DIY Halloween Costumes

Today, I have a special treat for you, a guest post from my awesome little sister!  Leslie and I are the two youngest in the family. We shared a room together, played Barbies for hours on end, she'd sleep on my shoulder on the hour long bus ride home from school, attempted to share clothes (but that didn't work so well, someone always stained my clothes c: ), were in high school together which meant stops for milkshakes on the way home from school and so much more.  She's even partly responsible for my husband and I getting together.  Now she's all grown up and is the mother to 3 cute boys (who are very close to the same ages of my boys) and sadly lives four hours away from me. However, they all come to visit often and we always have a great time together.  Another couple of things you need to know about Leslie is she's very creative, loves to do art and all kinds of projects with her boys, and she's an incredible sewer (she'll share more of  these talents later.)  Check out her website Cornflower Attic for super cute bags, little girl dresses, and more.  


Anyway, Leslie always comes up with super cute costumes for the whole family.  So I asked her to come and share her awesomeness with you all. Take it away, Les!



I'm all about getting creative (and cost effective) when it comes to Halloween costumes.  If I can make something from items I already have, and save $20 per costume, great!  Here are a few ideas I've used over the past few years that might get your costume-making creative juices flowing.

Incredibles Costumes:
When I made these costumes, I was pregnant with our second child and decided Halloween was the time to make our big announcement.  I didn't know at the time if I was having a boy or girl, but we were pretty sure if it was a boy, we were going to name him Jack, so that started our Jack-Jack/Incredibles theme (plus my then two-year-old was a big Incredibles fan at the time). 

 (Sorry.  These pictures are a few years old and not great quality).

We took this picture and mailed it to my parents and my in-laws telling them Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, Dash, and baby Jack-Jack were wishing them a Happy Halloween.  I even put a big arrow pointing to my belly and the mask attached to it, but they still didn't notice it.  In fact, it was my sister Kimberly that first noticed it when she looked at the picture and noticed the mask and pointed it out to my mom (right, Kim?)  (Of course I noticed first! lol)

Anyway, these were super easy to make and a fun theme.
Supplies needed:
Red shirts for adult costumes
Red sweats and sweatshirt for child costume
Orange, black, yellow and white felt
Glue gun
birthday package of Incredibles masks

For the logo, I drew an oval on scratch paper, a second oval a little bigger than the first, and then on separate pieces of paper, the "I" and dot for the "I."  I traced them a time or two until I got the proportions correct, then cut out the paper, and used it for the patterns to cut out the felt.  I used a hot glue gun to glue the pieces of the logo together and then used safety pins to secretly attach the logo to our shirts.

For my son's costume, I cut a simple black triangle from felt and glued it to an orange strip to look like a belt.  We are talking really simple here now... I attached this piece to his body with a very loose rubber band around his waist.  The band fit right at the belt line and wasn't noticeable.  If you had a black band it would work even better.  I also made black bands of felt to put around his forearms to look a little more like Dash's costume.  You could glue them to black gloves, but I knew my son wouldn't want to keep the gloves on all the time

The eye masks were a in a birthday package from Walmart.

Baby Dragon/Wilma Flintstone:
My husband and I borrowed Fred and Wilma Flintstone costumes from a friend, and I decided we needed a baby dinosaur.

I already had the green baby sleeper for the base of the costume. I cut orange felt circles and sewed them all around the costume including a big one in the center to cover up the moose graphic on the sleeper.

The sleeper came with a green hat, but I needed to spice it up a little. I bought a dog costume headpiece at Target, cut the dinosaur spikes off and glued them to my green hat.

Here is my baby dinosaur emerging from his baby sling egg.

I didn't make the Wilma costume, but it would be simple to put together.  Lots of white felt with one seam on the side.  The top  has a slanted neckline and the bottom was cut in a zigzag.  The lovely necklace is made with white pom-poms. 

For Fred, you could cut  orange fabric into a tunic shape and cut the bottom hem with a zig zag.  Then cut out black felt designs and sew or glue on the orange.  (Felt is the easiest to work with.  No fraying!) 


Mr. Potato Head:
Our theme for this year started when my oldest son deciding that he wanted to be Zurg from Toy Story  for Halloween.  I started dreaming up great costumes for the rest of us and had a whole theme going on when my son then changed his mind about 4 times between October 1st and October 31st!  He finally decided (two days before Halloween) on an army guy, which luckily still worked great into the whole Toy Story theme. 

For Mr. Potato Head, I started with brown felt.  I cut a big, boxy, potato shape that would fit my then, one-year-old.  I cut the same shape twice and sewed the two pieces together around the side edges, leaving holes for his arms and head.  I did not sew the bottom together so his feet could be free to move, walk sit, etc.  To make him a little bulkier, I turned the costume inside out, placed a handful of batting on each side seam, and glued a piece of felt around the batting to keep it in place.

Next, I found pictures of Mr. Potato Head online, copy and pasted them into Microsoft Word, enlarged them to about the right size for the costume, printed them, cut them out, and then cut the same shape out of felt.  Then, I hot glued the facial shapes right onto the brown potato shape. 

I know, I know, my kids aren't going to enjoy Mom and Dad dressing up with them for long, so I better make it good while I can!

Owl:
Last year we went with a Harry Potter theme.

You might notice an addition to the Hogwarts crew.  My middle son likes to be his own man from time to time, and this year he decided to be Luigi with his cousin who was Mario. Yea for four-year-old independence!

I got this cute owl idea from the blog U Create. I followed their instructions listed here. It was really easy and I was happy with the way it turned out.   

When my sister-in-law heard he was going to be an owl, she whipped up this little hat for him.

Well, I hope these ideas have got you thinking about things you might have on hand to make some fun costumes for this year.  I am currently trying to figure out how to get my hair to stay in cinnamon roll buns for this year's costume and how to transform my husband into Han Solo (he insists he is not wearing skinny jeans).  Have you seen any good jedi tutorials?  Thanks for reading!

See, isn't she so creative!! And that her husband, Luke, goes along with the dressing up is so cool, my husband will not. :)  Hope that gives you some great ideas for this year's festivities.  Since this is kind of just a general overview of the costumes, Leslie said she would be happy to answer any specific questions you have.  Feel free to email me (address in my profile) and I'll pass them along to her.

Linking up with:
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