured the size of each circle and marked them clearly. Now I knew exactly what size of snowflake patterns I needed to print.

When it came to printing I went into photoshop and did this:

I ended up needed to print off four pieces of paper for this particular panel.

Then I cut them out and taped them into the right places.

I ran out of wax paper, so I improvised and used a layer of plastic wrap taped over the designs.

Then I pinned my cape over top of that and was ready to embellish! During the embellishing process it looks a bit like this

But I will save all the information about how to do THAT for next week.

I hope you enjoyed!

The Making of Elsa – Frozen – Part Two

December 18, 2013April 16, 201427 Comments

When I started this project I knew right away that the bodice would be the most challenging part of this entire costume (though not the most time consuming – that award will go to the cape, i’m sure). I thought about a lot of different methods, and had originally planned on buying a sequined material which I could use to imitate the squares on her bodice.

But after looking at a half dozen stores filled with sequins I realize that was the wrong route. Square sequins come in two different sizes, and a dozen shades of blue. But they were too sparkly to be accurate, and they weren’t rectangular enough to achieve the accurate texture of Elsa’s bodice.

I was trying to explain what I wanted outloud when I said “It’s almost like scales” and that was the Ah-ha moment! I actually know how to create scales (thanks to several ‘mermaid tail tutorials’), so although I couldn’t buy material with the design I wanted, I could make my own!

But I will talk about that more later on, my first order of business was to make the bodice.

I decided to make a mock corset, it looks like a corset, it laces like a corset, but it doesn’t have a busk and is filled with plastic boning. This way it’s more flexible then a metal boned corset and will sit on my dress form better (a requirement for adding texture later on).

I used the block drafting method, where you divide your measurements by four and create four pieces which end up being a half mock of your body. I did this last year for my RMT corset – but it went much better this time around!

I added seam allowances and cut my first mock up.

It was actually pretty decent, but a little to large in some places, and slightly small in others.

I made the required alterations, then cut the pattern down so it had a more accurate shape.

I was actually really happy with this, I just had to take a little off the waist.

I tore apart this mock up and marked all the alterations onto my paper pattern…it looks a lot different then when I started!

Then I went ahead and cut it out, twice. One for lining, one for the top material.

I sewed them all together and pressed my seams open, so I would get a very smooth finish. I added fourteen pieces of plastic boning to the lining, and then I sewed the top seam right-sides-together.

Once that was done I pinned the bottom so everything lined up, and sewed bias tape on.

The bias tape was hand sewed over so the edge (and interior) were finished nicely.

And after that, I was ready for texture!

I started by purchasing some odd things – acrylic paints, tacky glue, a half yard of cotton canvas, crappy paintbrushes, and flexible caulking.

My original plan was to press square shaped stamps into the caulking to get the right shapes. But that did not work at all. Plan number two was digging out channels with a toothpick…but it was impossible to get the lines straight.

Finally I realized I could cut pieces of fabric and apply caulking over them to get the effect I wanted.

Step one was was prepping the corset – I ironed, then lint rolled the whole thing. I wrapped plastic around my dress form and pinned the corset on as best I could.

Then I cut the canvas into lot’s of strips, all of varying thicknesses. Some were under a quarter of an inch wide, others were over an inch.

I also squirted out a generous amount of glue (I used the entire bottle) into a plastic container, and got an even amount of water. My set up looked like this

I used a 75/25 ratio of glue to water, which I would brush onto the fabric. Then I would cut a piece of canvas, stick it to the fabric, and paint over it with a more watered down glue/water ratio to make sure the corners didn’t lift. Whenever I wasn’t using the brush, it would sit in the water so the glue residue wouldn’t dry.

Because I wasn’t drying the brush inbetween, the glue got more and more watered down as I went on.

Overall I didn’t have any issues. It’s sort of tricky since you have to be careful not to use too much water (takes ages to dry) but too much glue will really stiffen the fabric.

It’s also a really slow process.

Once I was finished I left it overnight to dry. The the next day I popped open the back of a bottle of caulking, and used a brush to pull it from the tube. Then I painted a thick layer over the entire corset, I also ran the brush around each square to make sure they were defined.

I found one layer was enough to cover the canvas texture, but still leave each square raised slightly from the material.

After that dried I used a sponge brush to apply a base coat of acrylic paint.

I’ve done a tiny bit of highlighting and lowlighting so far, but I still have a lot of painting to do (and a lot of glitter to add) before i’ll be happy with it. That’s something that will take me a while to complete, so the photos of it finished will be included in a later post.

I did end up adding grommets, seven on each side, and tied with blue satin ribbon. Overall i’m a little annoyed because it’s about an inch too large, it doesn’t give any sort of shape at all. I think I will end up taking it in an inch at the back, then adding new grommets.

But here is how it looks at the moment