My family has never been big on store bought Halloween costumes. I have always felt like after the age of 5, there just were not many good options in the stores, especially for boys — and let’s be real some of those costumes are so expensive! My kids generally wanted to be something a little bit more original. Living in a Pinterest world makes that just so simple!
One year the kids were a purple minion and a guy with his head in a jar. Other years we had a rubics cube, the tooth and the tooth fairy; my entire family and some friends once went as a group of 12 smurfs. The list goes on and on. DIY’ing your halloween costume is much easier than you think!
We tend to search the internet for creative costume ideas and then go about figuring out how to make them.
For the minion I used the following:
- A large narrow clothes basket
- Purple fleece
- Black fabric
- Silver spray paint
- A hot glue gun
- Purple faux fur
- White foam board
- Black gloves, shirt, & pants
- Old black overalls
First I cut holes in laundry basket for his face and arms. I lined the basket with fleece so that it would be comfortable on the inside too. I then covered the outside with more fleece using hot glue. I cut apart the overalls and glued them onto the fleece.
I then cut a hole for the mouth and lined it with black fabric and added teeth made from foam board.
I really lucked out on this hair. It was actually a furry gift bag I found on clearance, so I removed the handles and glued it onto the top of the head.
For the face we used a empty plastic container. I made the dots with hot glue and the spray painted it silver. Attached 2 strips of black fabric and then secured the mask with hot glue.
Zach wore nice warm black fleece pants, a turtleneck and gloves so not only was his costume cute, it was also warm!
He wore this several times over the years and it was always such a huge hit!
The head in the jar also went over well. I found a tutorial on pinterest years ago and it was pretty easy to follow. The container is a giant cheese ball container from Sam’s Club. We removed the bottom and his head fit perfectly!
Making costumes is kind of a family tradition and the kids love it. They always help and are very involved! It’s something fun that we can all do together!