Sneak peek: The making of Tamatoa


In the months after seeing “Moana,” my daughter Stella has been telling me that she wanted to dress up at Tamatoa for Halloween. Although he’s a pretty minor character in the scheme of things, he has one of the best songs in the movie. I also kind of loved the fact that Stella wanted to be a character like that instead of the traditional Disney princess.

Earlier this year, Stella began to waiver slightly, talking about dressing up as Elsa instead. But as we talked about all of the fun things we could do to make her into a big purple crab with a sparkly gold shell, she gave me the green light to start getting the components together for a Tamatoa costume.

Side note: Word Press/my computer keep wanting to change Tamatoa to Tomato, which could be an equally great costume.

One of the biggest challenges was deciding how I could make this large shell for her to wear on her back. I considered a backpack or using a large piece of floral foam, but fate intervened when we went into the dollar store to buy Zack some birthday balloons. We spotted a green foam turtle shell with elastic shoulder straps. It was perfect!

This week, I bought a sparkly gold fabric to pin over the shell, and pillow stuffing to help give it a rounded shape without being too heavy.

One of the best finds was this string of pearls at Hobby Lobby. The jewelry section had pearls that were closer to $10-12, but in their Christmas section, I found a long strand of pearls that were 40% off. I spray painted them with a shiny gold paint and then a glittery paint on top of that.

Stella got involved in the placement of the pearls and the shells, which were also spray painted gold.

I’m very excited to see how the purple parts of her costume come together. The shell is already better than I expected:

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