How to Make a Fancy Nancy

Marah poses as Fancy Nancy with her little "boyfriend" Jack

March is National Reading Awareness month and so Marah's school has been doing several fun activities throughout the month in order to increase literacy and a love of books. If you know me very well at all you will know that I LOVE books and am a strong believer in the importance of instilling a love of literature in my children.

Last Friday the school held a "dress as your favorite storybook character" day and I was so pleased when Marah announced that she wanted to dress up as Fancy Nancy. My mom has bought Marah two Fancy Nancy books and we love them for a few reasons: the illustrations are adorable, there are many fun, interesting, new words like exquisite, extraordinary, ecstatic, iridescent, as well as a few French words, plus... she likes to be fancy. What girl wouldn't love that?!

So here is where my love for crafting comes in quite handy! Everything I desired to make this costume was already in my home. I didn't have to trek to the store or spend any extra money! To start, we raided the dress up bin and found a lacy, pink, vintage prom dress that I wouldn't have a problem fancy-ing up and got going.

Marah and I collaborated on this costume. She gave me ideas for where to put jewels, what color ribbons to use, how to decorate the headband and shoes, and I helped her with her hair and (of course) did all the hot gluing to complete the ensemble. We had a great time working together and we were both so proud of the finished product!

Not only did Marah feel beautiful and get LOTS of compliments on her costume (it was really one of the best in the school), but now we have a costume ready for Halloween! Score! Here are some photos of the process as well as the actual event:

Marah lined up a pattern of jewels for her head piece.

Ribbons MUST go in rainbow order, don't you know?

Hair pulled in to a high ponytail and rolled up with sponge curlers for the night.

Isn't she fancy?

I added beads to the ends of her rainbow ribbons, pink bows and jewels to her shoes, and feathers and jewels to her headband. The striped socks were the perfect accessory to pull this look together :)

Parading her fancy self through the gym.

Even the boys came along!

Marah with all the girls in her class.