Garland (Posted 30th April 2013)

Still working on the ideas for the flower garland in Giselle's hair. Decided atm on a plan to use heat cut petals of the same chiffon I'm using for the shoulders and sewing each flower to a seperate hair clip for better placement and flexibility when styling the base wig (will also help the wig stay on my head with all the dancing about). So far I've mocked those up and set about silk dying the central flowers to a darker pink so they'll look more like natural flowers (may well end up with glitter invloved somewhere). Toying with whether I should wire the petals, but currently just leaving them as is.
The wig itself needs a bit of work. It's a brighter orange than I'd like but with all of the hyped up glitter and colour it's not the end of the world. It does however need straightening out a bit, as I like the waves it has but they need to be more focused around the bottom rather than all the way up.

Progress finally (Posted 5th April 2013)

Spent the last few days working on this, so expect pics soon.
Since the last update the dress has been finished in the new fabric, and still needs a little alterations as I've lost weight again, but only has the hem left.
I've gone a bit mad with the glitter again and so the bottom of the dress now has swirly andalaision designs around the front and sides.
The ribbon tie also has a version of the motifs from Prince Edward's sleeves embellished onto them and trimmed with more glitter.
I've been trying to re-imagine the dress as if she'd gone through the wishing well wearing this dress rather than the wedding dress, so everything that got emphasized in Edward's costume I intend to do with this dress too.
I also need to buy more chiffon to use for the sleeves and flowers, as I'm still not happy with it (gone through 3 different sheer pink fabrics now).

Weather worries (Posted 11th October 2012)

Just typing out my thoughts really. With just over 2 weeks ago, there are now weather forcasts availiable for the dates of expo, which alerted me to my own stupidity. Usually I'd never do a cosplay in October unless it is warm enough to withstand the worst, ever since the horrifying experience of October 2008, but for some reason this slipped my mind when planning Giselle.
There are pretty much no Giselle costumes suitable for the current weather, as she's all about sunshine so I'm left with an option to change to a different cosplay, or to try and incorporate a warm jacket/cloak to Giselle. I'd been thinking about making a simple cloak, but nothing I came up with seemed to fit my idea and none of it worked with Giselle's regency aesthetic.
Then I got to thinking what Giselle would make for herself if she wanted to keep warm. She wouldn't keep it simple, whatever she wore would be fit for a princess with flowers and ribbons galore, like all the curtain dresses she makes once in new york. She uses what is around her, so I think she'd likely take influence from all her throws and cushions in her home in Andalasia, along with all the flowers of the forest.
So I got sketching and came up with the idea in the attached picture. It's a jacket, similar in style to regency period jacket fashions, but with a longer drape. It's reminiscent of her Turquiose dress, but in a pale stone colour to compliment the bold pinks of her dress underneath, and will be made out of much warmer fabric.
Any thoughts would be appreciated, but with any luck this will keep me warm and match the rest of the costume well.

Fabric re-think (Posted 24th September 2012)

The original fabric I'd ordered for this turned out nothing like the seller had pictured, and I've been unable to find a good alternative in my price range (which is virtually none-existant atm).
So a re-think is in order. Instead of the chiffon overlay, I've bought essentially the same fabric as the base layer seen in my other photos, but in dusky pink so I can use that as the main dress colour, and will use the original base as lining. It will be nowhere near as floaty or texturally interesting, but on the bias will atleast hold the right shape.
Bit of a pain in the neck, but hopefully will still look good. The picture here shows the new fabric against the original reference and base layer, with the lighter pink chiffon. Still darker than i'd like, but pretty close and I'm hoping under brighter lighting it will not only have the two-tone quality of Giselle's animation, but also look paler and more accurate against the orange of my wig.
The lovely irkat said she will make me the flower garland to match the costume so when I have my birthday money through I will buy the chiffon for the sleeves and send some to her for colour matching.

Base Dress (Posted 27th July 2012)

Got the base fabric yesterday so I have this sort of mocked up. I have done so many half attempts at this dress with spare fabric from other cosplays over the years so have come to a conclusion on the best way to go about it quite easily.
Instead of using a stretch fabric for this I'm going to use crepe and chiffon on the bias (similar to my blue fairy dress) to minimise the need for seam lines and to keep the dress very floaty and lightweight. I decided on 2 layers as a way to make the dress a little different to other versions i've seen and to catch the light in a more interesting way. It should give it a two-tone look, with a bright cerise base and an almost coral lighter pink overlay.
I'm also going to give this a slightly fuller skirt than most of the film images show as it'll give it more body for dancing and spins.