Coraline 'Raincoat' Costume

Coraline 'Raincoat' Costume was completed June 2009. Costume was completely put together by myself.

Why I wanted to make it:

I love stop motion animation, it fascinates me! I don't know how people do it, with out going crazy?!?! When I saw the previews for Coraline I was excited! I was even more excited to hear that Neil Gaiman wrote it (one of my favorite authors, but miss out on Coraline since I read mostly the comics he wrote). I of course read the book before the movie came out. After seeing the movie I wanted to a least make one Coraline costume and one of the Other Mother outfits. I decided on the Raincoat costume because it is quite prominent in the film (other than the Star Sweater costume), and it is really cute!

Work in Progress:

This project was probably the easiest and most stressful costume have made (well... put together, cause I really make any of it, except for the Seeing Stone, but more on that LATER!). The big THINGS, Raincoat, Rainboots, Wig and Dragonfly clip. Wig was pretty easy to find, just went to ol'faithful eBay and searched for about an hour and found the prefect one. Link to Wig

The Raincoat I picked up a the local Canadian Tire, they are chalk full of rain gear items. I really didn't know how many types of raincoats are available till I started to look for this one. The only issue I had with the Raincoat I got was it had a huge ugly logo on the left chest. So I just bought a small bottle of acrylic yellow paint that matched the Raincoat and painted over the logo. It turned out great. In the photos you can't even tell its there!

The boots took FOREVER to find. I searched online for hours, checked out Canadian Tire again, they had the right boots but in BLUE! It was just one of those days where your out doing something else (grocery shopping) and you just pop into a store (on a whim) and find the YELLOW boots you where looking for all that time!! I got them at my local Marks Work Wearhouse.

The Dragonfly hair clip was a long online search also. I wanted it to be the right size and colouring (so pretty much prefect to the film). I ended up going with at jeweled brooch and then just bobby pinning it to my wig.

The Seeing Stone was pretty fun to make. I bought a glow in the dark kit of Sculptey at Micheals. Link to Kit. I used the semi-transparent green and blue and the opaque black. I made rolls of those three colours and then rolled them together till they got the wavey rock/stone look. I shaped it to look like the Seeing Stone, baked it and then sprayed it with a Ultra Gloss/Crystal Varnish.

For Coraline's freckles in the photographs I just used a warm grey eyeliner pencil and just applied it lightly. Her freckles are not that prominent in the film... but they are there. My cat Maverick was the model for "The Cat".

Costume and Price Breakdown (estimates):

Fabric: n/a

Pattern: n/a

Wig: $25

Shoes (Rainboots): $30

Weapon Props (if you include the Seeing Stone as Coraline's weapon against the Other Mother): Sculptey Glow-in-the-Dark Kit - $7 (used coupon), Gloss/Crystal Varnish - $8

Other Accessories: Raincoat - $15, Yellow Paint - $2, Dragonfly Brooch - $24

Time to Build: Lots of research and search time to find all the pieces. But putting the costume together when I had all the pieces took like 20 minutes. :)

Enjoy the photos :)