Doctor Who at the Renaissance Festival

When Matt and I first started dating we went to the Renaissance Festival every year.  Once the girls got a bit older we restarted the tradition.  We've always enjoyed going and grabbing a turkey leg, chocolate wenches (chocolate covered strawberries) and walking around and looking at all of the costumes and attractions.  Two years ago we went on St. Patrick's day weekend and thankfully Emma was going through a Tinkerbell phase and dressed in all green and her fairy wings and wand.  We lucked out and there was a Green costume Contest in the main pavilion.  Emma charmed over the judges and won the competition.  Halle has wanted to win a costume competition ever since and unfortunately last year we couldn't go on a contest weekend.  This year I didn't plan ahead to look at the calendar and we just picked a date.  I quickly scanned the website to see if we could get lucky and oh my, did we!  They were having a Doctor Who/Time Traveler costume contest.  As a HUGE fan of The Doctor, I couldn't resist and my brain quickly went into overdrive about what I could create in less than 24 hours and on a budget. I thought about dressing up one of them as a Doctor's and the other a companion, but that just wasn't sitting well with me for some reason.  Then BOOM, it hit me.  Dalek and TARDIS.  This would be fairly easy.

Here's how they turned out!

This was at the end of the Festival; Halle had her face painted as a Zebra. 

Both of the girls got up on stage and said the lines we rehearsed.  TARDIS Emma said, "I'm much bigger on the inside!"  And Dalek Halle said in her best robot voice, "Identify yourself. EXTERMINATE." Anyways Halle ended up winning third place the contest and we were all so happy.  Even big sister Emma was happy even though she didn't win.  Here's Halle with the other two winners from the contest.

Now let me tell you all something... If you want your kids treated like rock stars at the Renaissance Festival, dress them as a dalek and a TARDIS.  Seriously.  I'm not kidding at all here folks.  The girls were stopped every few minutes asking to have their pictures taken and getting high-fives.  Workers at the festival just loved them so much.  They got lots of free chocolate and I was called the coolest mom in the world.  One thing I found really funny was that most people assumed Matt was the Doctor fan.  He can't stand Doctor Who.  He just pretended he knew what people were talking about when they approached him.  If I started talking about it, they looked at me funny.  Hilarious.

Here are close-ups of each of the girls costumes and what I did:

 
 Dalek Halle's costume turned out so well and she felt like a princess which is always good.  I originally was going to tear up a pair of old red silk pj pants I had and re-sew them into a skirt.  The sewing machine and I got into a big fight and that's when I took this dress out of the closet. It was one of my flowers girl dresses from me and Matt's wedding.  I bought eight styrofoam balls, chopped them in half and spray painted them gold.  Make sure to get a spray paint made for foam.  And even though mine said, "foam safe," it didn't say styrofoam.  The paint ate some of the foam on the balls but no big deal.  (I also saw someone on line use the bottoms of large easter eggs! Genius!)  I stuck them on using some double-sided peel'n'stick fabric fuse found in the notions aisle of your craft store.  This stuff is AMAZING.  Only one ball fell off the entire festival and it easily re-stuck back on. OK, next I put a bunch of green floral tape strips onto a craft mat and spray painted that gold.  That's what I used for the criss-cross pattern on the top half of the dress.  The plunger arm was made out of a McDonalds Shamrock Shake cap I had and spray painted black and was fitted onto a cut piece of gold painted pvc pipe.  The mixer arm is well... a mixer attachment from my kitchen taped to a wooden dowel and I wrapped a piece of gold ribbon to it.  Her little ears/top of the head was made out of spray painting six 2 oz. disposable souffle cups (SOUFFLE! YAY!) and stacking them on top of each other with little fuzzy pompoms glued in between each layer.  I punched holes in either side of the bottom plastic cup and sewed them to a cloth headband. 

Emma's costume was just as easy as Halle's. This was an old blue dress that I had stained and unsuccessfully attempted to re-dye blue.  I bought a roll of blue ribbon at the craft store and a sheet of 8.5x11 adhesive backed felt. I used the fabric fuse to apply the ribbon in the grid on the dress and then put the white squares on top of that.  I used blue cardstock for the grid on the windows.  For the little hat on top I just cut a piece of white cardstock and folded into a tube shape. I used blue cardstock again for the grid and then cut a circular piece of felt for the bottom of the hat.  I hot glued a hair clip to it and voila!  TARDIS complete!

We had such a great time at the festival this year and I have to say it was in part to these little snazzy costumes.  I wish we could have the girls dress as them every year! 

Thanks for stopping by crafters! 

Oh by the way.... you might want to come back tomorrow because I have some kinda sorta big deal news...  and a giveaway of the Tim Holtz nature...

(Ok... I can't wait to share... I'm going to RANGER U!!!!  WOOHOO!) 

But still... come back tomorrow!!!