October is the start of the Rennaisance Festival here in Texas. If you've never been it's truly a magical experience. Almost every year they have several themed weekends and my favorite is the 1001 Dreams Fairy weekend.
Last year I made my costume and although it turned out cute, to me it seemed like it was "handmade", you know that feeling that you could have done some extra things to make it more professional looking, but you didn't? Well, this year I was determined that was not going to happen!
Well I knew I wanted a new corset but I was not in the mood to try to struggle to make one! If you have ever attempted this you know what I mean! So I went to eBay, I love eBay, and I found an awesome maker of fine corsets. Going by the name VonLancelot, these corsets are handmade and are breathtakingly gorgeous! Here's the one I bought, of course, I wore mine without the white shirt thingy underneath and I changed the blue ribbon to braided cord which gave it a more earthy feel, you know like a wood nymph, (see 3rd & 4th pics for braided lacing):
Front
Back
Lacing
Close up of Lacing
So I gathered my ideas, the corset and my money bag ...oops, I mean my husband, and headed to JoAnn's. Turns out he has a great eye for design! He helped me pick out all the materials I used for thee costume.
I knew the type of skirt I wanted but I wasn't sure how to go about making it so I did a search and found a really neat site: You Can Make This.com. I found the tutu skirt I was looking to make, found the instructions, downloaded them and here is my result:
The full tutu skirt
Close up of waistband
Next, because the tutu is see through, I needed an over skirt. This is where things got a little tricky for me. After numerous google searches using every word I could think of for jagged or ripped or torn edged skirts and turning up not one single usable pattern, I knew I was going to have to rely on my limited drawing talents. Luckily my hubby found the awesome blue sheened leather looking material that I used. So I took a white eyeliner pencil, yes I know they make chalk pencils for this but I need a smooth flow and the eyeliner did an awesome job, and I started drawing what I thought looked like a jagged edge. After cutting the first piece out with my cutter bee scissors so I could get all the smalls jags I drew, I had a template to use. And here is the result of the overskirt:
Overskirt
Closeup of jagged edge and material
Now I know by this point you are thinking, "Okay so she has used her cutter bee scissors but I don't see any other scrapping supplies being used." Remember I told you this year was going to be different, more realistic, truly fairylike. And a fairy is not complete without her wings!
Last year I bought some gorgeous butterfly shapped wings, unfortunately, this is the best picture I was able to find that was close to them, although mine are white, or pearly irridesent to be exact.
And here is where the scrapping supplies came in handy. As you can see the wings are pretty but plain. So I decided to glam them up a bit. First, I had my amazing hubby use his artistic talents and draw the pattern on a large sheet of brown shipping paper. I didn't want the ink from the marker to get on my wings when I traced over it. So I covered the entire thing with wax paper and taped the wing down. Next I pulled out my stickles, some bling and some cool leaves I had bought for one of my fall scrapbok pages. After 2 and a half bottles of stickles in Patina, Lime Green, and Mermaid, numerous blue, green and clear bling crystals, and one package of leaves, I had created my dream wings! Here are the pics:
Full wing design
Close up of Wing design
Close up of Leaf pattern
Close up of curly design
Happy Scrapping!
