How I Made My Mad Rabbit Cosplay

12/8/2015

This cosplay is now up for sale on my Etsy shop.

I had been nagging Danielle to do a cosplay with me since the beginning of the year, and she agreed, and then she finally made a decision on a theme! We went with Alice in Wonderland, because she wanted to do a rave style Cheshire Cat. Carley would be our tiny Alice. I ended up with the idea of doing a character mashup between the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter.

I tried to pull them together with a rave theme, so I took the red jacket and yellow vest on the rabbit and designed a red vest with coattails. When I think rave, I think glitter, beads, leg warmers and tutus. So I chose to go with a teal and burgundy tutu under a black tutu!

The top hat was obviously required, but because I was dead set on having a cake under my hat, the ears were going to be tricky. They had to be attached to my head, not the hat. So the obvious solution was big, long, floppy ears! And then I designed a little teapot shaped purse to keep my things in!

The first thing I made was the cake. Because I was really freaking excited. I used a foam beer cozie from Micheal's, but I'm sure regular craft foam would work just as well. I cut the cozie in half, on an angle to make a topsy turvy cake. I cut a small strip out of the one half to make it a smaller layer.

I was upset with how I re-glued the top half. It didn't maintain a round shape. If I had made it with craft foam, it would have been thinner and kept its shape better, plus since then, I've learned about heat forming, which also would have been a helpful skill at the time. I glued the layers together to get a basic cake shape.

I used thick globs of hot glue around the edges to make a dripping icing texture. I added my little battery operated candle and then painted! I was unhappy with the icing edges because the glue wasn't as even as I wanted.

So I sat there with a lighter, re-heating the glue and smoothing it out again with a knife. To smooth out the edges even further, I primed with wood glue and sanded it down a handful of times. And THEN I painted it. Again....

The next thing I worked on was the tutu. Pretty simple. I made two tutus (heh, two tutus...) because of the layers. I made one black and one burgundy and teal. They both were made from 1/2" elastic, sewn together in a loop to fit my hips. I tied lengths of 6" Tulle Ribbon to the elastic.

The best way to do this, is double the length you want the tutu to be, fold the piece of tulle in half, and loop around the elastic, pulling tight. The original tutus were wayyyy too fluffy and my coattails stuck out an odd angle, so I cut out A LOT of the tulle to thin it down.

Next, I made the top hat. My thought process was "go big or go home." I found some tutorials, and then used the basic idea to make my own hat. I used a large sheet of cardboard and cut slits in it to make the hat. After curving out the strips and taping it in a circle, I glued a circle of cardboard to the top. This evens out the top and keeps the slits at equal distance as support.

A huge misktake I made in this process, was fitting my head. The cardboard fit just fine on my head when it was just cardboard, but when i started gluing the brim to the base, it became less flexible and was way too tight and hardly fit on my head. The brim is just a very large circle I cut out of currogated plastic. I needed a sturdy base to hold the weight of the entire hat with just my fingertips as I would be taking the hat on and off all day.

Despite it being uncomfortably tight, I proceeded to cover the hat in fabric. I had some black fleece left over from a project I was working on and worked with that. Yay a hat!!

*One week later* ... Nope I hate it. I was home alone one night and slowly recovering from an all day hangover. I got up and needed to be productive, so I completely destroyed my hat, pulled it back down to the basic parts. I cut it down to about half size, and found a better tutorial for making a curved brim.

Basically the same method, but the brim is glued to the curved edge of the hat. This was VERY time consuming because the glue had to dry completely for the corrugated plastic to keep its shape. I also remembered to widen the brim to allow for the glue, wig, and ear room.

I used a different method for the top, because the strips from the first hat made the edges seem to sharp rather than rounded out. I followed this tutorial at around 1:31. Luckily, Riley got new bed sheets and I got to use the silky material from his old ones for my hat!

HELL-O! That is much better.

The only things I sewed on this project was my vest and the bunny ears. The first bunny ears I made were too short and looked ridiculous. I needed new faux fur, and when we were shopping one day I found this amazingly soft blanket. I needed it. It was two sided and my mind couldn't help but think "Nidalee?" So with two projects in mind, I bought the super soft blanket for less than $20! A quick stop at value village got me a pink scarf and burgundy bed sheets for the inner ears and the vest - all for $6.

The ears were easy, just a quick patterned shape of bunny ears cut out twice on the fur and the scarf. The ears are 15" in length for my costume. Sewed, ironed and glued to the wig.

The vest was a little weird for me. I didn't use a pattern, and because of the style I wanted, you can tell. But on the otherhand, it looks pretty good for freehand work.