Coolest Homemade Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts Costumes

The idea for the Homemade Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts Costumes came from Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”, starring Johnny Depp, and premiering in March 2010. We happened to see the trailer for the movie and pictures from it online and based our costumes on them. Both costumes were completely homemade by us.

A big focus of the Mad Hatter’s costume is his hat. To make the hat, we found a cowboy hat, which we used for the brim, and a small garbage can, which we attached to the cowboy hat’s brim. We covered the entire thing in fabric from a fabric store. Accessories for the hat were all handmade out of wire and jewels. The “3/5” tag was part of a cardboard pizza box; we then burned the edges for an aged look.

The jacket, the vest, the pants, the collared shirt, the shoes and the bag were all found at a thrift store. All of these items were drastically altered to fit the Mad Hatter’s style by using a sewing machine, spray paint, fire, and sand paper.

The Queen of Hearts started as a plain velvet black dress from the thrift store. We then built up this dress with different fabrics from the fabric store, spray paint, fabric paint, and jewels. The red and gold skirt parts were sewn on with a sewing machine and hand painted.

The gold crown and scepter stick were handmade also. The crown was a sauce can which we altered and spray-painted. The scepter consisted of a candle-stick, heart-shaped cookie cutter, and jewels, which were all spray-painted and hot-glued together. All makeup and hair were also done by us.