Make a Jenny Jellyfish Costume

It’s Book Character Day tomorrow at my granddaughter’s elementary school. Last week her mom handed her a stack of books and said pick out your favorite character. She did. Jenny Jellyfish.

A  quick search turned up some pretty cute jellyfish costumes. So we set out to make one. Her mom bought the fabric, mesh ribbon, sparkly duct tape last weekend and ordered an umbrella and silver leggings. She found a perfect turquoise top with sparkles all over and some blue battery operated lights. And dropped them all off at my house. One thing we didn’t find were jelly shoes!  You may want to add that to your list…

You’ll want  a clear child’s umbrella. She found this one on Amazon.

These are not ingredients…but I’m using my ‘recipe plugin’ so you can print what and how to….;)

I began by putting the umbrella through the shade of a floor lamp. This held the umbrella at a good height and allowed me to work standing up.

First she found an 8 foot streaming door curtain. Sorry, I didn’t take a picture before I took it out…

I think she found it at the dollar store. It was 8 feet and I wanted it 42 inches long.  But decided to just cut it in half at 48″.  I was able to cut it in half and make two lengths out of one  curtain and have enough to go all the way around the umbrella.

It was tedious but I laid it out smoothly on my counter. Measured 48 inches from the top and while it was laying smoothly on my counter, I cut a 36 inch piece of duct tape and gently laid it across the streamers at 48″. Then I cut right above the tape. So, now, I had two pieces to work with. Waste not, want not.

I used duct tape to attach the streamer curtain to the bottom edge of the umbrella.

Next I cut the fabric into strips. I cut from one edge almost to the other edge, but I didn’t cut all the way through. I wanted to leave an edge attached to tape the whole fabric to the umbrella, rather than each individual strip! I had two yards of fabric, but I could have used 2.5. It was enough to go around almost twice with the aqua sheer fabric. I didn’t worry that a short section only had one layer of sheer fabric.

I once again used duct tape to attach.

I had duct tape holding everything on to the umbrella. Not too pretty….

So I went over the ugly tape with some pretty tape 🙂

Much better. And to further cover the ugly duct tape, I scrunched up some aqua mesh and hot glued it around the umbrella covering any other unsightly tape….

Mind  you, you cannot hot glue on a plastic umbrella…but you can on ugly duct tape 🙂

I held it in place with hair clips while it dried. Once dried it was very sturdy!  I was happy about that.

A string of battery operated lights are on the inside for added charm…

and some big blue eyes, completed the look. I used typing paper and construction paper to make the eyes and painted the black pupils.

Tonight we have one happy little Jenny Jellyfish book character who can hardly wait for morning!

So now, are you ready to make a jellyfish? You can do it…

I can’t wait for the parade either! Looks different in the dark…..

Parade Time….