Peacock Costume Tutorial "Birds of a Feather Flock Together"

Handmade Peacock Costume

This costume post was just featured on coolest homemade costumes check it out and all their other amazing halloween costumes!

As usual i'm behind on my blog posts. However it still isn't Thanksgiving so I feel like I have time to include how I made my Peacock Halloween costume. As you'll remember from last year I was a 1950's housewife. This year I wanted to up my game a bit more, and instead of having my mom sew a few items I decided I'd do it all myself! (With the help of my friends of course!)

THE FLOCK!

For Halloween my friends and I wanted to go as a group and needed an idea fast! I've always wanted to be a peacock so we came up with the idea to all be birds.  Our theme was, "Birds of a Feather, Flock Together," once we had that settled it was off to buy hundreds of feathers! The materials used:


Target Stretch Skirt
Cheap black lace-up corset
3 Feather Boas
Additional aqua Boa
2 Peacock garlands from Michaels
200 5ft Peacock feathers from Featherstore.com
Stretch Belt
Cardboard
Duct tape
LOADS of hot glue
Needle and thread

Before the madness started!

Skirt: To start I hung the stretch skirt from my dress form and stitched the boas in a zig zag pattern running up and down the skirt. Only tacking the boa at the waist band and letting the rest fall freely.  

Brooke helping me stitch!

After this first tacking was complete I went back in and horizontally stitched the zig zags down to cut down on the "poof". 

Stitch after Stich after Stich - control the poof!

1) 1st round of skirt.  2) Skirt after being tacked down. 3) Final Costume!

When the skirt was tacked down, I added peacock feather garland pieces, aqua boa chunks I had cut off and sewed on and individual peacock feathers sewn into the mix.  

Adding in aqua blue feather chunks and peacock feathers.

The skirt took around 10 hours...so be prepared for a great outcome but a lot of work! 

Finished! So pretty!

Below is a little image I threw together to give you a better understanding of how it's done:

Corset: Once the skirt was complete I took two sections of the peacock garland and hot glued them up the center of the corset front. Following that base layer I filled in with aqua feather chunks cut from the boa, blue black and finally peacock feathers arranged fanning upwards to my neck. After these were all glued down I hand stitched over the glue to make sure the feathers would hold.

Peacock garland from Michaels.

Starting the Corset.

Monte wants to help!

Tail: The most important part of the whole costume was the tail. It had to be grand! I needed a way to attach it to the costume so I could get it on and off for riding in cars or getting through doorways.  I started with a black stretch belt sandwiched it between two pieces of cardboard but left a track for the belt to move freely. The card board was cut in a shape like a ball field with the bottom squared off. 

Belt sandwiched between cardboard with duct tape to reinforce.

Once the belt and cardboard were one piece I started taping the feathers in place facing forwards on the inside and outwards on the outside. (So from the front you could see the eye of the feathers and from the back you could as well).  

After the initial height (about 5 ft) was reached with the feathers I cut down the next layer and began to make the fan at a lower level (about 3 ft) repeating this step for 1.5 ft,  8 inches and then the base of the tail was finished with garland pieces and rhinestones.

Almost Done!

I made sure to try the belt on every so many feathers to make sure it was even and balanced. The feathers were so light I didn't need any other support besides the belt tucked under my corset to hold it in place.

Finished!

Pairing the costume with crazy teal and blue eye make-up, feathers in my upswept hair, sheer black tights and 5 inch heals the costume was complete!

Flamingo, Owl, Chick, Peacock, Robin

Shake ya Tail feather!

The entire costume took about 30 hours to complete and was a huge success.  Not one feather was lost after partying for a good 8 hours!

 This is my favorite costume to date! And the reaction from the crowds of people when an 8 foot peacock and the flock walked in was priceless!

Update to this blog post! I sold the peacock costume this past October to a sweet girl named Adele in NY for Halloween and she looked FABULOUS! Check out how she rocked the costume and how the "tail" of the peacock lives on!

Also Deveon posted in the comments of this blog last year asking for help making her costume perfect. She followed the instructions exactly and check out the results! Pretty amazing - the costumes almost look identical!

Thanks guys! This Post has had so many views - it's fun to see people using the steps to make their own awesome peacocks! :)

Pumpkin Painting Party - Halloween 2011

For the past 3 years I've held a Pumpkin Painting Party at my house and it's been a blast! This year was our biggest ever - with 11 girls attending and many pumpkins to be sprayed, bedazzled and dried while we chow down on Halloween snacks!  It's always so fun to look at all of the creative ideas each person comes up with! This year one girl got smart and did a fake pumpkin so hers will live forever while the rest rot! But I think it's fun to make a work of art that is only temporary...let's just hope the neighbor boys dont smash mine! Look next week for my tutorial on my Peacock Halloween Costume - so many feathers all over my house right now! :)

The Goods!

Green Drink with floating eyeballs and brownies!

Cupcakes

Dining Room all spooked out!

Some of the Pumpkins before we started.

Spraying the pumpkins.

Pumpkin dry time.

Family room Group

Dining Room Group

Green Pumpkin before...buttons seemed like such a fun idea.

300 buttons later, not so fun!

Black and silver with some sparkle ribbon polkadots!

Browns with a bow and rhinestones!

Cut little pumpkins!

Spiderweb pumpkin with prop :)

Buttons, dripping orange with dots, and crazy fun splatter paint!

Classy pumpkins with sparkles, feathers, and real leaves!

Turquoise dots, and fuzzy ribbon!

The whole group showing off the goods!

Closet Clutter! Welcome to Clothes Mountain!

Yikes!

Ever since I can remember "cleaning" to me meant shoving things away so you couldn't see them. This is NOT something my Mother taught me to do nor is it something she is very proud of in me, however I've developed quite the talent for it. From a young age there were grapes in the closet, chicken bones under the bed...just enough space under the dresser to hide all of my socks. Drawers became like treasure chests for items never to be found again.  As I've aged I've learned this is not appropriate for common areas, places were people might open a "junk drawer" and find mysterious objects from who knows where? So i've adapted, like most messy animals do, and confined my messy ways to only my bedroom...specifically my closet.  The part I haven't mentioned yet, is that I, like most females, truly enjoy shopping, and by shopping I might mean a small case of hoarding.  So long story short, this blog is to document that in 2011 I DID CLEAN MY CLOSET, and at this point it is still organized...might be a good goal heading into 2012 to keep it that way!

And so it begins...

The process began with slowly yet surely moving all items from the closet onto hangers and hanging those on the door.  Once I ran out of hangers the "pile" moved to the bed...

Welcome to "Clothes Mountain"

Forming floor piles...

After the pile on the bed was sturdy enough to hold itself up, I moved on to making piles on the dresser and the floor.  Keep, dont keep...keep, dont keep. Progress was slow, and after 6 hours I quit to take a break.

Who knew...Hardwood floors in there?!

There were still tons of  clothes to be put away, so I bought some more hangers, and recruited a friend to help with operation closet clean out 2011. After all was said and done, 3am was far too late to be cleaning.  We loaded up the laundry and shut out the lights for the night! Till next year I guess :).

Now, who's going to do this laundry?

TV cabinet repurposed into sweatshirt storage!

So fresh and so clean!

Don't laugh at my 80's furniture - my mom and I risked our lives to get this stuff!

Kelli is pooped! 3am never felt so good!

Fun new shade to dress it up, and everything is nice and clean!