Brilliant Alice in the Looking Glass Sibling Costumes

Every year my kids and I have more and more fun with Halloween….and it’s not even the night of Halloween that’s the most fun…it’s the prep for Halloween!! We always hand-make our costumes and try to only use things that we already have around the house.

This year when we watched “Alice Through the Looking Glass” with our littles, they immediately knew that they wanted to be the characters from the movie. My son Zechariah was the Mad Hatter. We made his costume from an old suit jacket he had that was a bit too small for him. We painted it green and attached ribbons and fabric to the back. We dyed a white dress shirt pink(using food coloring), and attached lace to the sleeves out of some scrap fabric I had.

From there, we used another scrap of fabric to make the scarf. The hat was made from an old flower pot that we had in the garage. We placed it on top of another hat that we already had(we needed it for the brim) and wrapped lace around it and painted it. We then dyed a blonde hairpiece an orange-red color and textured it to give it the correct shape. Our middle daughter, who is 7, was Alice. We cheated a little on her costume because the first layer of the dress was purchased at a thrift store. We then added ribbon, cinched the waist, made multiple petticoats to give the skirt some volume, and added an under hoop to help the dress keep it’s shape.

We also found a blonde wig at a thrift store and I tied a black and white scarf around the top of her head to “tame” the wig a little. The most elaborate and perhaps difficult costume was our littlest, Justice(3), who was the Queen of hearts. Her costume started with and old and hideous floor length black flower girl dress that somebody had given us.

We started by cutting open the top layer of the dress to create a multi-layered effect and so that the second layer could peek out in the front. The top layer of the dress we spray painted with a metallic gold spray paint. Then we painted the second layer of the dress red and hand painted the hearts. The dress was originally sleeveless but we added sleeves that we cut out of old long sleeved shirt and attached them to the dress.

We also added a black lace shoulder ruffle at the top of the sleeve and made cuffs out of red ribbon. The breastplate was made out of cardboard that was spray-painted gold and that we covered in beads. We then created the neck piece out of a deck of cards. Her crown was made out of disposable cup…and you guessed it…We covered it in old spray paint!!

We also covered it in beads and gems that we had in a bag of jewelry making supplies. Her wig was also painted and then pinned into the correct shape before we put it on her head. Overall, we had a BLAST making the costumes and the kids were the celebrities of the night with everyone taking their picture and asking them if they had won any contests.

Sadly, I was in trouble with the kiddos because we hadn’t entered any contests!! So here we are…entering a contest. Fingers crossed!! 🙂