DIY: Frozen's Elsa Cosplay - Macarons and Mischief (2024)

So apart from blogging and working full time; I’m a huge geek/nerd. When I watched Frozen, I was all ” ELSA COSPLAY!” I guess majority of the world have seen Frozen and been obsessed with it. Last month for Fan Expo Vancouver, I cosplayed blue-dress-snow-queen Elsa. I took a bunch of shortcuts to make the dress, so here’s to a sort-of-tutorial for anyone who wants to be dress up as Elsa!My friend and I were discussing that we can no longer like something then buy a graphic tee to show much we like the show/movie/character, we gotta become them. I LOVED the sparkly blue dress in Frozen and I’m a sucker for snowflakes (a HUGE Jack Frost fangirl over here) so Elsa’s costume was something I had to try to make. So before costume making, I looked up a LOT of reference pictures; there’s a plethora of information and help on tumblr, pinterest, and other blogs.

To actually provoke me into not ditching the costume idea, the first thing I invested in was a $30 wig. I figured that if I bought the wig, I will make the costume for sure or the wig would be for naught. I bought my wig here with free shipping!
It was kind of fluffy on the top of the head and it didn’t have a widow’s peak like Elsa, but it fit pretty well (after I wore a hairnet and looked like a little old lady.) My black hairline does peek out once in a while, cause my hair is like its own separate being on my head.

The majority of the attention is focused on the bodice as it is most sparkly of various different shades of blue and teal. I went to my local craft store and couldn’t find sequins to cut into squares, so other measures had to be taken! I noticed that a lot of different cosplayers do their own version of Elsa.

I didn’t make the costume from scratch; I went to Value Village to find a plain dress to sew and decorate on. I bought a plain blue dress that looked very similar to this. I cut off the straps since it is a strapless dress over the mesh top Elsa wears.

I sewed the bottom of the dress first, with two different types of fabric. I had a blue lining, then laid it over with a sheerer blue fabric with a silky feel (this was the most expensive, $10/m of fabric!)

I just sewed it around the waist area of the blue dress underneath. I do not know why I did not take a picture of this step 🙁 Afterwards, I used a fabric that has rectangular sequins to glue on the bodice part of the dress. I bought this from ebay seller here. It says “turquoise” for the colour, but it is more of a dark blue. At first I wasn’t happy about it, but the sequins match the colour of the blue fabric better. Since the sequins come on a a mesh; at first I wasn’t sure how to get it on the dress. When it comes to cosplay, glue gun is your best friend.

I cut the fabric into strips and glue gunned it onto the bodice. For some reason and inaccurate judgement, I didn’t cut out a “V” shaped bottom as I planned.

Elsa has a opening on the right side of the dress, so I cut a slit and hemmed it with glue gun and invisible double sided tape that I got from the sewing section of the dollar store. This was an awesome purchase; you just put the tape along the fabric where you want to hem, then fold the fabric over it! Unfortunately, after two days of wear, the hemming started to undo itself and since the dress was long and a bit difficult to walk in, it started to fray. But luckily, no one at the con noticed and I got compliments anyway (yay!)

Ok next step, the cape! The cape begins at the back of the dress where the sparkly bodice begins. I bought 2m of a shiny mesh fabric from Fabricana and cut it into “cape” shape. And, then I had another fail. I saw this cape pattern online and I wanted to copy it.

I put the mesh cape on a giant piece of foam board to paint the pattern on, and as I was painting it looked pretty good until……….the paint goes through straight the holes of the mesh so you can’t see anything!! I was freaking out and I was doing this the day before the convention. My last minute resort: I mixed fabric glue with teal sparkles; it’s a thick mixture and painted a star on the cape (so this pattern does not appear on my dress at all. FAIL!!!) I bought some snowflake sequins from Michaels and glued them on the fabric to give it some shine. However, I lost 90% of them while walking around.

Oh capes aren’t the most practical thing to pounce around in. They are in everyone’s way, and my own. Almost got sucked in the escalator.

Elsa has a blue, transparent shirt underneath her dress. I scoured ebay and bought this a shirt from this seller, though mine was a bit cheaper, but it’s the exact same item. I added blue sequins around the necklace and used a variety of 3D fabric paint to decorate the shoulders/sleeves.

And here are my shiny shoes! Elsa wears heels, but I cannot survive walking around a convention all day in heels so I decided to “diy” a pair of flats. I got these black pointy flats from Old Navy. I first used gesso as a base to paint the whole shoe; since I am using a variety of paints on it, I didn’t want any chipping (which happened anyway.) After I used gesso, I used a sparkly blue paint to cover the shoe, then used a variety of 3D fabric paints (it squeezes out of a tube so I can get skinny lines) and painted swirls and lines around it. I also used a small , flat square paintbrush to draw lines and make random patterns. To finish, I glued snowflake sequins on.

Here’s some pictures I took~

And I also appeared in a cosplay video over here hehe!

Omgoodness this was a longer post than I anticipated! Props if you read through the whole thing! I got to thank my special tools that are extremely useful for sticking things together, invisible double sided tape and MY PRECIOUS GLUE GUN! Without a glue gun, this project would’ve taken eons to finish. Hopefully I can put up a Elsa makeup tutorial, once my camera baby is returned to me :'( There were plenty of Frozen fans around Fan Expo Vancouver and a bunch of little girls who loved the Disney movie as much as I do. I can’t wait to go back again next year!

If anyone has any specific questions, feel free to contact me or leave a comment and I’ll try to help! This may be one of the more complex cosplays I’ve attempted! :’)

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Ps: I think I got an eye infection in my other eye. That’s two eye infections in two months. WHY?? =(