Seahorse-riding Mermaid Costume

I made this seahorse-riding mermaid from scratch for my 4 year old daughter, Skylar. She wanted to be a mermaid riding a seahorse like the ones she had seen in so many of her bedtime stories. I agreed to the challenge. This costume is made completely from scratch using wire, fabric, plastic sheeting, lights, ribbon, vinyl, plastic jewels and pearls, elastic, real seashells, headband, thread, and hot glue. I made the seahorse out of 18 gauge craft wire, bending and hot gluing in place. I stuffed it with plastic sheeting, added LED string lights, tea lights for eyes, and covered everything with gold mesh fabric. I made the double tail with 152 individually made scales, some made out of vintage fabric. The top is nude knit fabric with heat transfer vinyl purple glitter shells and embellished with glued-on pearls and plastic jewels. The pants are fleece, with long strips sewn on. The tail slips over the pants and then Skylar steps into the seahorse and pulls it over her hips. It is snug enough to stay on her hips without needing extra support. The tail covers the top of the seahorse opening. The crown is a headband with real seashells painted with glitter. I loved making this costume. It really challenged me to think outside the box and to not only plan ahead, but also to be able to change plans along the way. Originally I had several ideas to get the seahorse to stay up like using a belt with loops and snaps or velcro but in the end, it was easiest to just pull it on and it stayed on her hips without adding anything. For anyone making something like this, with an illusion of riding something, I would suggest doing a life-size tracing to get proportions and scale right and to be able to work without having the model there constantly. It really helped to make a pattern right off of the tracing too. I probably spent about $60 on the materials because some fabric is from my stash. I probably spent about 100 hours on it but I loved making it come to life and working on it with my daughter. She got to make a lot of artistic decisions and helped turn scales right side out, hold things in place, and watched me sew and put pins in the pin cushion. Together we created a completely homemade, one-of-a-kind seahorse-riding mermaid that goes well beyond the typical toddler mermaid costume.