Coolest Nightmare Before Christmas Costume

What could be better than Halloween? Combine it with Christmas! I wanted to pay a true homage to the characters by making my own costumes.

Originally I started making my Sally costume completely from scratch by taking my measurements and trying to create my own pattern, but my measurements got off and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it correctly that way.

So I found a bargain dress with a similar cut and shape and decided to patch on the pieces of Sally’s dress pattern. I included close-up pictures to see the stitching better – I hand-sewed all the patches on (unfortunately my sewing machine was out of commission) and then added the yarn for decoration, so the yarn isn’t actually holding any of the pieces together.

I traced out all the shapes on a piece of muslin to use as a guide for where I wanted each piece and its approximate size. I used teal Ben Nye Liquid Paint for my upper body and arms and found matching tights, and wore a store-bought burgundy wig.

Although I’m primarily entering my Sally costume, I also hand-painted Jack’s jacket (I included a picture with him too so you can see the costumes together), which we had to rip some seam out of to make it fit him lol, made the bat bow-tie out of cardboard and attached it with a strip of velcro and painted his face with Ben Nye cream makeup.

The costumes took a lot of work but I was very pleased with the finished product and received compliments on it, so it was very much worth it!