President of the Cosplay Club, junior theatre major Hayley Ebberts has made over 100 costumes since she started sewing in 2007. In the past year, Ebberts has extended her talents to start the company Eli’s Princess Parties.

“I love to make Disney costumes because they are always interesting,” Ebberts said, “and the movies are just spectacular.”

For her first gig, last Halloween, Ebberts was hired by a local couple who wanted two Disney princesses to greet the trick-or-treaters. Since then, Ebberts has worked at a promotional event at the Valley Mall in Yakima, birthday parties, and she even volunteered for the Ellensburg Dance Company’s photo booth.

“If a kid asks a question about a character, she has a response right away that fits the life of the character,” Samm Grover, director of Ellensburg Community Dance, said.

Grover found out about Eli’s Princess Parties online when she was looking for someone to play Princess Anna from “Frozen” for a tea party fundraiser the dance company was hosting.

Eli is the name that Ebberts uses as her stage name.

“If you come from that creative background, you get into character much easier,” Grover said.

Grover says that Ebberts is very good with kids and recalls seeing her get down on the ground in her dress, so she could pose for pictures and talk to smaller children during Buskers in The ‘Burg.’

“She’s willing to do whatever it takes to make the kids happy,” Grover said. “She is very helpful and not scared to just step in.”

Ebberts says it takes her about an hour to get into costume, apply her makeup and put on her wig for an event. Although she has styled her own hair before, she thinks wearing wigs is a lot less demanding.

“When you do wigs, it’s just easier to keep it styled,” Ebberts said. “It doesn’t get all messed up. With my own hair, my hair will deflate after 20 minutes.”

Yakima is where Ebberts gets a lot of her costume material, but she orders wool online because it’s difficult to find in large quantities. The costume for Merida from “Brave” is made of wool, along with several parts of Anna’s costume.

“Disney does such a good job at keeping their stories modern yet historically accurate, so I try to do that with my costumes,” Ebberts said.

Being a fashion design minor, Ebberts makes all of her own costumes. The time it takes Ebberts to make a costume depends on the details.

Ebberts’ Snow White costume only took one week to make, while she has been working on a costume of Princess Anna from “Frozen” for over a month and is not even halfway done due to the difficulty of the hand embroidering. Her other works in progress also include Elsa, Ariel and Cinderella costumes.

“I do think that Elsa [costume] is going to be the hardest,” Ebberts said, “Just because there’s so much sparkle and non-realistic things.”

Ebberts has borrowed another company’s Anna costume before to play the role because she is not finished with her own.

“I really love being Anna,” Ebberts said. “I really relate to her personally, and it’s something that the kids are really into right now.”

Her favorite part about going to events is the kid’s reaction to seeing a Disney princess in the flesh. Ebberts says that kids are shy at first, but it usually doesn’t take them long to warm up to her.

“Later throughout the party, they get more and more into it, and they are all over you [me],” Ebberts said, “and they just love hugging you, and it’s just wonderful.”

One of her favorite memories is from a party she performed at two weeks ago.

“There was a little girl, and she must have been three our four, and she was the very first girl through the door, and when I saw her she was very quiet,” Ebberts said. “About an hour into the party, I was sitting down with another girl, and this little girl just runs up and bear hugs me.”

Since starting Eli’s Princess Parties, Ebberts is surprised by how much she loves working with kids.

“They respect a princess a little more than they would a babysitter, I think,” Ebberts said.

Ashley Baker, junior costume design major and vice president of the Cosplay Club has know Ebberts since 2012.

“She’s just incredibly nice,” Baker said. “She’s just a very warm person to be around.”

Ebberts hopes to expand her business and to get more people involved with Eli’s Princess Parties.

“I would love to get a full cast of princesses at some point,” Ebberts said.

One of the main reasons she chose Disney Princesses as her main business point was because they are so popular.

“Everyone knows them, everyone likes them, and it’s something a lot of kids can relate to,” Ebberts said.