Tim Burton Maleficent

I made this costume for 2019 Halloween. When I went out I received a lot of compliments and everyone loved that it was handmade and different. I came up with the concept for a Halloween costume to blend the villain Maleficent from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty with the style of Tim Burton. I am a huge Tim Burton fan and have loved the styles of his movies. For this look I pulled from the movies Edward scissor hands, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Catwoman from Batman. Edward scissorhand and catwoman had black leather outfits so that inspired me to make my look out of a black pleather material. With this twist on Maleficent’s outfit I wanted to incorporate the thorn bushes which she surrounds her castle to prevent the prince to getting to sleeping beauty. These thorns were black in the movie so black pleather was perfect to make this look. So I ,with the help of my boyfriend, cut out over 300 strips with 20-30 spikes on each strip. I then twisted each strip and put it through the sewing machine. Very carefully I sewed the length of the strip in order to keep it twisted. This was a 3 day time consuming process but love how the results turned out! I wanted to give a fringe effect when I moved with all the hanging thorn vines. I wore all black under the vines so that they would stand out. I added a elastic bands down each arm so that the vines would stay in place. For the head piece, I purchased a pleather Maleficent head piece from Amazon. But I want to put a twist on it so it would look different from other peoples. I added a wire through the top of the horns and made it look like the iconic Tim Burton swirl from Nightmare Before Christmas hill. After having the shape of the swirl I added foil around the wire to make the swirl bigger and blend into the headpiece horns. After creating the base of wire and foil I used black electrical tape to cover the foil. Black electrical tape had the same sheen as the head piece so it matched perfectly! I wanted to incorporate the white stitches from Cat woman’s costume from Tim Burton’s Batman. I found this white rubber string that worked perfectly. So I used a leather needle and stitched the edges of the head piece. Made it look like the costume was being held together by stitches. In Sleeping Beauty Maleficent had a pet raven so I bought a replica ravens skull on Amazon for my necklace. For the makeup I went similar to Edward scissorhands. I wanted dark gaunt eyes so I darkened around each eye. I shadowed under my cheek bones to make me look more deathly skinny. I wore glowing green contact lenses that popped with the dark makeup. For the staff I took a pvc pipe and used a heat gun to bend it and give it more of a stick like look. On the top I curled the end like the nightmare before Christmas hill. I added a remote control puck light in the center. I set the puck light to glow green and had the controller in my pocket so I was able to make it flash and blink and change colors. It was great to have my own lighting when we were walking through the crowd of West Hollywood. I was able to shine the light on my face and really made my green eyes glow. One of my favorite costumes and really proud of it!