Rose Tyler {Mostly Completed Costume Pictures}

I promised pictures, and here they are! Whew! That was quick!

Anyways, this is my Rose Tyler Idiot's Lantern costume, which is mostly finished. I still have to sew the sequins onto the bodice, either find a new jacket or modify the one I have, finish the shoes, and make a new petticoat.

The jacket ended up being too long so I just flipped the bottom up and tucked it under. Otherwise it gave the dress a very ugly look. I also have to re-do my petticoat because when I got in the car tonight my shoe caught it and tore a decent sized hole in it. It's not a big loss though because I kinda didn't do the best job on it anyways, plus it's not expensive or anything.

Tonight when I wore it I left the hair down because I ran out of time before we had to leave. Oh, and I left my sleeves down because it was pretty cold. But the wig kept my head nice and warm. :D

Other than the shoes, I love wearing this costume!

The Autumn Costume Party

Saturday was the big costume party at our friends house, which was super fun! Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of just me at the party, so I'll try to get some good pictures of my costume when I dress up again for Halloween. Hopefully it doesn't rain or anything.

But here's a few pictures from the costume party, which was filled with dancing, lots of laughing, and fun games!

Ellie as Astrid from How to Train your Dragon 2

Abby came in 50's glam

Peter came as Tristian from Weeping Willow (a Hunger Games fan film he was in)

Bethany as Emma from Once Upon a Time

Rose Tyler Sneak Peek

Just a quick sneak peek of my Rose Tyler costume, which is almost done! I'll post full pictures when I get to wear it to my friends costume party on the 25th. Until then, this'll have to do.

Custom Wig Head Tutorial!

A few weeks ago I attempted to style my wig for my Rose costume, and while it looked alright on my styrofoam wig head, it looked pretty bad once I put it one my head. It was because the wig head was so much smaller than my actual head. When I had it on you could see the wefts and in area's where it wasn't so thick you could see the brown of my actual hair.

I decided I needed to get a wig head that fit my head so I could style my wigs on it. I started watching lot's of video's on YouTube on wigs. My main focus has been on Broadway wigs, just because they're very high end and look amazing! I was surprised by how many video's I've been able to find about Broadway wigs.

I found a backstage video about the wigs from Wicked, which showed how they make the wigs for the show. You can view the video HERE. Anyways, I went and used the technique they showed in the video to customize my cheap wig head.

And thus, I present to you, the Custom Wig Head Tutorial!

This is my styrofoam head I started out with. I purchased it at Jo-Ann's for around $5.

First things first, put your hair up how you wear it when your wig is on. I just put my hair in 2 braids then cross them and pin them to my head. I also like to pin my bangs back flat on top of my head before putting my wig cap on.

For the next part you're going to need cellophane, packing tape, and scissors (if you need them).

Next I had my mom cover my head with a few layers of cellophane making sure that it went over my hair line a bit.

 After that she put a few layers of tape over top of the cellophane to get the shape of my head. Then she took a marker and traced my hairline before removing the whole thing from my head.

When that was done I placed the casting on my Styrofoam head and taped it on with more packing tape. Then I cut a slit in the back and began stuffing it with poly fill. I ended up cutting a few different slits to make sure I stuffed the entire head and tapped them up again when I was done.

 I took a few measurements of my head with the wig cap still on and measured my head as I was stuffing it to make sure the measurements were the same.

And that's it! A custom wig head that cost practically nothing! Below is the finished wig head with my wig on it.

The Petticoat of Doom {Rose Tyler Progress}

The other day I went to Hobby Lobby and bought the tulle for the petticoat of my Rose Tyler costume. The tutorial I was using as a guideline used 4 yards, but I bought 5 just because. Besides, it only ended up costing $6. Tulle is cheap, which is awesome!

I cut it out yesterday morning and started working on it. I had a tutorial but I decided it was easy enough and just used it as a guideline. Well, one of the things they said is that petticoats are made form the bottom up. But what did I do? I made it from the top down. Don't do that. Start from the bottom, you'll save yourself a lot of time and frustration.

I kept having trouble with my gather stitching too. It would be fine and then I would be pulling it to gather it and somehow it would all just come out. I still haven't been able to figure out why. So I ended up having to hand gather 25+ yards of tulle...

I put my circle skirt on over the finished petticoat to get an idea of how it looked. It looks fuller person. The pleats in the actual dress will add a lot of volume to it as well.

I chose a slightly off white color for the tulle because to match the costume. I ended up just using muslin for the top tier/waistband part which I already had in my stash. So the total cost for this costume is a whopping $6. The skirt is going to take a ton of material, so that'll make up for it.

Rose Tyler Mock Up

Okay, so I started out with using New Look pattern 6156 for the bodice mock up for my Rose Tyler costume. I started out doing it exactly as the pattern went just to see how it would look. I already knew I would have to make some changes so I could add boning, because the bodice is obviously boned. This pattern only had darts in both the front and back.

This is what the top looked like when I did it the way the pattern is. As you can probably tell, it didn't fit at all the way it should have.

I un-stiched the darts and added Princess type seams to both the front and back.

On the right is the original pattern and the left is my alteration. It fit so much better after this!

I tweaked the back a little bit before cutting out a second layer for the lining. I ended up having to take it in a little bit in the front seams and cut the back panels a little smaller before I was satisfied with the fit.

As you probably noticed I added straps to my bodice. The actual dress is strapless, but I'm not comfortable with that and because it won't be seen anyways, I decided to add straps.

I started testing pleats on a piece of scrap material to figure out how to do the pleats. I think they're supposed to be one way pleats, but I couldn't get that to work. I decided to go with box pleats. After doing some excruciating math with the help of my mom, I finally figured out how wide I needed to make  the waist of my skirt.

Because I didn't want to use a ton of material for the mock up of the huge circle skirt, I just cut out a quarter of it. You can't tell from the picture, but it's a few inches short.

I just have to make a few adjustments to my pattern before I can go fabric shopping! YAY! So far this costume has been a lot easier and quicker than I thought it would be *happy dance*