Peacock Fairy Costume Dress

I finished this peacock fairy costume yesterday.  With the sunset getting later and later this time of year, there was plenty of time to head out to the arboretum for a photo shoot yesterday evening.  

I'm really pleased with how this costume turned out!  

I wear fairy costumes for a living so I designed this costume to be really versatile.  Instead of a dress, it's made up of 7 different individual pieces so I can mix and match with some of my other fairy costumes to create a lot of different looks.

The skirt is 4 layers.  There's an iridescent two-tone taffeta as the main part of the skirt.  The ribbons at the front are functional gathers, so I can let the skirt out into a floor length gown or gather it up for a saucy fairy look.

There's a lighter blue ruffle bustle that attaches to the skirt.  The bustle is really long, and can be let out into a ruffle train which follows me like a peacock tail, or adds a lot of shape when it's bustled up.

Layered over that is a tutu made of purple, blue, light blue and black tulle.  The tulle is edged to give it a lot of definition, and I used my new embroidery machine to embroider peacock feathers here and there in the tutu's layers.  This might be my favorite part of the whole costume.  I'm having SO much fun with that machine.

The 4th layer is another bustle / hip scarf that ties on with gold ribbon.  It's a lovely stretchy animal-print fabric with gold flecks.  This fabric was actually the inspiration for the whole costume.  It's simply gorgeous.  I also added a row of super bright LED tape to the underside of this piece, so in low light the LEDs shine down into the tutu and give the whole skirt a subtle glow.

There are 3 pieces to the top.  There's a sheer off-white blouse, an under-bust corset and a peacock bra.  The bra is covered in shiny gold fabric with real peacock feathers layered onto it (spray glue FTW).  

The corset is made from a sparkle velvet (left over from my Merida costume) has triple lacing in the front and is cut low in the back to accommodate my green Fancy Fairy wings.

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LED Fairy Lights - Steampunk Costume Accessory and Fairy Room Decor

Wow! So, I've been out of the country, fire dancing at a theme park in Japan, for most of the winter. I'm back now and I got an embroidery machine for Christmas, which I haven't even taken out of the box yet, because of the aforementioned Japan trip.

Just before we left, I made a bunch of gorgeous fairy lights and hung them from my ceiling:

I got some colored bottles and covered them with iridescent cellophane, using mod podge and a heat gun.  I've had the mod podge for EVER and was never quite sure what to do with it.  This was an excellent application, I think.

Then, I took some leather scraps and cut them and tied them around the cellophane-covered bottles.  I filled the first couple of prototype fairy bottles with a battery-operated LED strand with about 8 lights on it.  I pushed the cork in and braided the LED cord in with leather cord wrapped around the neck of the bottle, and now the battery pack can get wrapped around a belt and the fairy bottle dangles from my waist.  It's an incredibly awesome costume accessory!

Here I am sporting 2 fairy bottles at the Dickens Fair with Nick in all his steampunk finery.

The little ones worked so well that I wanted to make some bigger, more permanent ones.  I asked for (and received!) a fantastic strand of multi-color, color changing LEDs for Christmas.  It was a bit of a project, but I made 10 more fairy bottles of varying sizes and colors and soldered together a bunch of lead wire between the LEDs before enclosing the LEDs inside the bottles.  This was a bit of a project - I am not the world's best solder-artist, though I'm probably a bit further up the ranks after doing all those connections.  

At the end of it all, though, my fairy bedroom now sports 10 color-changing LED fairy lights - 4 at the corners of my hanging bed and 6 more around the room.  I even have a remote control to turn them on and off, and to change between the colors.  I can pick one color or get them to softly cycle through the rainbow.  

There will be more LED projects in the future!  LEDs are neat.  :)

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Dusty Green Flower Faerie Hoodie with Spiral Embroidery

Custom order through Etsy for Elven Elysium, who makes amazing faerie things too. I like this one SO much that I'm adding it to the repertoire.. check it out here!

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