My daughters and their friends decided to go together to a local science fiction fantasy convention. Though I’ve been before, I never wore costumes, but my daughters wanted to cosplay their favorite characters. I didn’t want to buy a ready made costume for many reasons. First off, I enjoy creating costumes. Secondly, ready made costumes usually are either outrageously expensive or incredibly shoddy quality. (I bought my daughter a costume for Wednesday Addams a few years ago and it was both expensive and got ruined after just one wearing.) Then there’s always the need to modify the clothes to make it a bit more modest to suit how our family dresses.
Homemade costumes aren’t always super cheap, and I’ll admit this wasn’t either. But it was frugal enough and is good quality fabric and so reusable multiple times.
My younger daughter, Rose, cosplayed as Nimona, as I wrote about here.
I dressed up as a Cryptic spren, a character from my favorite series, the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson.
Anneliese decided to dress up as Glimmer from She-Ra Princess of Power.
Princess Glimmer's Looks
There are two basic looks that Glimmer has, one from when she was a princess, and one from when she was Queen Glimmer.
We decided to go with the look of Princess Glimmer, but with pants that were a little longer, like with Queen Glimmer.
Her costume was nearly all put together with things I found on Shein. It entailed very little sewing. The only sewing was hemming the pants and attaching the cape, but if someone doesn’t know how to sew it could have been glued or stapled instead of being sewn.
Making The Costume
We started off with something like this purple jumpsuit I bought on Shein. It shows it is $10.28 on the American site, but when I bought it on the local site it cost $13.43. My daughter wanted it shorter, so I hemmed up the legs of the pants to a little below knee length.
Above that Glimmer has this loose overlay in a split front long tunic style. I bought this lilac men’s t shirt in a large size- it is being sold now for $6.15; I bought it for $5.73. I cut the front open up to about chest level, then shaped the back into a rounded curve, keeping it as long as possible for accuracy.
Glimmer has a diamond-shaped detail at the top of the open section of the overlay (it’s easier to see in the picture). I racked my brain trying to come up with ways to make this. Eventually, when in a craft store looking for parts for my other daughter’s Nimona cosplay, I found a metal diamond-shaped appliqué with a small loop on the back, which made it easy to sew onto the fabric.
Glimmer’s cape is light blue and sparkly, and this blue sparkly sleeveless dress ($7.43) that was being sold for $6.63 was perfect for it! I made a mistake with it though, so if you buy the same dress to make this costume use the slit in the dress already as the split part of the cape- I first seam ripped the side, which meant that the slit in the cape was either going to be less centered or the cape less wide so each side was equal. Don’t do that, just ignore the seams on the dress and work with the slit as is.
Figuring out the top of the cape where it attached to the shoulder was a bit confusing, because it isn’t clear in pictures, but I made a part a little longer on one side and thicker, and made a rounded shoulder part, which I then decorated in the concentric ovals that were part of the design.
Glimmer has short fingerless blue gloves and then a longer white one underneath it on one hand. I bought these long fingerless thin gloves ($1.70) for $0.57 per pair, and she put the white one on one of her arms until the elbow and put the light blue ones on top and kept them bunched down so they ended a little longer than wrist length.
We tried to figure out boots for her but weren’t successful. I suggested these purple boots from Shein but she wasn’t a fan because they weren’t the right color. We tried all sorts of different things with foam and her sneakers and it didn’t work out well, and in the end she just wore sneakers, but I think it didn’t detract from her costume at all.
Lastly is her hair.
Anneliese anyhow has short hair like Glimmer does. My original thought was to use purple and pink costume hair spray to color her hair like Glimmer’s, with purple underneath and pink on top. But I forgot to buy spray color in time and when I went to the supposedly best costume store in the area, they didn’t have the right colors. However, they did have a wig, which was the most expensive part of this costume. It was pink on top and purple underneath and it was long. It cost a good $28 and we trimmed it to the right length. I tried looking online on Aliexpress, Shein, and even Amazon, and I couldn’t find a similar wig with the same colors. You can buy a solid colored pink wig cheaply from Shein or Aliexpress and that is what I’d recommend.
The Results- Perfection!
I would say it’s a pretty solid cosplay. She was easily recognizable.
Even though it wasn’t a perfect costume, since we’re not professional cosplayers or costume makers, it was a hit.
I got such a kick out of seeing people walk over to my daughter shouting “Glimmer!” with glee, and asking if they could take a picture with her.
It was also cool that I did a reverse image search on Google and it automatically knew that she was Princess Glimmer.
My daughter has worn her costume a few times since and will be wearing it at future conventions.
While it wasn’t the cheapest costume ever, I’d say she’d putting it to good use.
Do you make your own costumes or do you buy them for Halloween or costume parties? Have you been to any geeky conventions? Which ones were they? When you go, do you go as a “normie” or in costume?
