Cool DIY Maleficent Costume for a Man

This is my first time attempting to make a Maleficent Costume.

I have been very eager to do this for a long time. I was very excited that I finally get to dress up as her, as she is one of my favourite Disney villains. I recall it was last year I saw Maleficent’s costume sold in a store. It was badly made and sold at an unreasonable price. Better to DIY, I thought, especially since I loved going through the process of designing and making the dress.

Actually, the first thing I made was her staff. I made it long ago before I started on the costume. I simply used a wooden stick, modelling clay and Styrofoam ball. This time, I’ve decided to create another version of the staff, a light up version.

It was indeed quite a challenge to try to match and get as correct as possible to the Sleeping Beauty movie. I did lots of research on her costume, and on other people’s interpretations and versions of the evil fairy. I’ve also looked at movie clips and stills where Maleficent appears. As I watched the movie, I pressed the pause button many times to study her carefully. Furthermore, I’ve looked at some figurines of Maleficent I collected in the past, and images of figurines from the Internet. I also have a doll of her from The Great villains Collection in 1992 that I’ve used as my main inspiration/reference. It is, in my opinion, the best version portrayal of the Villainess.

People say that my costume was very accurate, and I’ve had people ask me how I made the staff (the non-light up one).

I began with designing and developing sketches of the overall look. For instance, it would be hard for me to walk if I made the spikes at the bottom of her dress go pass my feet to the floor, so I made only a few of the tips touch the ground. A few days later, I went and bought the fabrics. I had some pictures of Maleficent saved on my phone so that when picked out the colors.

It is the day before Halloween, there wasn’t enough time for me to carefully plan out and design the horns. I have been studying Maleficent for a long time, drawing her horns again was easy for me. I quickly drew four horns, sewed them together and stuffed them with lots of cotton pieces.

On Halloween, I used the old staff I made long ago, it doesn’t light up, the sphere was just a Styrofoam ball painted green, but the overall effect still looked great. It matched with the dress very nicely. Before starting the light up staff, I took some time to figure out how to create a circuit with LED bulbs and the placement of the LED light bulbs, the battery holder and the switch. For the stick, I used a pipe tick enough to contain a single double A battery. I used two double A batteries, one stacked on top of one another. For the sphere, I happen to find a yellow ball in the dollar store. I thought it would be the perfect fit. I took it home and dug a hole at the bottom for the LED light bulbs to go in. Finally, I glued the plastic sphere onto the staff and everything is completed.