Frozen Inspiration

My mother’s Daughters of Norway chapter asked me to be a guest speaker presenting how I made both my Elsa dresses at their monthly meeting in February. I laughed that my platinum Elsa wig made me look even more like my mom with her current hairstyle…haha!

I figured it would be more interesting for this Norwegian heritage group to start with comparisons between the movie and the original Norwegian inspirations, so I mined my copy of Frozen for screen captures that highlighted what I personally noticed from my Summer in Scandinavia trip in 2007, plus what I had found in some online articles from last year. It took a whole week of evenings to put the full presentation together, much longer than I expected, but even though it was 50 slides chock-full of photos so I went a little over my allocated 30 minutes, the full room of women seemed to enjoy it, asking lots of good questions. You can see the photos my mom & the chapter Cultural Director took during the presentation in the full gallery below, including when they asked me to stroll down the aisle for everyone to inspect the Sparkling Snowflake Cape up close. Since I wore both dresses at the meeting, wearing the coronation dress to start, then giving the presentation in the full ice ensemble, I was not surprised that there were many photos taken with me “for my granddaughter/niece/etc,” so of course I had to get another one with my mom and her broken ankle scooter.

You can download the full “Frozen Inspiration” PowerPoint presentation here below if you’d like to see it, but fair warning it is 87MB, and the text might format strangely if you don’t have the same fonts as me. The first section is “Frozen: Inspired by Norwegian Traditions” including some online photos of clothing, horses and sunny fjords, but mostly my own photos from my 2007 trip, then the majority is the distilled version of all my blog posts about making both dresses as “Frozen: Inspired to Make the Dresses,” ending with highlights of all the events where I have worn both dresses so far, including sneak peeks of Halloween at Disneyland!

At the end of the live presentation, I showed my new video of “Britta as Elsa Sings Let It Go in Both Costumes,” since it shows even more final photos well.

We might get some more photos later from the chapter photographer (who also graciously helped me with my corset lacing!), but for now, here below are all the photos we have from the Sunday meeting. Enjoy!