Cheap and Easy Queen of Hearts Costume DIY (2024)

Posted onOctober 1, 2022December 11, 2023 Updated onDecember 11, 2023

Are you ready for this year’s costume? I don’t even know where to begin because it’s always a tough one with our daughter.
I always have to start out her costumes with a plain dress and she gravitates toward villains, she’s very opinionated about her Halloween costumes. Other darker character costumes I’ve created for her are a dark angel costume, sad clown costume, zombie soccer player, DIY maleficent costume, sugar skull costume, and apocalypse costume.

I thought the Queen of Hearts would be the perfect costume for her but when I showed her the photos again of the Queen in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland movie played by Helena Bonham Carter, she almost lost itand was beside herself about how ugly she is. When I showed her my red wig that I had left over from my adult Elmo costume (see a small photo of the outfit at the bottom of this post), she started to like the idea of a Queen of Hearts costume diy. I had to promise her that we’d come up with our own version of the Red Queen.

Cheap and Easy Queen of Hearts Costume DIY (not only for kids)

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I started out with this dress from Target that they, unfortunately, don’t sell anymore
but you can use any plain black dress you can find. More to that below. I also mentioned that I already had the wig and I also had the small crown which I bought in Germany.

Costume Instructions

As I mentioned above, our daughter had sensory issues at the time and that’s the reason I skipped the distinctive Queen of Hearts dress details and costume accessories like lace, tulle, tutu, hoop skirt, and petticoat. It would have been way too itchy for her.

In my head, I mapped out a combination of all the inspirational images I found of red queen costumes and I felt like I really wanted to include the yellow and black dress detail from the cartoon. That is where the duct tape came into place.

Step 1: Create the bottom part of the dress

I started taping/laying out a pattern with the black and yellow duct tape on the dress in a v-shape (as pictured) and drew a line down the middle of the v-shape. I lifted the taped-down duct tape slightly so I cut that center line with the scissors and taped it down again.

You could skip the black duct tape since the dress is black but I found that the shape of the dress stayed nicer if it was all duct tape. We skipped the back of the dress because if you wear a cape you can’t see the back. You could continue with the pattern in the back.

Step 2: Create the heart shape for the dress

After that, I taped red duct tape together on my kitchen countertop in a rectangular shape. Measure the chest area of the dress to determine what size of red heart you want to make.

Draw a heart on the rectangular-shaped red duct tape on the counter with a pencil. Lift the shape off the counter carefully and use sharp craft scissors to cut out the heart shape. Then past the heart on the chest of the black dress.

Here is what I ended up with and it wasn’t all that exact, to be honest, but it was ok in the end.

See Also

Halloween : How to Sew a Queen of Hearts Costume DIY

Step 3: Tape the deck of cards to the cape

I used the deck of cards to tape them to the collar of the cape with black duct tape which you can see in the upcoming photos of the finished costume. I taped the cards together on the back of the cards with duct tape and then glued them with superglue to some cardboard which then was taped to the cape with duct tape again.

Step 4: Queen of Hearts Makeup with face paint

For her makeup, I used this paint palette again and ended up doing a simple version of the Queen’s makeup with white face paint (instead of white powder), blue eye paint (instead of eye shadow), black eyebrows, and eyeliner, a black heart mole, and a heart shape on her lips with instead of red lipstick.

You can certainly use real makeup instead but that would be more expensive if you don’t have the right colors at home and as you can see the facepaint does a fantastic job and is perfect for this costume. I have used this palette for other costumes over the years too and it’s really worth the money.

Add the wig and crown as well at this point. Her hair is long and I ended up braiding it and stuffing the braid under the wig. The wig says in place with a few bobby pins and so does the crown.

Photos of the finished Queen of Hearts costume

I was thrilled about how it turned out but I’m not sure about her.
I told her to smile but she said that the Queen is miserable and doesn’t smile….she’s definitely right about that.

RELATED: I also used black duct tape to make the base shape for a scarecrow mask and all I wore with that is another basic black outfit and black cape.

My husband and I loved this simple costume but guess what she is doing now? Sitting in her room cutting up sweatpants so she can make her own comfortable Zombie outfit (What happened to wanting to be a princess?). I don’t know if I should laugh or cry about it. I’m glad she wants to be creative in her own way but also upset that she can’t just put this one on. Did you notice in the photo that I had to stick the cape on the wall because she couldn’t even handle wearing it on her shoulders?

Besides what my daughter thinks, do you like it? Which one of our cats should be the Cheshire Cat? Or our white cat Lucy could be her white rabbit, haha!

I’ll make a bigger version of it for myself yet and wear it to our neighborhood costume party on Halloween night. (My husband might be the mad hatter) It’s great that there are enough supplies and facepaint left for me to use and I already have that large black dress from when I was a simple with. The only difference will be that I will add fake eyelashes to my look.

Tschüß,

Gosh, she was such a cutie as a princess and a witch ut I don’t have blog posts for these costumes!