Once Upon A Time: Aurora Costume

Once Upon A Time has some truly FANTASTIC costumes - I mean, that goes without saying. There is so much detail put into these creative interpretations on classic Disney characters that I'm constantly amazed everytime I revisit the series. If you were to ask me to choose a favorite, I wouldn't be able to.

However, one costume that really stood out to me was Aurora's purple gown.

Maybe because it's more informally feminine than other characters, like say, Belle's gold dress. Another aspect that drew my attention was the frayed edges of the dress and how it just fit so well with the background of the enchanted forest.

Overall, it was tough deciding what costume I wanted to make first, but I was very anxious to explore Aurora's outfit further .

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This dress was made into 3 parts: a skirt, bodice and the corset. And because this was only my 2nd costume to ever make, if I was honest, I'd say that the hardest part was everything.

Typically I always start with the hardest piece first which (big surprise) is the corset. Fortunately, I had one on hand and was able to base the form of Aurora's on the one I already had, with a few minor adjustments. Anyway, this is what I came up with...

The corset was a subtle purple with sparkly grey/transparent fabric overlapping it. This was also attached to strands on her skirt, which was an accumulation of purple shades cut into strips and random pieces I had lying around the house. For the skirt there was a plain base skirt and all these other pieces were just sewn on top of it. It was really heavy actually, but I'm not sure how I could have done it any differently.

When it came to the bodice I had no idea what I was doing. There weren't any good reference pictures I could find so there's my excuse for that. It turned out to be a mess.

Corset originally used grey ribbon instead of strange mismatched purple/pink

If I were to re-do the whole thing again, I would pay more attention to the corset, making it shorter and being more careful on the edging. The edging is 1 inch ribbon folded in half and sewed over. It looks messy and was a hassle to put on (and for my seam ripper to take out).

Also, I had the misfortune of sewing in one of my corset panels upside down. YIKES!! I actually left it like too - it's way too much effort to take everything apart to turn it right side up again.  

Even with all its flaws, I'm proud of it and wore it to the OUaT meet-up. No pictures of me in it, seeing as how I'm a terrible picture poser and all.

<3 <3 <3

Divergent Clue

Here's a look at the Divergent edition of Clue teens played at our most recent End Of The World/ Dystopian program.

The rooms on the game board were made from movie images found online and it was all slowly pieced together to follow the format of the original game. I printed off the grid over 4 sheets of regular blue paper, glued them to sheet of poster board and sized the rooms accordingly... much harder than it sounds (at least for me).

Once all the rooms were fitted and glued on I realized I'd forgotten character starting spaces.  Oops! That's why they stick out the way they do. The book quotes around the board are to help tie them in a bit.

 

The game pieces were folded to stand up and the weapon pieces are images glued on to the back of those glass beads. That was one of our crafts for the program - glass bead magnets. From left to right images on beads are belt, glass shards, butter knife, syringe, Eric's gun and lit coals.

Weapons

Character pieces

 and of course the game cards...

Since this was a Dystopian event, we also watched the just-released Hunger Games movie, Catching Fire and played a Hunger Games inspired game called Panem To Panem based on the game Apples To Apples (I found the idea on a teachers resource website). Snacks for this were Dauntless chocolate cupcakes, Nightlock blue berries, Simulation Serum (orange jello) and Abnegation pretzels.

And in case you were wondering... a bubble magnets craft was also set out with images from different books/movies and sorts. That's why the weapons for Divergent Clue are made with glass beads.