TBT: Halloween 2015 Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas

So Halloween is my favorite holiday and since it's gone and past I figured why not celebrate it again by sharing this frickin' amazing costume I made.  I decided of coarse the week of Halloween that I wanted to be my favorite character of ALL time, Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Since all the costumes you can buy are either sexualized or super cartoony, I decided to make my own.  

The Dress

So I went to Goodwill to start the process.  I picked out 5 plain colored shirts that looked close to the color of the patches on Sally's dress.  Next I went to Hobby Lobby for some retail therapy (some people go to the mall I go to craft stores lol). The items I bought for the costume were Aleene's Fabric Fusion fabric glue, black fabric markers, two medium plane white t-shirts, a large sewing needle, and some 40 cent black cotton embroidery floss.  If you are going to ever use fabric glue I highly recommend  Fabric Fusion.  I found that the Fabric Fusion glue is the best because you can dry clean it once it's dry, it's permanent and it adheres/dries really fast.

So after I gathered all my supplies it was time to begin.  I sketched out what Sally's dress looked like so I could plan out how much fabric I needed from each t-shirt.  Then I started making the base of the dress. I took the two plane white t-shirts and cut the top off one of the shirts.  I cut right below the sleeves so the shirt looked like a skirt.  After that I busted out my very rusty sewing skills and sewed the two shirts together to make a dress.  Once I put the dress on my assistant (aka my husband) helped draw out the neckline to mimmick Sally's.  I then took the dress and cut out the collar and the neck line.  Now the fun can begin.

So I then took my sketch and started mapping out the 5 Goodwill shirts.  Once I had the basic layout of where all the patches should go I had to really look at pictures of Sally to figure out the shapes of the patches.  This was the hardest part of the whole process because the patches each have their own shape.  Once I had the patches cut out I started drawing all the different designs with black fabric marker (never use a permanent marker because the design will bleed if you wash it and it might fade to unflattering undertones).  One of the patches on the right side has a design of 3 circles over lines.  The lines were drawn on with fabric marker but the circles were part of the green t-shirt I cut up.  Once I was good and ready with all the patches I glued them on.  I even glued the sleeves on.  I wasn't worried about covering the white dress all the way to the bottom or to the sleeves because I was going to cut it off any ways to give that tattered look.  

I let the dress dry overnight so I could put the finishing touches on the next day and not have to worry about anything getting messed up.  So after all my hard work I took a very thick sewing needle and threaded black cotton embroidery floss through it.  I went through the entire dress with the needle and thread making accent stitches so it looked like the patches were stitched together.  

Makeup, Hair, & Accessories 

To do Sally's makeup I decided to keep it more on the simpler side.  First I covered my arms, neck, and face with really light liquid foundation.  I used DermaBlend Leg and Body Cover in Ivory because it has full coverage and it will stay on all night.  To set the foundation use a white powder. I used it Cosmetics Airbrush Illuminizer to set the leg and body cover.  This actually worked out really nice because the illuminizer gave my skin a ghostly glow.  Then I used black liquid eye liner to draw the stitches on my face, neck, and arms.  For the lips I wanted a nice deep red color so I lined my lips with MAC lip pencil in Vino and filled them in with Dare You from MAC's 6 Editorial Reds Pro Lip Palette.  Last but not least the eyes. I put light blue eyeshadow on my lids, under my bottom lashes, and then I used the blue for my cheek bones.  It's hard to see in the picture though.  If I were to do it again, I probably would do the blue a little bit darker.  To top off the Sally look I used fake eyelashes that were very long, and I didn't use any mascara on the bottom lashes because Sally's top lashes are so long and accentuated. 

So now when I went to make my legs pale with stitch lines I went to trusty ole Pinterest for ideas.  I saw a pin of someone drawing stitch marks on white stockings for a Sally costume.  So of coarse I said "perfect!!" Well this actually ended up being a MAJOR Pinterest fail.  I bought too shear of tights so when I went to draw the stitches with the fabric marker, the ink transferred to my skin and faintly showed up on the stockings.   SO thank goodness I bought an extra pair because my legs looked really goofy with both my skin and the stockings marked up.  The stockings were just sheer enough so that in the end you could see the stitch marks on my skin, and I looked really pale like how Sally does.  I would not recommend using marker on your skin.  Instead the liquid eyeliner would have worked just fine with the stockings over. Lesson learned.  Then to finish off the legs I wore white black striped tube socks with black booties.  

The last piece to this look is Sally's hair.  I went to amazon.com and bought two packs of $10 hair extensions.  The hair was good quality for being super cheap but they gave me two different colors, what's up with that? I had no time to return one of the packs so I said whatev's and used both colors.  I bought a Large Band Wig Cap from Sally's Beauty Supply and tied my hair back and put it on.  Once the cap was on I clipped the extensions to the cap and BAM I was Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas!!!