Fancy Dress = Fancy Dresses

My fancy dress career began aged about 7, when I won the school fete fancy dress competition. Most little girls choose to dress up as fairies or princesses. I went as a fisherman. To this day I still have no idea why.

Since then however I’ve been a ‘funky’ witch, a pirate, an American beauty queen, a cowgirl, Cat Woman, a bat, a zombie, and a white rabbit. However, the cherry on top of that very eclectic cake has got to be the cave woman.

I’m not sure what it says about my maturity and how far I’ve come since the school fete days but for my 21^st birthday I set a caveman/woman theme and found that it’s amazing what you can do with a brown sheet of fabric.

Armed with a good handul of safety pins my friends and I set about creating out tribal outfits, and we came up with surprisingly different creations. There was Holly, the Greek Toga cave girl, Lianna the topshop cave girl and me, the, um, I’ve been living in a cave, cave girl.

Once again I have to sing the praises of the waist belt. There’s no way these dresses would’ve come together had it not been for carefully selected black and brown belts like this.

Also this particular fancy dress project wouldn’t have worked quite so well without our accessories – chunky necklaces, beaded bracelets, and….spears?

It might not be a fashion DIY tip, but to make the spears we got a bit of bamboo from the garden centre, covered cardboard triangles in tin foil and then stuck the whole thing together. Again Blue Peter, I’m just a phone call away.

So whilst this blog is in vast danger of turning into how-to-make-a-fancy-dress costume, what I really mean is that while it feels fantastic to make something ‘proper’ like this, it’s equally good to get a sheet of brown material, dance about with your friends and make something a cave girl would be proud to have in her wardrobe.