Leopard and Ballerina

We were at a Fastelavns party last night and I went as a ballerina while the boyfriend dressed up as a little leopard.

We found some parts of our costumes in stores (my silver leotard was on sale at Monki and I ordered my white tights from Asos while the boyfriend's leopard print pants are actually women's pajama pants from H&M and I found him some leopard print Happy Socks), but I made other essential parts such as the tutu, the leopard mask and the leopard tail. There are many no-sew tutu tutorials online so I just found one that I liked and followed it. The longest part was cutting all the strips of tulle but it was worth it! I used silver and white tulle and tried to keep the white on the bottom layer of the tutu. For the boyfriends costume, I hot glued some leopard print fur/fabric over a cat mask from the craft store and outlined the eyes and painted in the nose with some black acrylic. I don't have a sewing machine so for the tail I cut out a rectangular piece of fabric and I used my hot glue gun (best thing ever) to glue the good sides of the fabric together and turned it inside out. I added some wire to the inside of the fabric so that we could shape the tail a little bit. And that was our costumes!

Normally I am not really into costume parties, but I had a lot of fun putting our outfits together over the last few weeks. What about you? Do you like putting your own costumes together or do you prefer buying something at the store?