The Little Mermaid Costume

The Little Mermaid has always been one of our favorite movies so we wanted to dress up as three of the main characters.

For the Ursula costume, we used black and purple shiny fabric. We cut out the pattern of a tentacle in both fabrics and then put the shiny side of each cut color facing towards each other, put fabric glue on both sides and then once the glue dried, turned them right side out. We stuffed each of the eight tentacles with batting (quilt filling) and attached them to an adult size black tutu. We also made the eels by using a teal fabric that looked like the exact color they were in the movie. We used the same process and stuffed them both with the same type of batting. We used felt for the eyes (yellow and white) and goggly eyes to place on top. We used grey felt for the top and bottom parts of the eels. We used safety pins to attach the tentacles and eels to the tutu. We bought the wig and jewelry and made sure they looked just like Ursula wears in the movie. We used purple face paint for the face and skin and used water to spread it out. We added fake eyelashes and used a teal/blue eye crayon for the eyeshadow and drew on a mole with black eyeliner. For the Ariel costume, we sewed the mermaid skirt by using a shiny scale green fabric and we attached a two different tulle fabrics to the bottom to make it flare out and give it body. We used purple shiny fabric for the top piece and tied it into a bow on the back. We bought a red long wig for the hair and the flounder bucket as an accessory. For the King Triton costume, we made the arm cuffs out of yellow foam (two different shades. We cut out pieces of foam and wrapped them around each arm to figure out out big they had to be, then added smaller pieces to make them look exactly like they did for the movie. We also made the crown out of the same type of foam. We made a sketch of how we wanted the crown to look and then used that as a stencil to cut out of the foam. We then used fabric glue to attach it to a headband tiara that we purchased so that it would lay nicely on the wig. We had to purchase the mermaid skirt, fake chest, and trident.

Everyone was so impressed with how realistic our costumes looked! We got so many great reactions from people. When people saw us they were shocked at how into it we were and just kept saying how much they loved them. One comment that we got a lot was that it looked like we walked right out of the movie! Everyone wanted to know how we made them, how we got Ursula's skin to look the perfect shade of purple, how Ariel's skirt was made, how Ursula's tentacles were made, and how King Triton's crown was made. Many people wanted to know how much time it took us to make the costumes and how we came up with the idea.

We had so much fun acting out scenes from the movie and singing Under Da Sea and Poor Unfortunate Souls. We are all really good friends and so it was fun to be these characters together as part of a group costume!