Link and Zelda: Ocarina of Time

September 12, 2023

Link and Zelda: Ocarina of Time

This was our first REAL cosplay, and it's still one of my favorites!

Much of it was made by repurposing old clothes, and we worked with foam for the first time!

Unfortunately since it was our first real costume and it was so long ago I don't have photos of the whole process.

I always have to draw out the costume before I can start working on it, it helps me better understand the elements of the costume.

We were lucky and scored a lot of the things we needed at the thrift store, including some boots for Ryan which is awesome because boots like that for men are really hard to find!

Zelda's Dress

I started by dying a white skirt I had pink. Dye is so helpful when making costumes because you can really customize things!

Then I made a petticoat to go underneath the skirt to give it more volume. I attached some tulle to the bottom of a piece of fabric and made it into the skirt. That way the volume is near the bottom of the skirt giving the dress an A-line shape.

The skirt wasn't quite long enough and Zelda's dress has a pink stripe through it, so I cut the skirt where the stripe would be and sewed a wide ribbon in the gap, creating the stripe!

I don't have any pictures but I took a button up shirt and sewed it shut and removed the buttons, then I popped the collar, rounded it, and added a pink ribbon around the edge. you can see the end result in this photo.

Then I added a strap across the front opening and made another "shirt" to go over it (the dark pink layer you see). I put snaps on the two top collars to secure it to the light pink shirt and elastic around the bottom to cinch it in around the waist.

Zelda's Armor

I started by tracing all the shapes I needed on a piece of thick EVA foam.

(this is the one I used)

Then I cut it all out using a box cutter/Exacto knife.

I used sand paper to round the edges but it didn't work great, we have a Dremel now and it works so much better! I would have used that if I had it then.

(this is the one we have)

I then drew designs on some of the pieces using my wood burning tool. This method is good for indented designs.

(this is the one I have)

Then, I used puff paint to draw some raised designs on the armor pieces.

Then I spray painted them gold, they turned out so pretty!

Link Costume

Unfortunately I don't have any progress photos of Ryan's Link costume, but I can tell you what we did!

The shirt is a polo we found at the thrift store and just made sure it was a couple sizes too big for Ryan. The white shirt underneath was a long sleeved polo that we added laces too in the front of the collar so it could be laced up to a mock neck. The gloves are leather gardening gloves (these ones) we just folded down the top to over the logo. We ended up cutting the finders off and using a little bit of paint to weather it. Then we just sewed him a triangle hat which was super simple!