When the first lockdown hit in April last year..

Seven of my dear pals (who I rarely get to see as they live two hours away) came up with the idea of a weekly Zoom Quiz. And if that wasn't exciting enough .... they made it fancy dress themed!

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I Love Fancy Dress (did I mention how much I love a good fancy dress party? No I really mean it. I LOVE FANCY DRESS! My mind is literally brimming with 'fancy dress ideas' 24/7 and I was sooooooo thankful for an excuse to make a costume on a weekly basis.

Every Thursday at 8.30pm we plucked a bottle of wine from the fridge, put on our best home made costumes and got together online for a few hours of quiz questions, catch ups and giggles.

Each of us took it in turn to be the host and to chose a new theme every week. Waiting for everyone to join the call and the anticipation to see what everyone had dressed up as was absolutely priceless - so funny! When we started these quizzes, I never thought for a second we would keep them going for 20 weeks - but we totally did. And I am so thankful for these moments. They gave us so many special memories during these strange times that I simply will never forget.

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Below are our Zoom quiz themes and my costumes. Just remember one thing - on a Zoom call, nobody sees the bottom half so pyjama bottoms and slippers are 100% acceptable.

1. Nature Fancy Dress

For this one I made mushrooms out of Play-Doh and pushed a hair pin into the stem/stalk and popped them in the oven for 10 minutes to bake, then left to cool. I made a necklace out of some old moss ribbon that I had at home from an old project, and used a hot glue gun to glue a few of the mushrooms onto it.

I found some ivy in the garden and clipped it into my hair. I used Snazaroo face paint for my face and voila! Shroom baby? Forrest Spirit? Elf Fancy Dress? You decide.

2. Food Fancy Dress

I'm the queen bee when it comes to bee crafts. I had so many ideas for this one, but ended up choosing - 'Honey'. (Namely because it was a cheap and easy fancy dress costume to make.) I painted bubble wrap with some gold paint and used my hot glue gun (aka Bertie) to do a drip glue-effect necklace.

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(Lay a metal necklace on tin foil, glue lines of hot glue off it and build up for the desired effect.) Then when it had cooled I painted it with the same gold paint. I did the same on an old pair of earrings too. I drew a bee with my acrylic pens and stuck that onto the necklace.

For the face paint I cut hexagon shapes into an old take-out box lid (or you can buy a hexagon stencil), and sponged gold Snazaroo face paint onto my skin through it. DIY fancy dress at it's finest!

3. The Oscars Fancy Dress

For some resason this felt a bit like 90's Hollywood fancy dress and was a last minute mad dash (as I'd been on the beach all day with the kids). I popped on a very old black dress from Topshop and some earrings from Primark - As glam as my life gets these days and a cocktail party for one!

4. Colour Costume

Boy, did my kids love this one. I used my husbands yellow t-shirt (that I pulled my arm through the neck) to give a slash-neck style and a LOT of yellow Snazaroo face paint for my skin and hair.

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Yes it all kinda washed off perfectly fine (Thank goodness). For the background I bought a large sheet of yellow card from The Range in store (this theme was towards the end when stores started to reopen). This theme was hilarious and my friends fully committed to colouring themselves in entirely.

That's dedication! This is going to be my Burning Man fancy dress outfit, if I ever get to travel out of the UK again.

Your skin oh yeah your skin and bones .. were all really YELLOW. *As will be your bath tomorrow when you try and wash off the YELLOW!

5. Austrian Costume (Around the World)

This was for the 'Around the World' theme and obviously there are so many to options to choose from - but I played this one safe with -'Austria'. Kinda Sound of Music Fancy Dress! I can't take any credit for this one as it was an Austrian / Oktoberfest outfit from my Mum that she had bought when she was a tour guide there. Some great ideas can be found amazon or Pinterest

6. Space Fancy Dress

I was torn for this one. Part of me wanted to go full space cadet / astronaut fancy dress but I would have had to buy things for that look, so instead I chose a cheap and cheerful moon and stars headpiece. For the Moon I cut a circle out of white card. I used PVA glue to stick toilet tissue onto it to make craters.

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When it dried I lightly painted it with silver paint in certain places to give it more texture. I used a hot glue gun to attach it to a flower arranging wire and then wrapped the wire around an old hairband. For the stars I cut out lots of different sizes and covered them in tin foil. I used my hot glue gun to attach strips of wire and attached these to the hair band, finally bending them all in different directions.

I wrapped the headband in a piece of sheer silver ribbon that (I had off an old gift) and this hid all of the wires on the hairband. For the top I just wrapped tinfoil around my middle, and used an old false eyelash glue to stick silver glitter and star sequins to my face. The earrings were from NEXT (they haven't got them in stock anymore) but have lots of others on their website.

7. Surf Fancy Dress (Sports)

As a retired principle Latin American Dancer I decided against depressing myself trying to squeeze into one of my dresses, and went with our famiy favourite - Surfing. (It was also a very easy fancy dress idea) My wax covered board is made by Greg Webber of Webber surfboards.

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It's a double diamond board which I love. It's also been perfect for our eldest transitioning from a foamy. My wetsuit jacket is  Billabong and is ideal for hot summer days in warmer waters. My husband wanted me to go as Turtle from North Shore .. believe me I was tempted.

8. Music Fancy Dress

Of course I chose the queen of pop - Katy Perry. (Although Gwen was a VERY close second choice). I used an old corset from Ann Summers and a mixture of cardboard, felt, pipe cleaners, shredded coloured paper and mosaic tiles to make candy.

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The hairband from the space costume came back into use which I wrapped in pink ribbon and stuck on a heart out made of shredded pink paper too with my glue gun. Add 1 x Christmas inflatable candy cane and I made myself into a California gurl! I am planning on doing a Katy Perry Fancy Dress video tutorial for this. Interested?

9. Under The Sea Fancy Dress

Through gritted teeth my husband let my cut up one of his old wetsuits to make a Stingray. (In my defence we needed to make some drum kit silencing pads for the children's drumkit - it's been driving our neighbours potty!) I added details using the acrylic pens. For the necklace I reused the metal one for the honey costume and stuck on some blue seaglass that we found on the beach.

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Some Snazaroo wavy lines and you've got yourself a stingray costume - or a really wacky headpiece for a wedding! This felt very much like a Lady Gaga fancy dress kinda thing.

10. Animal Fancy Dress

Had to throw some money at the situation for this one. Bought these fox ears and tails costume accessories from Amazon. Then just painted my face with Snazaroo brown colour face paint. My youngest had lots of fun dressing up in the fox ears after. Who doesn't love a little fox fancy dress?

11. Cupid Fancy Dress (Myths & Legends)

So many cool ones to choose from, but the hopeless romantic in me went for - 'Cupid'. Made some wings out of an old cardboard box and covered them with red tissue paper for a feathery effect. Made a crossbow from a branch I found on a walk and an old artificial rose.

Made some hearts to go on the necklace (that i reused for most of my costumes) using my hot glue gun to make heart shapes onto tinfoil, and sprinkling red glitter when the glue was hot. Got the old red love heart specs, and put on Marilyn Mansons 'Heart Shaped Glasses' and pretended I was Evan Rachel Wood for the night <3

12. Christmas Fancy Dress

Do you wanna build a snowman?

Not really Anna! I want something a bit more easy peezy thanks. If you have a novelty Christmas jumper and a piece of ribbon to make yourself look like a Christmas present. Yes a Christmas present. Then it's a super simple option and alot simpler than building a flipping snowman.

13. 80's Fancy Dress

Weirdly this eighties fancy dress theme happened the same day a dear friend of mine asked me and some of his other pals to be in a mini lockdown edit for his 80's style music video for his band Taurus 1984 and their single Situations. Certainly made a lockdown day different! Double denim, aztec neons and a shaggy perm. BOOM! So my day costume simply turned into my night costume! Take on Me? Aha!

14. Hen Party Fancy Dress (w/cocktail making)

This one was carnage. So we had to dress like we were going on a hen party (as close to sexy fancy dress as we got) and we did cocktail making before the quiz. Our hostess with the mostess sent us random mini bottles of alcohol through the post in advance, all numbered and she would tell us over Zoom what numbers we had to mix together.

There were 5 cocktail recipes in total but boy were they were strong. The quiz was complete filth, but had us laughing so much. I went for a sailor girl fancy dress (which was a big hit with the hubby) Actually, more so than any of the other costumes. He just must really love sailors I guess?

15. Halloween Fancy Dress

Minimal effort as I'd been on the beach all day so was running late (again). Chucked on this gorgeous dress from Silk Fred, an old witches hat and coloured my lips with a black eyeliner. Ta Da! Halloween Not So Scary Costume check!

16. 60's Fancy Dress

Easy fancy dress at it's finest! I've always been obsessed with Bridgette Bardot and the 60's. So it was an simple choice. The theme of this night was entitled 'through the decades'.

17. 'Mexican Party' Fancy Dress

Everyone loves Mexico and Mexican food and celebrations do they not? The costumes we had were: a Chilli, a bottle of tequila, an avocado, a sugar-skull bride and me as a... piñata! Could it be anymore of a unique Mexican costume! I will do a post on how to make this one as I've had so many questions about it. Just be sure to stock up on the coloured glitter, iridescent fringe foil and coloured tissue paper!

18. Disney Fancy Dress

Drawing inspritaion from kids fancy dress .... I went with 101 Dalmatians. Do you think I could find my Snazaroo face paints for this!? Not a chance! Ended up doing a crap job with some cheap white facepaint my son had free on a magazine, and some black eyeliner. Not quite the desired effect. Any chance to wear my Zara dress though!

19. Beach Fancy Dress

Not going to lie, this was our first quiz night and I didn't take a photo (it was a cheap fancy dress idea anyhows lol)... so here is a picture of me on the beach! You get the idea, wear something beachy!

20. Carole Baskin Fancy Dress

The theme was 'all things 2020' and this was probably the most funny fancy dress evening of all of our zoom quiz nights. We had Boris, Donald, Coronavirus, toilet rolls and other prominent figures/items of 2020. I went for Carole Baskin because the hubby and I binged hard on the Netflix series Tiger King in first lockdown and, well .. I often think about feeding him to large cats! A leopard print maxi and a flower crown and I'm ready for the crazy cats and kittens!