Mermaid Costume Tutorial

This was a lot of work for very little payoff, but I guess that's the theme song of my life.  Originally, in the grandiose, what-was-I-thinking phase of the birthday planning, I imagined Tootie Pie wearing this at her 2-hour party (one hour of which was spent in the pool) and photographing her with each of her party guests.  Ya know, so each thank you card could be personalized?  Because, the only thing more tedious than dusting off my never-that-great-to-begin-with Photoshop "skills" to make a thank you card is making twenty different thank you cards.  So, that's not what happened.

 What did happen is, after many an unhappy fitting, and glitter everywhere, we used this costume exactly once, for her thank you card.  Oh, and the backdrop was used the same number of times, but that is now "art" in our basement stairs.   

All you need for this project is sequinned stretch fabric and tulle.  I followed this tutorial for the skirt.  I love the speech bubbles on the photo where her daughter was complaining that her arms were too tired.  Adorable.  For the top, I used the pattern here and followed the tutorial here.  Rather than sew it to a leotard, I sewed elastic to it, since it was not intended to be worn long nor in public.

In the photos, she is wearing a Strawberry Shortcake wig, bedazzled with a purchased pressed paper starfish that I added dimension to with a glue gun, and then dry brush painted it with gold paint.

In the card, I added waves using Photoshop, and some text.  All in all, I think the end result came out quite nice.