Queen Elsa From Frozen

  Total time: about 5 months
Playlist: Frozen, Top Gear, Friends, Frozen, Now You See Me, The Hollow Crown, Frozen, Suburban Shootout, Sherlock, Frozen.

This is how I made my Queen Elsa costume from Disney's Frozen.






It all started on a warm afternoon on August 11th, 2013. I had declared that this shall be my Halloween costume this year.

First I bought some dark silky blue fabric to use as lining, and sky blue fabric to use at the main dress fabric. Then my issue of D23 featuring Frozen on the cover arrived and realized that her dress was more robin's egg blue than sky blue. So the sky blue fabric became my lining fabric and I got a satin robin's egg blue fabric for the main dress.



Additionally I had sheer, some what stiff and shiny, light blue fabric for the train. And light blue tulle, in four layers, for the sleeves. I wanted to get the fabric as close to what was animated on the character which was difficult seeing as how the movie hadn't come out yet, but I stared at a lot of pictures.

Yet despite staring at so many pictures, it wasn't until it was too late that I realized she has a sweetheart neckline! But that comes in later.




So I made the base dress first, which looked like a boring prom dress. And I was working on other costumes at the time, so here is what it would look like if Elsa stole Henry's cape from Fire Emblem.





I hemmed the edges of the train and made it attach with snaps so if someone accidentally steps on it, the train will just snap off and no damage will be done, except maybe a foot print. I also glued white glitter along the edges of the hem as well as a few snowflakes on it. I then glued rhinestones on the top edge of the train to make it shiny and reflect light like ice. Because her dress is suppose to be made of frost and ice, I wanted to make it seem like it was as much as possible. So lots of glitter and rhinestones.

The one material I felt would add that frost and ice look was glass beading. I hand sewed silver, long glass beads along the slit and the hem as well as for the vertical lines going down the skirt. As show in the picture- please ignore the cat, she likes to sit on my costumes.

And I used a mixture of green, silver, white, and teal glass beads to do the bodice. I did think about sequins for this, but I felt that glass beading would look the best. Normally I would do the sane thing when it came to a costume and not something crazy time consuming because I know eventually I will grow bored and stop working on it. But I felt this dress was too beautiful to not do it how I envisioned, and I really related to this character so I felt I had to do her justice. So time to do the insane.

Starting from the point at the waist in the center of the front of the dress, I did about five inches of beading. I glued the beading down early one morning and allowed it to dry in the back of my car as I drove down to Anaheim to wear my half-finished Elsa costume at Mickey's Halloween Party in Disneyland. Because I started in the middle, and it was permanently glued, I couldn't go back and fix the fact that it isn't sweetheart.



I received a lot of compliments from guests, cast members, Belle, and Aladdin (Aladdin really liked it, which was interesting) so I knew I was headed in the right direction with this costume. But for some stupid reason I thought it would be a good idea to go on pirates in my fancy costume with the long train. Needless to say, the train got very dirty. Pirate dirty. Okay, maybe not that dirty.


Returning from Disneyland, there were a lot of things I had to do: repair beading, clean train, re-do sleeves, finish bodice, and finish rhinestone work. But after Disneyland, and it being October with lots of Halloween costume commissions, I had to put Elsa aside.

November was Dicken's Fair time until mid-December when I finally saw the film and I decided to go back to work on it.

I don't think Frozen is the greatest Disney film ever, and I do agree that there are a lot of flaws in it, but I still love Elsa, and I still want to complete this costume. So with inspiration from other people completing their Elsa costumes and the non-stop buzz for the film, I returned to my costume.

I cut off about half of the train in a triangular way, and attached some sheer white fabric that had silver snowflakes printed on it. I glued crystal snowflake beads to the center of some of the snowflakes on the train to weigh it down and create the drag that Elsa's train has in the film.

I used white, glitter, puffy fabric paint to paint on large snowflakes over the light blue part of the train.

As well as used silver, glitter, fabric paint to paint a large, pointed design down the back of the train.

Then to hide the fact that I used two different fabrics and two different colours, and to bring more frost in, I watered down some white pearl paint and used a feather to paint over the bottom of the train to create that frosted look.


I cut off most of the sleeves and sewed on shiny, light blue tulle sleeves to fit the whole arm and come to a point over the hands, and to cover the shoulders. Smaller rhinestones were added and I hand painted, with white glitter paint, the sleeve design down the length of the arm.






















The wig I wore at Disneyland was too long, so I cut it down, and re-did the French braid. I then swooped the bangs back to create that poof atop her head and used lots of hair spray to hold it in place. Then I used non-fray glue to add white glitter through the hair to add that frosted look, and I used hot glue to attach ice flowers, silver snowflakes, and small ice crystals, as well as the hair tie gem.




I found the perfect shoes on Amazon for around $20 and I added clear vinyl snowflakes to the toes and heels and used the white pearl paint to frost the shoes a bit.




Now the bodice. Using thick, white thread and lots and lots of beads, this is a Facebook post from the time of me doing endless amounts of hand beading on March 11, 2014:

'So I decided that while working on my Elsa costume I would do some math, so here we go. (Mind you these are all averages and this is only pertaining to the bodice not the full costume.)
Total Beads: 26,585
Total Strings of Beads: 264 (<- actual number of strings)
Total Hours Stringing Beads: 53.8
How many strings do I have left? 182, in other words I still have 36.4 hours to go.
I want to wear it for something in 83.5 hours, but really the beading needs to be done in 73.5 hours so the glue can dry. Factor in 7 hours of class time left this week plus an hour for driving, that is 65.5 hours of non-committed time to finish this costume. How much sleep will I get this week? Go!'

I didn't get it finished in time. I still had a week of beading left, and the week after, each morning was dedicated to gluing down all of that beading.

*Every morning of my Spring break I would put Frozen on and sing along to the songs while I glued down another section of beads. It took a week just to glue and dry. And I'm pretty sure I annoyed my brother.*

 












That was it, it was done. I didn't believe it was done after working on it for so long. Total elapsed time from August to March was eight months, but subtract half of October, November, and half of December, it totaled more to five months of work. Not everyday, but very close to it.

The plan was to wear it to WonderCon 2014. And I still was going to, but I decided to do a test run, just in case something went wrong or fell off or something, I could fix it even stronger. So to test it I wore it to KrakenCon Spring 2014.

It was a big hit. I sang 'Let It Go' to a table at the Maid Cafe, and on stage at the Maid Cafe. Took copious amounts of pictures for people, with other Frozen cosplayers, and with little kids.

And I won a judge's award (my first costume award!) in the costume contest.

And my cosplay film group, The CosFilm Collective, was doing a small video and you can see me scatter throughout it...and the end of it.

After KrakenCon Spring 2014, some repairs had to be doned to the wig and some of the bodice beading, as well as replace some rhinestones, but not too bad, and it held up really considering I was wearing it for 12 hours.

WonderCon 2014. Only picture I have of me from it.

And despite the multitude of Elsa cosplayers at WonderCon, a lot of people were stopping me not to take pictures but to just say that they think it was the best Elsa costume they had ever seen. Which feels good since I put a lot of time, effort, and heart into it.

I love this costume and this character and I am very happy with how it turned out and that it turned out how I wanted it to be.

-Charlotte