My Doctor Who Dalek Dress

I made this ages ago for the 50th anniversary and I've been meaning to make instructions on it, so here they are - my dalek dress. 
My Tumblr : the-quarter-blood-princess.tumblr.com
You will need :

For the dress
-1 dress
-Black felt (I think I used about 1/2 metre)
- 12 polystyrene balls
- Basic sewing kit
- Packing tape
- Black acrylic paint
- Multi bond glue
For the accessories
- Plastic headband
- An egg carton 
- A plunger
- A paint roller

Step 1: Choosing the Dress

I bought my dress for $6 or something from an op shop (second hand store).. so you really don't need to splash out for it. Mine is a synthetic floaty material over a silky lining.. it's good to have a dress with two layers but it shouldn't matter to much. Mine had these hideous sleeves that I cut off- The only real specifications for the dress are - no frilly bits on the front and no patterns.. You can have fun finding a cool colour because daleks come in just about every colour :)

Step 2: Felt Details

You may not have noticed, but at the tops of the daleks they have this grill thing, which I did by sewing on these rectangles of felt onto the top. The measurements of the rectangles will depend on the size of your dress, but if you have two in the centre and four on the outsides that are about a third of the size, that should be good :) Use some black thread to sew it on.. I hand sewed it because I suck at using a sewing machine, but if you want to, go for your life! Also I've heard that you can buy stick on felt or something like that? Well, if that actually exists that would work as well. 

Step 3: Underskirt

So this is for the black underskirt to represent the part where the wheels and stuff are. I measured the underskirt that was already there, and cut a strip of felt to sew onto the bottom of it. So essentially I lengthened the underskirt with black felt. Again I hand sewed this, but you can use a sewing machine if you want :). 

Step 4: The 'balls'

Any way I say this it doesn't work.. balls, lumps, bumps, I don't know. You can buy these polystyrene balls very cheaply at craft stores, I had 21 1/2 balls on my dress but you can change this depending on the size of the dress etc. It is useful to have a few spares, for any accidents that may occur. 

To cut the balls into halves, I used a bread knife on a chopping board.. this makes a bit of mess, but it is much easier and more accurate than trying to use a stanley knife or something.

Step 5: Painting the Balls

For making them black I used ordinary acrylic paint (you can buy this from $2 shops for very cheap) and it works very well, if you want to be fancy you can use black spray paint, but this works very effectively. 

Hint: if you are using acrylic paint it can be difficult to paint all the way around the sides, but you can stab a fork into the bottom and it becomes very easy to manoeuvre. 

Step 6: Attaching the Balls

This took a bit of experimenting with, and if I was to do it again I would probably try a different method.. but this worked perfectly fine in the end. I tried to put the multi-bond glue straight onto the polystyrene, but that ate through the polystyrene like you wouldn't believe! So what I did was used the really wide packing tape, and put a layer of tape on the flat part of the hemisphere. Once I put the tape on, I put the glue on top of the tape and then placed the balls where I wanted them. The glue took about an hour to dry, but you can do one side of the dress at a time. 

*This picture is when I had stuck half of the balls on*

Step 7: The Accessories - the Headband

This is for the little head things they've got.. I cut off 2 of the cup parts of  an egg carton and then cut some even sections out of it. I then painted them grey. I cut out two circles that are just bigger than the bottom of the egg cups and glued the egg cup onto them and painted that grey as well. I bought a really cheap plastic head band, it can be any colour but it has to be quite wide. I painted the headband grey as well and once it was dry, glued the egg cups onto the headband. 

Step 8: The Accessories - the Plunger & the Zappy Thing

The plunger- this is the easiest of them all.. I just bought a $2 plunger and painted the handle black with acrylic paint.. easy peasy. 

For the zappy thing I used a paint roller that I found in my attic (but you can buy very easily) that had a yellow handle. I took the fluffy cover off of the paint roller and then got my dad to bang it out straight with a hammer.  

Step 9: Finished!

I was really pleased with the final thing.. it took a while and I made a lot of mistakes but it was lots of fun. I wore it with black school shoes with yellow laces in them (I've just got yellow doc martens so I can't wait to wear it again with them) and when it got colder I put on my black leather jacket. The one thing I found difficult was sitting down (because I was watching the 50th anniversary in the cinema), it is rather uncomfortable, so I've just bought a plain black dress to go underneath it so I can just whip off the Dalek dress if I need to sit down ;). Hope this was helpful if you ever want to make a dalek dress :)