Eye Spy...DYI!

So my 'Halloween' this year was Moonfest.  The gals from Art Hive Magazine teamed up with Whole Foods to represent our brands...and have fun of course!  All month long I was so excited about my DYI costume for the 2014 Moonfest theme, 'Dark Carnival'.  I saw this really cool tutorial about how to make a corset from...you're not going to BEElieve this...zippers.  

Yep, zippers!

So I didn't exactly wait until the last minute...well, the day before is a little last minute I guess.  I wasn't worried though, because I had my friend Stacy coming over to help me out, and she is a lean, mean SEWING machine (and actually brought hers along with her)

SEW...what was the problem? (sorry, couldn't resist!) The problem is that zippers cost more than I thought- sheesh!  And I was going to need over 26 to create the piece...even with my feeble math skills I very quickly calculated it...and it was going to be too much for just one piece of my costume.  

My zipper corset dreams had come...well...unzipped.  (wow, I am getting good at these!)  I was bummed.  But what I decided to do was if I could not create each piece myself, I would buy the cheapest 'parts' possible and at least embellish them myself to add some personal DYI flair to what would be an 'off the rack' piece.  So here is what I came up with;