My Little Beastie: DIY Maleficent Halloween Costume

My littlest and I talked about her costume selection very early this year, probably in July. She decided she wanted to be Maleficent and once September rolled around I asked her again with the same reply. So into the net I plunged for design ideas. I found a really awesome tutorial for the horns on YouTube's Threadbanger page. She's a cool chic full of lovely ideas.

Anyway, I found a picture of a Maleficent action figure with an awesome punk rock look, so that became the inspiration.

Here is my little beastie all done up, getting into character. I basically used contouring bronzer on her cheeks and temples, then did some eye makeup. She is always a good subject for my experiments and has gotten rather seasoned at having her makeup done.

Here are some pictures of the process of the design. It took about one week to construct the head piece and a day for the cape. I ordered a raven prop and made a wristband out of it so she doesn't have to hold on to anything. I cut two holes in the cape to thread the elastic from the wing through. Added purple fabric and beads to the collar for some color.

The form is a basic foam head available at Michael's for around $5

The cloth you see pinned to the form below is called buckram fabric, which is used for hat making. After the pattern was cut, I submerged it in water, squeezed it out and formed it to the model exactly the way I wanted it. I doubled up the fabric, cutting the pattern twice.

 While the buckram dried on the mold, I formed the horns using paper clay, also found at Michael's. The horns had to dry for 48 hours.

Once the buckram was dry, I traced the pattern onto felt, brushed the buckram with glue, and flattened the felt over the buckram. Also, after each layer is added, you should pin it down to help maintain the shape you want.

After that completely dried (24 hours), I adhered double fold bias tape with tacky glue to give the edges a nice crisp finish.

  

Next I added the decorative trim to the edges which added to the stability and create a lip that proved useful during the beading step. I glued this with tacky glue which held great. The glue oozed through the material openings for a strong bond.

         

As the glue set on the piece and the paper clay had dried completely, I was able to paint the horns, glue them to scrap felt with hot glue and cut the scrap about 1/2 inch around the horn. Separately gluing the horns to glue then gluing them toe the top of the head piece with hot glue really created a strong attachment that just gluing the clay to the project could not have achieved. The felt was flexible and could accommodate the curvature of the rounded shape.

Here I began to wrap the remaining trim around the horns to add dimension.

Next, I glued the mardi gras beads using tacky glue at first, but quickly realized hot glue was the key. I was nervous the tacky glue would have a dulling effect on the the fabric and beads.

The final product was slightly heavy and too thick for hair pins. I bought a head band with long teeth and since the head band had more of a curve I utilized the same technique to fasten the band to the inside of the head piece as I had with the horns. To add more stability I cross-banded felt strips over top of the band between the teeth. I tied tulle to the band for a snug fit. It worked great. In the future I will attach fasteners to any hats I make before all embellishment begins.