I love sleeves on belly dance costumes, it accentuates your arm movements (is great for cold weather) and you can have fun with their design. Tania made my costume for me and came up with this amazing beadwork on the sleeve which you can see better in the last pic. She’s amazing.

The last show I wore false eyelashes for the first time. It goes great with stage make up (like the Arabic eye make up video I posted before). I found a nifty device at Woolies that looks like a fat plastic tweezer but it makes it so easy to hold the eyelashes on perfectly. The first 20 minutes felt like my eyes were half shut because I’m not used to the feeling and seeing your top lashes quite so present and I had to stop myself from blinking too much. But by halfway through show they felt totally comfortable and they stayed on the whole time (Score!).

I now have about 6 costumes with additional variations (my white costume goes with 3 different skirts for example) and I realise that you need to keep yourself interested most of all and more costumes mean less wear in each so longer life span. Sometimes of course clients request specific colours for company functions or theme parties (Virgin will want red, a hen party are all in purple etc..) so it’s good to have a variety on hand.

Here are some great sites for costuming and make up ideas at
Thia

…and for the more serious seamstress there are patterns and ideas right here at  Belly Dance Costumes

…and for the online shopper there’s Miss Belly Dance.com

Enjoy!