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Vanessa
"What a lovely little bride I'll make, my dear, I'll look divine!
Things are working out according to my ultimate design!
Soon I'll have that little mermaid, and the ocean will be mine!"
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Vanessa (Ursula in disguise)
The Little Mermaid
Made by: fhfhgf30 on eBay, altered by me
Appeared: Otakon 2023
Status: Active |
I decided to go to Otakon 2023 at almost the last minute, and the main reason I decided to go was to spend time with my friends. As such, my main motivation in picking my costumes was to match my friends. When I initially made a post on Facebook, waffling about my decision, my high school friend Lani replied with "If you do go, you wanna be my Ariel? I'm gonna make Ursula". And that prompted me to reply in all caps, not just because Lani and I never use inside voices around each other (ALTHOUGH WE DON'T) but ALSO because Lani had commented on my initial "retiring" post back in January with the equivalent of "me too". And when I CALLED her on this she said that Melissa McCarthy stole her face and she was determined to take it back. Which...now that I type it all out, actually sounds like it should be a movie of its own. That being said, Aki Reiniibow already had an Ariel costume, and if two cosplaying together is fun, three is even better! Now if Reinii had said she wasn't up for it, then I would've borrowed her costume, or gotten one of my own, but since she was amenable, I figured, why not take the opportunity to be Lani's character's human disguise? It seemed like an easy enough costume.
Easy enough, sure, but Vanessa isn't exactly a popular costume, being both a villain and on the screen (in this costume) for approximately a minute (and it's not like she's in the movie in other costumes for much longer.) There were some *really* nice ones available, but I wasn't looking to drop big bucks on this costume, either, and not just out of cheapness. Vanessa wears this on the beach, so it seems more to me like it's supposed to be more like a peasant dress, rather than a princess dress. Finally I found a dress on eBay that seemed "good enough", and ordered it quickly so that I'd have it in time for Otakon.
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I should have known better--any time you see the same image across multiple listings, they stole it from elsewhere, and it's a gamble as to what you're actually going to get. I knew I would get cheap when I bought cheap, but what I wasn't expecting was a dress that was too big (my own fault, I did gain weight but maybe not as much as I thought), terrible fabric quality, which I could have lived with, too long and, most egregious of all in my opinion, THE WRONG COLOR. There wasn't time to try to get another one, and all of my usual seamstress friends were busy with their own last minute Otakon preparations, so there was nothing for it; I would have to try to dye and hem the dress myself.
I bought a bottle of sapphire blue RIT synthetic dye, and was surprised when the dress almost *immediately* turned the shade I wanted it to! I tried taking it out immediately, but since the largest pot I had still wasn't quite big enough, the color had a splotchy, almost "tie dyed" look that, while pretty, wasn't at all what I was going for. I tried putting it back in a few more times and stirring the pot, but I didn't want to leave it in too long and have it get way darker than I wanted, so even the finished product is less even than I'd like. The hemming isn't too great either; I had never hemmed something quite so big before, and I had to pin it on myself, so it's not as even as it should be. Then I realized they had forgotten the "modesty panel" that goes behind the lacing at the neckline, so I used some of what I had cut off from hemming for that. And Reinii pinned it in the back so I had at least something of a waist. All things considered I think my alterations were an improvement over the initial product, and really, no one was going to focus on me when I was with such an amazing Ursula and Ariel. And on the plus side, the singing seashell necklace that came out with the new live action movie is just *perfect*. |
Photos
CGs and Fanart
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