Ice Queen Costume DIY

My Halloween party is this weekend and somehow I've overbooked myself to the point that I'm not positive I won't show up naked to my own party. My personal need to DIY everything sometimes has its limitations (i.e. free time), but I'm sure I'll sacrifice sleep one night this week and bust something out. Last year was the first time I threw a Halloween party and guys, Halloween parties as adults is the SHIT. You don't need to wear a slutty costume to an overcrowded bar in order to get dressed up and participate in the holiday. Given that my birthday is in the middle of October, there was no way I was going to get people to come over for both a birthday party and a Halloween party. So I did the next best thing: a Halloween themed birthday party. Thank goodness my birthday was book-ended by a wedding one weekend and a baby shower the next weekend last year or else I never may have come up with this idea. After deciding to actually have a party, the next hurdle was what I wanted to be. If I wanted to go all out, which why would you not, I knew I'd want to be something that either had crazy makeup, a big crazy outfit or some kind of wig. I give you, the Ice Queen.

Honestly, this was a relatively simple costume. I bought a bolt of white tulle and small roll of sparkly tulle off Amazon (shocking I know) and tried to follow Lauren Conrad's tooth fairy costume instructions, although I'll admit they weren't super clear. As you can see, mine didn't turn out nearly as well and kind of fell apart as the night went on. Underneath I just wore a simple white tank top and nude leggings from Forever 21 and for my shoes, I just re-purposed a pair of strappy silver sandals I had coincidentally wore for the aforementioned wedding two weeks prior.

The biggest "DIY" part was the crown, which honestly was thrown together using hot glue, glitter, pearls and fake snow. The benefit of keeping a craft bin, or many craft bins in my case, is that I already had the supplies laying around. If you're interested, there are some DIY tutorials on YouTube you could follow or you could take my approach and just wing it. I basically just made a bunch of icicles by layering lines of hot glue onto some parchment paper. Before the glue was dry, I sprinkled silver glitter and fake snow on top and included a few pearl beads spaced out on the icicles. Be sure to vary the lengths of the icicles. I can't remember if I used a piece of wire or an old headband to make the base (I think it was wire), but either way, you make the half circle base of the crown by layering glue onto a more structured object (like a headband or wire). Then I just hot glued the icicles straight up in the front portion of the crown base. It honestly took no time at all and came together really amazingly. Be warned, you may need to add a lot of glue at the base of the icicles when you add them to the headband in order to keep them sturdy and standing straight up. But the beauty of hot glue is that you can just keep adding and it only improves the look of the crown.

Lastly came the makeup. I did watch a lot of YouTube tutorials before attempting the makeup, but honestly just ended up doing my own thing the day of. I used white face paint to try and lighten my skin tone. I also used silver eye shadow to create a shimmery illusion for my skin. This was probably the most annoying part since the Wet & Wild eye shadow I was using got super patchy when layered on the face makeup. For the snow on my face, I honestly just globbed on eyelash glue, took a handful of fake snow and slapped it on my face. I just kept layering until an area was covered. I also used the eyelash glue to attach pearls and rhinestones over the fake snow. Lastly, I applied a layer of white face paint over a pair of fake eyelashes and then used eyelash glue to adhere more fake snow to the lashes themselves. Then I applied as usual to my eyes. I did not use any other mascara, since I wanted to create a washed out look. For my lipstick, I applied silver glitter to some chapstick. Probably not the healthiest when later consumed while drinking....

I should mention the fur was just a piece of fabric I've had laying around forever (I meant to make a pillow cover with it years ago and just never got around to it). If I wanted to spend more money on the costume, which i didn't, I would have gotten a faux fur blanket from Target and used that instead.

And there you have it! What looks like a crazy costume was actually pretty simple to make. I'd say my biggest piece of advice when DIY'ing your own costume is firstly, utilize what you already own. There is no sense spending a ton of money on something you'll wear for one night. And secondly, it doesn't have to be perfect. Yes, my dress fell apart. Yes, my foundation was patchy. But who cares?! I got the desired effect and I think that's good enough.

Huge shout out to everyone who came last year and brought their A-game. We had Stevie Knicks (like the singer and the basketball team), Weird Al Yankovic (accordion included), Medusa, Merlin the wizard, Georgie (from IT), Darth Vader...They were all so good!

And in case you want to see the crown re-purposed: