WARPAINTandUnicorns as Merida

Merida

Brave

Original and Disney Parks

Cosplayer: WARPAINTandUnicorns
My one and only Disney Princess costume. I don't have a great love for Disney princess of past besides Ariel. In the past, they were not able to defend themselves. >_< They were always being saved by the prince. boo

Ariel is a no go with my body type, but Merida has my hair. ;) Just not as ginger as her.


FABRIC:
100% Cotton Velveteen from Fabricland. $18 a yard (but I got it on sale)

Rippled Linen on optic white that I dyed with teas to an off-cream shade, for the undershirt and puff on the dress.

My cloak fabric wasn't as grey/taupe as hers as I bought it before the full movie poster came out and it looked dark brown at the time. lol It's a suiting polyester with a nice drape and weave.


SEWING:
About 50% of this dress was hand sewn because it's Velveeten and I had to do a lot of invisible stitching one all the segments of the sleeves, the armholes and the hem. (Never hand hemmed a dress before... 6.5 hours later I was done and wanted to kill myself for a backache. )


WIGS:
Went through a few different ones but the final one was Newlook FireRed shade in Cathy XL and Mary G-1000 sewn together.

Newlook has a new PP-Brave Brave Princess I recommend that one and stacking it with another long wig.

I cover how I made the wig here.
http://www.warpaintandunicorns.com/2012/09/simple-wig-tricks-stacking-with-merida.html

I got a lot of people asking me if it was my real hair because I match my eyebrows at FanExpo. lol



BOW:
PVC pipe based from Jonathan Gordon of SouthCoastDesigns on Etsy. Resharpened with heat and paint it with a wood grain texture with heavy body acrylic for the texture. And a wash of dark brown paint to sink into the tooth of the acrylic grain. Once I shaped it to the Pulled position, it was a full foot shorter than it should have been but to make one any longer would have probably degraded the shape.


Presentation FanExpo 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA2XeEqUWN0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLqAeU73_hc

You can see my head bob before walking onstage as my music didn't play. I was like "OK! Let do this!" lol

No awards just fun.