This is the most impractical dress for a dancer. I can only move my legs from the knees down. It's great (Surprise not really) But damn do I feel pretty in this costume... too bad I'm too big for it currently :[

Construction deets:
I started with a commercial pattern that was the only mermaid style dress that I could find and made a mockup with it. From there, I altered the mock up accordingly to make the dress work for Ninian. I lost weight while working on the costume so I did the mock up twice. I actually kept the train in the pattern, even though it's not in the original art work for Ninian. I really just have a thing for trains in costumes and dresses. The dress is all one piece, with the longer, dark color being underneath, and the shorter, light color being attached at a seam under the shoulder piece. The fabrics I used were the crepe side of a crepe back satin for the upper dress, and the lower dress is a heavy couture satin that I special ordered from Joanns. It was super expensive, but I loved the color so a friend suggested that I make the part of the underdress that is unseen out of a cheaper fabric, which is what I did. It also cuts back on the weight since that satin is kind of heavy.

The shoulder piece, collar, and armband are all made from leather. The brown parts are a solid piece of 6oz veg-tan leather, dyed with watered down leather dye. For the gold parts, I made a pattern with foamie, traced them, cut them out of 4 oz leather, and then painted them with Meltonian leahter spray in gold, then sealed them. Finally, they were glued on to the brown pieces with leather weld and are secured together with snaps.

The rest is pretty straight forward. The gems are all resin cast. A lot of the little details are made from worbla. I need to remake a few of the pieces since they were rushed the first time. The gold belt I made twice, since the first one was too heavy and it broke before I could wear it. The beads for the second one were made from Fimo light clay then spray painted. It still has problems, but not as many