Elsa - Frozen - Bodice Tutorial 

When I started this costume I knew that I wanted it to look accurate to the movie. Originally I was looking all over the internet for some kind of sequin fabric that would look right, but I didn't find what I was looking for. So after sequin fabric was a bust I thought about buying sequins and attaching them myself, however it still wouldn't look like the movie version.

So eventually I realized the best way to get her icy scale look was to use clear vinyl and make scales to glue onto the bodice.

I started off by making a bodice out of a light blue satin using the simplicity pattern 5006, but you could use any basic bodice pattern.

Then came the fun part, the scales. I started out with a yard of 8 gauge clear vinyl and cut it into thirds. Then using Lumiere paint  by Jacquard I painted the vinyl three different colors of blue. The colors I used were pearlescent white, pearlescent blue, and hi lite blue, which I purchased through Joann.com. 

After I had painted the three pieces of vinyl, I began cutting them into long strips of varying widths. From there I took the strips, cut them into rectangles, and then made them curved rectangles.

 

At first I was attaching the scales to the bodices using E6000, but it was taking forever to truly make any progress. I ended up taking some parchment paper and spray E6000 to make sections of scales. To make these sections I sprayed glue onto the paper and started arranging scales. Once the sections were dry I used the normal E6000 and attached it to the bodice.

 

Once I had the bodice covered in scales I added rhinestones of various sizes using E6000. Here is what the final product looked like: