DIY Queen of Hearts Costume Tutorial
I have always loved the Alice in Wonderland stories. Now that my girls are getting older - they’re starting to get into them too. When my 10 year old decided that she wanted to be the Queen of Hearts I was so excited! What a fun costume to make!
I thought long and hard in order to come up with something that would be fairly easy and quick to make, but still look like I had spent a bunch of time on it. I’m totally in love with how the costume turned out. I’ve broken the tutorial down into the five parts of the costume so you can use any of the sections to mix and match your own version of it.
Heart Tutu
The tried and true tutu has served me well over many years of costuming. It’s incredibly easy to take a basic tutu and add embellishments too - which is what I did for this Queen of Hearts costume. If you haven’t made a tutu before - start with my post on how to make a tutu. Since the signature colors of the Queen of Hearts are black, white, and red - I opted to do stripes of each color.
What You’ll Need
- Tulle in black, white, and red (about 2 yards of each)
- Elastic (enough to fit around the waist)
- Red felt
- Hot glue gun and glue
- Scissors (get some fabric only ones and forbid your kids from using them for paper)
- Small piece of cardboard
- Needle and thread (or sewing machine)
Begin this step by making your tutu. We did a fairly short tutu for this costume because it’s a bit more comfortable to wear. If you want to go longer - double the amount of tulle in each color that you purchase.
Then use your cardboard and cut out a heart to be your tracer. Take your red felt and trace out as many hearts as you can squeeze onto a sheet. Cut them out carefully.
I liberally sprinkled the hearts onto the tutu and secured them with hot glue. I love working with tulle because it takes to hot glue like a boss. That’s it! The tutu is ready to rock.
Card Crown
One of the most iconic things about the Queen of Hearts is her crown. I really wanted to work a little top hat into this costume, but I also wanted some actual cards to be in there. So I compromised and made a little top hat out of cards. I secured everything onto a red satin headband because pinning things onto my active girl’s head just doesn’t work. I like costumes that are trick-or-treating friendly.
What You’ll Need
- Deck of cards
- Hot glue gun and glue
- Red satin headband
- Heart gems or stickers (for embellishments)
- Red and silver pipe cleaners (to hide the base glue)
The first step to making the crown is to glue the top hat together. To start I fanned out some cards and glued them together. I kept adding to the circle until I had enough to form a little hat.
I discovered that because I had purchased cards that were lightly coated in plastic - they did not want to bend. So I hot glued them together and then rubber banded them for a while to make sure they “remembered” the shape they were supposed to be making.
To form the base of the cards - simply place several cards randomly in a stack and glue them all together.
Now take the bottom of your stack of cards and glue it to the top of the headband.
Then glue the top hat (with rubber bands removed) to the top of the little stack.
I didn’t love the little bead of glue that ran around the top so I added a little twist of pipe cleaners to disguise it.
The crown really needed a front piece so I took one extra card and added some foam heart stickers and a heart gem I had laying around my craft supplies. Then I glued this single card to the front of the headband top hat.
Card Neck Ruff
You definitely can’t be the Queen of Hearts without some sort of big neck ruff! I thought it’d look cool to make it out of cards. Turns out that cards are a bit heavy and unwieldy, but eventually I got it to work.
What You’ll Need
- Deck of cards
- Large sheet of craft foam (red or black would be best)
- Large bowl
- Pencil
- Hot glue gun and glue
- Stapler
- Red ribbon
- Hole puncher
- Scissors
To start out I took the sheet of foam (I used blue because I had it on hand - wouldn’t do that again because I ended up needing to cover up the blue with red felt) and a large bowl and outlined the edge of it onto the foam.
Next, I cut out the indent where the bowl was and rounded the other edges.
The next step after cutting your shape is to get gluing! Overlap your cards slightly as you secure them. You’ll want to make two layers of cards. Go completely around the outside first, then glue on the second inner layer.
The cards ended up being so heavy that to make the center stay put - I actually put a few staples in. I opted to cover the back side in felt both to cover up the blue, but also to protect little necks from staple ends.
Here you can see where I used a regular hole punch to make a small hole on either side of the front in order to string a ribbon through to secure the whole she-bang when it’s around the neck.
And here’s a shot of the back…I ended up lining it with red felt. I just used scraps that I had around so it’s not very pretty. It doesn’t seem to matter though because all you see is some red when the neck ruff is actually on.
And here’s a shot of the completed neck ruff.
Heart T-Shirt
This heart t-shirt added just the perfect extra touch to this costume. I used a tank top because our Halloween temperatures are still in the 90’s, but this could be modified to a short or long sleeve depending on your climate.
What You’ll Need
- Black tank top
- Paper
- Scissors
- Small brush
- Glitter puff paint in red
- Wax paper
- Cookie sheet
Begin by tracing a large heart out of paper. I like the trick of folding a piece of paper in half and cutting half the heart along the crease line (makes for a nice symmetrical heart.) Then take that heart shape and place it on your shirt wherever you like. I didn’t secure my heart down because I was just using it to get a quick outline.
First, I grabbed some wax paper and placed a piece between the front and back of the shirt in order to prevent the puff paint bleeding through. I also put the shirt on a cookie sheet so I could easily move it out of the way while it dried without messing up the paint.
Then, I took my red glitter puff paint and carefully traced a line along the outside of the heart. Then I removed the paper and drew lines back and forth with the puff paint (you’ll use a small brush to paint these lines flat.)
Now paint the lines into one big solid blob of a heart. Don’t worry if it looks white instead of red. Puff paint changes color as it dries (it usually darkens.) I opted for a glitter version so it really looks white. I also added two more little hearts freehand just to give it a little something more.
Heart Scepter
What You’ll Need
- White tulle (1/2 yard or so)
- Scissors
- Red and white felt
- Dowel rod
- Silver pipe cleaners
- Hot glue gun and glue
To get the scepter started I cut out a heart from cardboard and then used it to trace onto the red felt. You’ll need two of the large red felt hearts (you’ll glue the cardboard in the middle of them.)
Next, glue the cardboard heart onto the dowel rod.
Grab that tulle and cut it into small strips. You’ll glue the tulle onto the cardboard heart all along the edges. It should stick out like a ruff and you’ll use the other red felt hearts to cover it up so don’t worry if it doesn’t look very tidy underneath.
Now you’re ready to glue the red felt hearts onto the top of the tulle. After you glue one large red heart to front and back, cut out two smaller red hearts and then two even smaller white hearts. Layer them on each side and hot glue them down.
Lastly, you’ll wrap the dowel rod with pipe cleaners. I just wrapped them into a coil and secured one end with hot glue. Continue all the way to the end of the dowel rod.
We added striped leggings and patent shoes and some red lipstick (in a heart shape!)