Top 5 Do-It-Yourself Kids Costumes

Halloween is rapidly approaching and many of you are scrambling to choose from the left- over costumes that the more timely parents were kind enough to leave behind. Worry you not! HelloBeautiful has surveyed the net for some great alternatives to store-bought costumes that will leave your pockets less strained this Halloween season.  Check out these cool costumes that you and your child can make at home:

1.) A Bunch of Grapes

All this costume requires is about 2 dozen purple balloons, a simple purple outfit and a green hat.  Have your child dress in all purple, then blow up the balloons and stick them to the upper part of your child’s body.  Finish off the costume with a green hat, which you can decorate with simple art supplies to look like a grape stem.

2.) Chicken

Cut the sleeves off a white sweatshirt; fold in and glue raw edges.

Starting at bottom of sweatshirt, hot-glue a white feather boa to it, wrapping it around and up to the neck (you’ll need one boa for a baby, two for toddlers on up.)

Hat: To make chicken’s comb, stuff fingers of a pair of red rubber gloves with Poly-Fil or batting. Then use one cutoff sleeve for a hat: Fold over and glue raw top edge. Then glue the stuffed gloves, end to end, between the folded edges of the hat. Put hat on your child’s head and cut the open end to desired length, leaving an extra inch to fold in and glue down.

Add leggings or tights (striped leggings here are from hannaandersson.com), red or orange long-sleeve T-shirt, yellow gloves, and yellow rubber boots.

3.) Baby Lion

This is a great costume for babies and toddlers. And it might just be the easiest costume. Ever. Simply buy a mop (the old-school stringy kind). Remove the top, and attach it to a creme colored hat.  Dress your little one in a creme outfit and paint some whiskers on his face and voila! Baby Lion. The mop top will give the appearance of an instant lion’s mane. Use piece of rope to create a tail.

4.) Corn on the Cob

For this costume, you’ll need hot glue or fabric glue,  scissors and a tape measure.

Cut the sleeves off a green sweatshirt. Turn in the armholes and glue raw edges. Next, give 3 paper egg-carton bottoms a coat of yellow paint. When dry, glue to front of sweatshirt for kernels. Cut 1 yard of green felt in half. Pull on felt to create irregular edges. Fold and glue along each side of egg cartons, as shown. Glue green pipe cleaners to the back of felt at the top to help the “husk” tips stand up.

For the hat: Measure child’s head and cut a sleeve to fit, leaving an extra inch at the top. Cut a bunch of raffia and bundle together. Wrap a strand around base of bundle to keep it together; glue to hat for corn silk.

5.) Baby Sheep

To make this costume you will need an old sweatshirt, lots of cotton balls, a white hat, black & white felt, a black shirt and black pants. Cut the sleeves off of the old sweatshirt and paste cotton balls generously all over it.  Do the same for the white hat. Cut two ear shaped pieces of felt and add ach them to the hat.  Have your child wear the black shirt/tights under the cotton-covered sweatshirt, along with the hat.

Here is a gallery of these costumes as well as a few others that are simple enough for you to do at home.

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