If your kids are big fans of the Sky Dragon series of books by Anh Do , they can bring their favourite character to life for book week, world book day or Halloween with this one of a kind Sky Dragon costume. This DIY costume is budget friendly and easy to make yourself. Follow our steps below to make your own DIY Sky Dragon costume.
WHO IS SKY DRAGON?
If you're unfamiliar with the Sky Dragon books you may be mistaken into thinking Sky Dragon is an actual dragon. She's not, her name is Amber, she's a teenage girl and the lead character in all of the Sky Dragon books. She gains an incredible power after a tragic accident that takes the lives of her parents. Once she realises she can control insects to form a dragon that she rides on, she takes on the name Sky Dragon to hide her true identity from her enemies.
HOW TO MAKE A DIY SKY DRAGON COSTUME
I was really excited when my daughter chose to go as Sky Dragon because she isn't one of the obvious characters kids choose for the book week parade, I'm looking at you Harry Potter. The only downside is it makes it challenging to come up with a costume because there's no premade costumes or accessories despite the Sky Dragon series being super popular here in Australia.
If you search where to buy Sky Dragon costumes you'll get a heap of premade How to Train Your Dragon, Ender Dragon, Wings of Fire or generic dragon costumes. Unfortunately none of those are helpful for a Sky Dragon costume, so I created a DIY version.
You can see from the illustration above that Sky Dragon's signature look includes:
- Short red hair
- Dragonfly wing glasses or mask
- Navy bolero style jacket with 4 ragged tails
- Light blue or aqua top
- Black or brown ripped pants
- Black boots or shoes
- Scale gloves
Sky Dragon Items I bought
I usually go to a mix of shops if there's items I need to buy for a costume. First point of call for distinct items that I might need {like the jacket for this costume} is always the local op shops {thrift stores} to see if there's something I can find that will work, or that can be altered to work. If I can't find anything there then I'll search online at the different department stores, dollar stores and party stores to find bits and pieces I can put together to make the entire costume.
Aqua t-shirt. I found an aqua t-shirt that had a print on the front, but that was ok because the front of the jacket would cover it. You can usually find plain t-shirts at most department stores, even if you have to look in the boys section.
Black ripped pants. To make these I simply bought a pair of black leggings and cut jagged edges around the bottom of the legs.
Black boots. I couldn't find any boots because it was out of season, however we recreated the effect with plain black sneakers and black socks worn high.
Scale gloves. For the scales we used a pair of blue fingerless fishnet gloves from a party store. If you can sew you can use mermaid scale fabric to make your own gloves.
Red hair. I tried my best to convince my daughter to wear a red wig, but she refused so the next best option was a can of red hair spray that washes out which I got from the dollar store. Be aware though this stuff will rub off on everything it touches, so you need to wash their hair thoroughly after.
Sky Dragon book. The kids need to have the book for the book week parade so we used Fly Free {Sky Dragon 2} as we already had it, but you can use any of the Sky Dragon books {there's 6 now and I'm sure there'll be more in the future}.
How to make a DIY Sky Dragon jacket
Without a doubt the hardest part of this costume to DIY was the navy jacket. It's a very distinct design which is like a tuxedo jacket with a cross over bolero style front and long jagged tail pieces. I was hoping to find a navy jacket I could cut up or alter at the op shop, but of course it was out of season and I couldn't find any navy jackets, let alone one that would fit my daughter. So I had to put my thinking cap on and come up with a DIY solution.
We couldn't find any navy jackets in any stores, so I decided to make one by using 2 navy skivvy's and a bunch of creative cutting and sewing.
To change the collar from a roll neck to an open stand up collar we cut the front of the neck on one skivvy to open it up and then stitched a piece of cardboard into the roll neck to make it stand up. I measured the length of the roll neck material then made the cardboard half as thick so there was enough material to sew down over the cardboard. For the cardboard I used an old cereal box so it wasn't too thick or annoying around her neck.
I then cut the skivvy short across the front on an angle to replicate the cross over bolero shape of the jacket. I added the silver detailing on the jacket using a metallic silver fabric pen. You can buy some silver fabric and sew the details on, however I was trying to limit the amount of sewing required.
I then drew some long ragged shapes onto baking paper and used those as a pattern to cut up the second skivvy to make the pieces for the bottom of the jacket. Once these were cut they were hand stitched to the back of the other skivvy to complete the jacket.
How to make DIY Sky Dragon glasses
In the books Sky Dragon has a mask she made from dragonfly wings. My daughter has sensory issues and wouldn't handle elastic around her head for a mask, so I decided to make them into glasses so they'd stay on her face without annoying her.
In different illustrations in the books the dragonfly wings look like a mix of translucent, opaque and coloured wings so I tried to recreate this in my design. To make the dragonfly wings I drew them on paper in a glasses shape so there were still eye holes for my daughter to see out of. I then cut out that paper and laminated it to make it hard and I drew a few more wings at the top on each side to make translucent ones on the laminated plastic.
I then attached them to the glasses frame with some blue tack so she could take them off during the day if she wanted to.
Alternatively you could use a pair of white kids glasses and glue on some craft dragonfly wings. If you don't want to DIY the glasses at all, I did find these butterfly wing rimless glasses that would also work.
FINISHED SKY DRAGON COSTUME
The finished Sky Dragon costume isn't perfect, however I think we did alright with what we had available. Her teacher and other kids knew who she was from her outfit, so I call that a win! My main advice for anyone else wanting to make a Sky Dragon costume is look everywhere for a navy jacket because it'll make your life so much easier.
Disclosure - This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience, which means I may make a small commission at no cost to you, should you make a purchase.
