Nutcracker Ballet Costumes

How did we come up with these Nutcracker ballet costumes? After searching for unique couples’ costumes, we were coming up with zilch that had never been done around our area – that is until somebody did a post about ballet practice for their child’s upcoming Nutcracker ballet. I saw a picture and it sparked the idea. I knew it would be an eye catcher because it was something that we’ve never seen anyone here do.

The ballerina suit was the easiest part of the costumes. I added my own details, such as ballet looking flats from a local store and of course tights. Next on to the fun design of the Nutcracker!

The Nutcracker was easy to make. I started by looking for the red suit jacket at a local thrift store and was thrilled that the first store I went in not only had that but also a gold-braided belt that I cut in pieces and used for the shoulder details and the sword holder. I simply cut and hot glued in the places that I saw fit.

I rolled the shoulder pieces at the ends for more detail. I then bought black poster board and the black fur fabric for the hat. Spray adhesive and more hot glue did the trick. I also used the gold buckle from the braided belt for the top of the hat. It added a nice detail dead center. For the rest of the jacket details I bought a small amount of gold trim and 6 basic black buttons. I Hot glued the trim on and needle and thread for the buttons. I bought a small amount of the shiny gold fabric and bunched and hot glued it on the backside of the jacket lapels.

The sword was from a dollar store. The beard was a sheet of white fur in the craft section at the craft store. I glued that to the white shirt collar that my husband had on under the red jacket. We had the collar standing up to get the beard closest to his chin. The crazy hair came from the craft store. It was sold in the doll hair section. The sections of hair were cheap and came in bags. I think I used 2 or 3 bags. I teased and hair sprayed (a lot) each section then hot glued it on the inside of the hat. Just a pair of black slacks that my husband owned and black dress shoes finished off the costume.

The make-up took more time than I expected, but that was probably because it was the first time and we wanted every detail to look perfect. We started with a foundation for a smooth look and then completely crayoned in the eyebrows and mustache. For a short bit we were concerned that it was looking cheesy when we were adding the white under his eyes, but we kept layering and the end result looked awesome! We used black eye pencil, white Halloween face paint, red lipstick, and the Halloween red and black face crayons. We pulled up a few pictures of real wooden nutcrackers for face details.

The guests at the party we went to loved our Nutcracker ballet costumes theme! All night the guests asked how we came up with the idea. We are considering dressing up again to go to local bar costume contests this year.

All in all the Nutcracker was worth the effort, was cheap and easy to make and will forever be one of our best. This year will be hard to top! The Nutcracker ballet costumeswill and did have people CRACKING up!

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