mermaid costume

I think I found my calling....costumes. I love love love making them. I find it relaxing and fulfilling creating something using household items, fabric and a few clothing pieces. This year our daughter wanted to be a mermaid and we built our theme around it. She likes to call herself Ariel, but we went with a Peter Pan theme and I’m having so much fun creating our ensemble. 

This mermaid costume is by far the most complicated costume I have made, but it was still simple. I took to Pinterest for inspiration for what I did and didn’t want to do. I really wanted to make her costume feel like a real mermaid even though she is a little girl. She was adamant about having a bra like real mermaids so I had to be creative with how I made it, knowing she needed to still be covered up.

I started by hitting the fabric store a couple months back to get an idea for fabric. I chose this turquoise blue sequin fabric that has a teeny bit of stretch to make a basic skirt. I hemmed all my edges using a serger and added some fun elastic tulle trim to the top of the skirt. Once my skirt was made, I started on the tulle for the tail fin. I cut all my tulle into squares and just like tissue paper, I picked up each square from the middle and then twisted and ironed it. This created a wrinkle effect on the tulle so it wasn’t so princess fluffy. 

To attach my tulle, all I used was my hot glue gun. A little dot and gently press each piece into place. I arranged my pieces so it was higher on the sides and dipped into a low V in the front and back to create a fin look. 

The bodice is a nude colored leotard. I used the same fabric from the skirt {just a different color} to make the base for the bra. I sewed it onto the leotard using a loose straight stitch and bought different types of pearl like trim to decorate. The seashell finishes the top. I sprayed it with spray adhesive glue and dusted it with fine glitter. 

Kensi loves her finished costume and I’m so excited how it turned out. I can’t wait to see all of our costumes together this weekend for our fun Peter Pan theme!