Prize-Winning Homemade Glowing Jellyfish Costumes

It all began 8 months prior to Halloween in one of the greatest cities – Vegas.  I had organized a surprise 30th birthday party for my husband in Vegas with 12 of his friends and we went to Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles Love show.  The show was amazing, full of acrobatics, amazing costumes, and then we saw it.  A jellyfish floated across the stage.  My husband leaned over, “That’s it. Our next Halloween costume.”  And so the wheels started turning.

It was relatively simple. A clear plastic umbrella filled with LED lights on the inside of the umbrella, with flowing fabric and lights descending from the edges of the umbrella. It all comes together when you open and close the umbrella creating the effect of a jellyfish swimming through the sea.

We stopped traffic in these costumes – people leaned out of cars to tell us they loved the costumes, everyone walking past us on the streets took a moment and then shouted, “jellyfish!”, and we were in countless photos. I highly recommend this costume – very easy to make, you can make it a couples costume, or you could even do this with a group and be a sea of jellyfish!

Buy the materials:

You will need:

A clear plastic dome shaped umbrella – I found mine through Walmart, made by Totes. It had a silver fabric edge to which I could attach the fabric strips.

Blue LED battery powered Christmas lights

Pink, blue and white strands of electroluminescent (EL) wire to create the glowing tentacles

Shimmery and iridescent fabrics – I choose white, shimmery grey, sparkle white and shimmery purple and blue. For the tentacles you need 1-2 yards of each fabric. At least 3 yards of a white or shimmery grey fabric to cover the dome.

Wide wire lined ribbons in white and sparkles

Zipties (at least 50)

Batteries for the lights

Safety pins (at least 100)

The creation:

The bulk of the weight of the costume will be the battery packs.  Zip tie the battery packs to the metal rods of the umbrella.  The blue LED Christmas lights you loop around the top. The EL wire you can hang down each of the metal rods and then let them droop to the floor.

Tentacles – Cut the fabric strips into 6-8 inch wide strips and attach them to the umbrella edge with two safety pins. It helps to make them different lengths.

Use the large piece of fabric to cover the dome and attach it along the edges of the inside of the umbrella with safety pins.

Heading out on the town!

You should wear something all white to complete the costume. Be sure to head out somewhere where there will be lots of people – you are going to get a lot of attention! We went to two different events and won the “Cool prize” and second place at the other Halloween costume contest.

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