Ursula Costume

My 3-year-old daughter was into "The Little Mermaid" like many other kids her age, but for some reason she really took a liking to Ursula. After having no luck finding an Ursula costume in kid's sizes, I decided to take on the challenge of creating one from scratch.

I started by making a body form out of duct tape, so she didn't have to try it on over and over. Then, I created a "cage dress" out of rattan to hold the batting underneath the fabric and to keep the shape/prevent it from collapsing. After covering it in batting, I made the actual dress out of black velvet, purple sparkle fabric (for her skin), dark purple sparkle netting underneath (to help hide her feet as she walked), and purple sequinned fabric (for under the tentacles). Two halves of a styrofoam ball were used for her chest. I made a long sleeved bodice with a zipper in the back and then connected it to the body and tentacles of the dress, and made matching gloves with red press-on nails (hot glued).

As for the tentacles, the underside of them connected to the cage at the bottom, and each was a tube that I filled with balloons to keep it light while providing a lot of volume. The ends of the tentacles had fishing line running through that connected to the belly of the dress, to keep them off the ground when she was walking. The undersides had a strip of elastic sewn in to make them curl toward the ends (which were stuffed with a little pillow stuffing).

The shell necklace was made/shaped entirely out of hot glue and hand-painted gold.