fancy dress; diy mermaid

I must admit, I do love a bit of fancy dress! Making an outfit gives me an opportunity to make the most of my crafty skills and to make something a little different! When I was younger I would skip along to the local costume store + easily spend £40+ on an outfit which would be worn only once + probably by a few people at the party, well not any more!! For my sister's 18th fancy dress party last weekend I chose to go as a mermaid (a little random I know!). By being a little creative + making use of my free time, this is what I came up with *drum roll*...

Tah-dah! What do you think? I loved making this costume + being a mermaid for the night!ha.. The whole thing cost me around £20 + a few hours of my time, totally worth it to have a completely unique outfit! The night was pretty much a whirl wind so I've only got these few with my sister (alice in wonderland) + her friend Bethan (mad hatter). I got inspiration from a variety of online images but in particular this makeup tutorial by Traci Hines, amazing! So this is how I set about transforming into a mermaid...

You will need;

Sequin Skirt

Two-tone Organza

White Bandeau Top

French Lavender + Tropical Green Dylon Fabric Dye

Mixed Bag of Pearl + Iridescent Sequins 

Various Sized Flat Back Pearls

Small Starfish

Handful of Shells
Pearl Necklace 
Glue (I used a UHU adhesive)

These little starfish slides were inspired by those in Traci's video. I did feel a bit off-ish about using real starfish but hey-ho! I bought the bag of mixed pearl + iridescent sequins from The Range for £1 and placed them into a Chinese take-away carton for easy storage. I also bought flat back pearls from eBay to decorate them with. I then used glue to stick the embellishment in place! I later used nail glue to attach bobby pins to the back et voila pearl encrusted starfish ready to wear in your mermaid hair!

I bought the bandeau top from eBay but really wouldn't recommend the seller I used. I ordered a cream bralet hoping to just stick on a shell + some pearls + be done, but when it arrived it was a tacky white colour + as I was so busy with uni' work I missed the time to exchange, GRR! Instead of wasting the awful thing I used fabric dyed which I had left over from past projects to rework it. I firstly dyed it all over lilac (to get rid of the white) then used basic tie dying techniques with a more saturated lilac mixture + the green. My idea was that it would look like anemone or sea urchins to keep in with the aquatic theme! I finally decorated it with pearls + iridescent sequins and added a few shells + starfish to the centre.

I followed Traci's tutorial for the make up + loved the way it turned out! Super easy + really effective!

I used my mad eBaying skills to hunt down this skirt; I did the super obvious of typing 'sequin skirt' into the search bar + watching every skirt that caught my eye! I didn't worry about what size they were as I knew I'd be able to adjust it to fit me when it arrived! The one I ended using I won for 99p, bargain! I then bought 2 lots two toned organza from my local fabric store + made the fin by cutting two rectangles with curved edges + sewing it to the bottom of the skirt! I made a make-shift belt out of a pearl necklace that I got from the Topshop sale to add a final mermaidy touch!


So what do you think? I hope I've not made it sound horribly difficult to do (I do ramble a bit!) but it really was super easy! My laptop charger arrived today so expect lots of posts from now on, yay!

PS Do you like my sister's 'Alice in Wonderland' costume, I made this for her too! *bragbragbrag* ahaha