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Mirror Queen
From: The Brothers Grimm (movie)
Date: Halloween 2007; I-CON 27 (2008)
Pattern(s) used: 4940, 9929
Fabric Swatch(s):
Halloween '07: Over the top! Over the top! Yes, I went a bit over the top for this costume, but I couldn't help it. I loved the dress, and it was a challenge.
The dress - I used the Simplicity LotR patterns - the dress and the bottom half of the sleeves. I did not use the top half, although the original dress had little cap sleeves with which the pearling was attached. Again, time constraints (and moola) prevented me from really doing the beading and applique work that I wanted to do for Halloween. I ended up purchasing some wedding appliqués and adding them to the dress. I also got the little flowers for the insides of the sleeves, but wasn't able to put them on.
The under-tunic is a cross of the pattern I used for the Aspect of Fate and my own drawing. I think I used some sort of shirt pattern to make the tunic, but I can't remember which one it was. I attached the collar to that. I couldn't get the color to stand up straight enough with just the plastic corseting I had, so I ended up using more of the wire that I had left over from the Black Swan wings. I sewed that into the base of the collar, and sewed the plastic corseting to that. It worked fairly well. The edging ruffles are ribbon that I sewed into ruffles.
The crown - was almost entirely amezri's doing - she built it from the ground up, and I dressed it up. She used cardboard, angel cones, tissue paper and that kid foam stuff - and lots of tape and glue! She used liquid pearl to paint in the swirly designs on the little crown and around the base of the crown, then painted the whole thing gold. The small crown on top is made entirely of cardboard! The whole thing attaches to my head with two ribbon loops.
To cover it, I glued gold lame (there's that gold lame again!) over the whole thing, then added the ribbon in the criss-cross pattern (my eyeballs became very un-focused!) Next I hot glued the pearls and "jewels" to the crown. During the night, some of them popped off, though. That kind of sucked.
The earrings - also done entirely by amezri - she beaded them all herself, even making some of the pieces we couldn't find, out of clay. She also beaded the arm bands that attach the sleeve to the dress (they are detachable).
The belt - well, we ran out of time for that one, so I just slung a chain around my waste and called it a day.
The wig - that took 4-EVA to do. And a lot of patience on the part of my sister and amezri - they both spent several hours combing this wig into sections for braiding. After they were done with that, we slung the wig on amezri (this is where it would be nice to have a dummy or wig stand! >_<) and I braided the hair, with the assistance of my sister and my mother - it really took that many of us to braid this thing! It was evol!
Other jewelry & Accessories - I found a ring at an antique show for $5 that was suitably gaudy with pearls and red stones (rubies?). I couldn't find anything that would work for the berets, so I went without. I did find an AWESOME mirror to use for a prop, though. It was a little more costly than what I would have wanted (it's only a prop!) but it was perfect (and it wasn't THAT expensive, I was just hoping for dirt cheap. Hehe) For shoes, I just wore little ballerina slippers I had on hand in my closet.
I-CON '08: There were many improvements to the MQ costume for ICON and I'm very happy with the results now!
The dress - Nothing changed at all with the physical dress, but lots of changes to the appearance! I added the flower appliques to the sleeves, and also added one more to the V of the dress. I did not like the white appliques or lace, either, but didn't want to remove them, so I decided to paint them with gold fabric paint. Once I started, I couldn't stop! I painted every single little piece of white I could find (except the ribbon flowers). The appliques had parts that were kind of filled in white with thread, and for those I actually used glitter paint stuff to cover. After all that was dry, I sewed the red beads into the middle of each flower on the lace. The paint and the gold edging didn't really go all that well together, and I didn't like the gold edging all that much, so I decided to sew the ropes of plastic pearls on top, and then added the gold pearls as well. I added a couple of my red "jewels" to the center of the ribbon flowers as well.
The under tunic - I didn't do much to this except add some of the gold ropes of pearls.
The sleeves - amezri didn't like the way the beading on the sleeves went, so she re-did them, using bigger pearls (previously they were seed pearls). She also added lines of gold beads. This time we used Velcro to attach them to the dress (still detachable).
The crown - not much here, either, except some maintenance work and I added a bead housing that I had wanted on the original crown, but couldn't figure out how to use.
The earrings - nothing here, except I glued the missing jewels onto the mesh ovals
The wig - still braided, but now has some berets in it.
The belt - I put amezri back to work and she put together a belt much nicer than just the chain. I found some more bead findings and put her to work on them. It came out great!
The shoes - because I was going to be trekking around in this get-up all day, amezri insisted I wear sneakers. So I pulled out the gold sneakers I had used for Dot Matrix (good thing I keep all these things!) and decorated them up with "jewels" and flowers, so at least they match a little. And it's just funny! (and I must say, she was so correct! Yay comfy feet!)
Favorite part: originally - the crown. We worked really hard on that thing! For I-CON? I really like the belt, and also all the new work I put into the appliqués.
I-CON - all the attention I got was really cool. I got a lot of compliments on my work - it made it all worth it!
Least favorite part: the wig - it made me really washed out to have black hair. XD the earrings were also really heavy, even though they go over the backs of the ears, instead of in them. Also, not being able to finish all this stuff for Halloween.
I-CON - I got a new wig for the con, and it was well worth it - I actually looked nice in it. Problem solved! I didn't wear my crown, however. We felt that it would squish my brain too much. I was bummed that I didn't get to wear it, because it would have been VERY cool, but in the end, it was probably best not to wear it. No brain owies!
Pictures:
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