I am the queen of bargain Halloween costumes. I
love making unique costumes and being crafty, but hate spending money. If we're sharing our collection of crowns, I should also point out that I'm the queen of procrastination. So I don't usually have months to work on these costumes. In many cases, I had to throw them together at the last minute (ask me about how Jack Skellington became a munchin just hours before trick-or-treating).
I was inspired by
Dollar Store Craft's to feature some of our cheap costumes. I'm going to do a series of posts on the topic. This is my first. It didn't cost us a cent.
Costume: Flying Monkey
Items:
1 brown hooded sweatshirt or sweater
1 empty ribbon spool
1 red t-shirt
1 pair of brown pants
2 sheets of black craft foam or 1 sheet of cardboard and black paint
1 sheet of brown felt
1 sheet of beige felt
a few safety pins.
hot glue
If you have the shirt and pants, the rest of the items can be found at the dollar store. You could also use a brown sweatshirt and a brown hat and those can both be found at the dollar store.
My son had brown pants and we borrowed his sisters' brown hooded sweater.
I cut out circles for the ears and put the smaller one inside the larger. I bunched them a little bit and pinned them from the inside. I cut strips for a tail. I covered a piece of wire with felt and glued it with hot glue, but I found the wire was unnecessary. You can just cut out the curly shape and pin that on the shirt or pants. I found pinning it to the shirt worked better because it didn't pull his pants down.
I used a red t-shirt for the vest. I cut the sleeves off, cut the bottom to make it shorter and cut it down the center. The discarded portions of the t-shirt were used to make the hat. I covered a ribbon spool (the cardboard circle that ribbon comes on) with the leftover fabric and hot glued it on. I then pinned it to the hood on an angle. That hat was the most difficult thing for me to figure out. I was so thrilled when it was done.
For wings, I searched for pictures of bat wings and then just quickly drew that on black foam. I cut those out and pinned them to the vest.
I purposely pinned on everything to the pants and top so that they could be reused again. We got tons of compliments when he went trick-or-treating. It was hysterical to follow from behind and see those wings bounce and the tail swing.
As an added bonus, I'll throw in my ridiculously simple wicked witch of the west costume too. Since my son was a flying monkey and I do so love coordinating costumes, his baby sister went as the wicked witch.
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| I'll get you, my pretty. |
I used the big girls' black dance skirt as a shawl over her shoulders. I dyed a dress black, but it was really a waste of time. You couldn't see it at all. She wore knock-off baby legs which we had on hand and she wore the rocking
Jack and Lily skull shoes we had on hand (I won them from a blog contest). She actually wore those same shoes last year for Purim when she was a baby pirate.
Then I found a problem--the hat. I couldn't find any witch hats in baby sizes and my attempts at making one failed miserably. This year, you can find some toddler-sized ones in the Target dollar aisle. Last year, though, no luck.
So I hacked into a decoration from the Dollar Tree. You know those corny plastic depictions of a witch that you can make appear has smacked into your car, your door, your wall, your tree, or your mother-in-law? Well, we had one that we bought about 10 years ago. I cut the hat off that. It was small enough to work.
It didn't cost us anything at all. Black baby clothing is very difficult to come by, so if you want to create a witch, try raiding
your closet or even your older children's. Our older daughters had tons of black skirts from which to choose.
Both of their costumes were a big hit and didn't cost us anything. We were able to raid the closets and the craft bins. If you do need to buy the materials, it still shouldn't cost you much at all.
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Not a great picture, but this is SO my son.
It's also very flying monkeyish, don't you think? |
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