My school decided to postpone our World Book Day celebrations till today so the children were in school. The main reason was because we had a Zoom date with Michael Rosen, the wonderful children's author and poet.
This year, I decided to make one of my ideas that I have listed in my 'World Book Day costume ideas' blogpost but never actually made.
My inspiration was The Rainbow Fish from the above book.
It has a wonderful moral about not being proud and sharing your riches with others and is really beautiful!
As always, I want to make my costume from things I already have- I've only ever bought tiny items for my World Book Day costumes and used things that can go back to their regular use afterwards.
I started by knowing I wanted to use some of my craft felt stash to make coloured fish scales. I found this turquoise top in my charity bag. It's too tight (and too low cut) and so I was going to get rid of it so I decided to give it a makeover.
I cut a template from a coaster and cut various scallops from the appropriately-coloured felt.
I sewed them roughly to the top.
Unfortunately, when I tried it on, because it was so tight, some of the threads pulled and broke.
I tried to sew them back on and hoped for the best.
Next, I wanted to make some fins so I had brought home some chiffon scarves that I use at school for music and movement with the year 1 children. I got an old pair of pants of CBC's (they were in a cull bag) and I cut the cotton material off and left myself with the blue waistband. I tied 6 different scarves to that so they would dangle.
I laid these out on top of a blue petticoat that my sister bought me about 6 years ago and decided I needed more fins, perhaps from my shoulders so I took 3 chiffon scarves in 3 colours and tied them with a knot and I tied them onto large safetypins which I attached to the shoulders.
I made one more which I decided I would attach to my ponytail in the morning.
When I got up in the morning, I donned a blue top and leggings and a blue skirt to make the journey to school and put everything on when I got there.
The final touches were to dust my face with shimmery eye-shadow and I added my new GoryDorky necklace which my sister bought me for my birthday. It looks like soap suds but I decided to don it to represent the final glittery scale that the Rainbow fish has left after he's donated all his beautiful shimmery scales to the other fish.
And the final touch was my Nickat irridescent bubble earrings.
The children that knew the story recognised me instantly. A few thought I was a mermaid or a princess.
It was a hard outfit to wear on a windy day- my scarves went everywhere!
However, that's not the end of things I made this year.
I decided to bite the bullet and make a few examples of simple costumes that could be made out of cardboard.
The first was a Wardrobe!
For a Narnian theme. I was going to make some optional face masks to hang off it for a white witch and a lion but I ran out of time. I still have a wardrobe.
Next, I used an old pizza box (a supermarket one) and I painted a Gingerbread house that could be worn for a simple Hansel and Gretel-themed costume, either alone or with another costume, e.g. witch, lederhosen, dirndl etc. I added string to the top.
The next costume I made was a simple Ladybird costume which could be easily put onto a child should they need a costume. It actually ended up being used by my Deputy Head Teacher.
I had a pair of cardboard pizza bases which were relatively clean so I painted them red during a staff meeting. I then drew black spots on them in a marker.
I then hole-punched the tops to make them into a tabard.
The final touch was (if worn with all black), a head-dress made from red card and some wire from a floral decoration which I bent into antennae
My final contribution to the day was to help Year 3 teachers.
They were all going to come in wearing all black (boring) but didn't know what book to go with. I suspected they were the character of The Dark from the book by Lemony Snicket.
The Dark is personified and Lazlo, the little boy in the book, is really scared of it as he goes through the dark house with his torch. The dark keeps talking as he goes and in the end, he realises, the dark can actually be our friend.
They were all entranced with the idea. To help, I printed 3 mini copies of the book for them to hang round their necks with string and I made them all torches out of card too.
Other great costumes included all of Year 2 who came as Oliver Jeffers' The Crayons, a full blown Gruffalo, Year 5 as Willy Wonka characters, Year 6 as characters from Holes (Louis Sachar). Year 4 are studying the book Varmints at the moment and all came in adorable Varmints costumes with ears, noses and bunny ears!
