Pams Party & Practical Tips: How to make a Lapis Lazuli Cosplay (at the last minute)

DIY Cosplay, Steven Universe, Lapis Lazuli

Recently we had a big anime convention in our area. My daughter and her friends decided to dress up as several of the characters from the show Steven Universe. She chose to go as Lapis Lazuli. She waited a bit to long before she ordered her outfit, which was the blue dress that Lapis normally wears. She found out late evening two days before the convention that there was some miscommunication on her part, and that her dress was not going to arrive in time. She had to come up with Plan B, and put something together quickly. Luckily her character also wears a baseball outfit on the show. The day before the convention we went shopping, and found all of the pieces that we would need to make a Lapis Lazuli costume at the last minute.

Disclosure: Links in this post are affiliate links. If you decide to purchase something it does not affect your cost, but I will get a small commission from Amazon.

We were able to find many of the items at local stores in the area. The shorts, white tennis shoes, and white hat were at Walmart. If you are not able to find any, here are links to the shoes, and hat on Amazon.

We had trouble finding a white baseball shirt with blue sleeves, so we made one. We bought our white tee from the dollar store, and blue fabric paint. We found the paint at Michaels and used a coupon, but if you don't have one nearby, I linked the one we used. She painted the tee shirt sleeves, the hat rim, the shoes, and the socks. (more on the socks in a minute)

While her paint job on the shoes was not perfect, you could not tell when they were on her feet.

You may notice in her picture above that her face and body are light blue. For her face she used Snazaroo in turquoise. Instead of using the body paint on her arms and legs too, she went with another option We bought two pairs of white tights from Target, and a bottle of Rit Dye in Teal. She dyed both pairs of tights, using the directions on the package. She wore one of the tights on her legs, and made the other pair for her arms into gloves. (pictured above) They look kind of weird here, but they did look nice once her fingers were in them. The stitches would have looked prettier if she used a sewing machine, but instead she stitched them by hand. First she traced her hands onto paper, and made a cardboard pattern. She made sure to leave a little bit of space between each finger to allow for the stitching once the pattern was in place. She then turned the tights inside out, and cut the very end of the toes with fabric scissors. She placed the cardboard pattern inside the tights,and began sewing around it. When finished, she carefully removed the cardboard. Once she had a fit she liked, she trimmed the excess fabric between the fingers, and turned the tights right side out. We had also picked up a pack of fake fingernails at the dollar store. She painted them with dark blue nail polish and when dry, hot glued them onto each of the glove fingers. She attached them while she was wearing the gloves to get them in the correct location.

Now about the knee socks that were supposed to be part of the costume. Since we still had her batch of Rit dye made up, she dyed the socks blue. The socks of the costume are supposed to be a darker blue than the skin color, but even with coloring them twice, they were not dark enough. It was too late to go out and buy another bottle of dye in a darker color, so she thought she would use fabric paint and paint them. In theory that was a good idea, in reality, it did not work out so well because the paint did not dry in time. The socks were still too damp to wear as they were leaving for the convention. We were very happy with how well her cosplay turned out, and even buying everything last minute it did not cost a lot to make.

Once there, she had a great time!