Easy Homemade Halloween Costumes

In a world where monthly bills seem to rise with the sun, it is sometimes very helpful to save a little money and depend less on the vendors around us. Easy homemade Halloween costumes are economical and truly fun for the whole family.

Everyday household items can be transformed to adorable easy homemade Halloween costumes in no time at all. The big brown supermarket bag, for instance, when it is not doubling as a book cover, can become a costume. Simply invert and cut arm holes and a head hole. You have a brown body costume. With a feathered headband you have created an Indian costume. With a little metallic paint you have a tin-man body. Be creative!

With a simple purple or green sweat suit you have the perfect base for a bunch of grapes! Add green or purple balloons and the fruit is complete.

Safety pin a large array of clothing to a comfortable outfit. Hang socks, underwear, shirts, shorts, etc. Then walk around carrying laundry detergent! You are laundry personified….

There really are no limits to the costumes and personas you can create using the everyday items in your home. Large cardboard boxes make excellent costume bases. Be a walking television set or even become that star on TV (by appearing in the cutout view hole).

Masquerading as a pencil or a pen is also very easy. With a navy blue sweat suit for pens and a tan sweat suit for pencils you have the base of your costume. Add an old party hat and your costume is complete. Just cover the hat to represent the tip of a pen or pencil.

Some of the best ideas can come from the children themselves. If you keep costume clothing or old clothes in an attic or closet, let the kids experiment. Old baggy jeans, button down shirts and straw hats make the perfect farmers, crazy, mismatched clothing with a big tie and a wig can form the perfect base for a clown. Long silky bathrobes and ghoulish masks create ideal Halloween creatures, and of course, a standard witch hat, with any kind of old fashioned dress, adds a little class and antiquity to an old favorite.

Some more ideas

• Use balloons!  Blow up small white balloons, and attach them to the child’s clothing to make a bathing beauty. For a more detailed costume, cut the bottom out of a large plastic tub and hang it over the child’s shoulders with straps. A shower cap, sponge, or rubber ducky all will add an extra special touch.  How about purple balloons to make a cluster of grapes, or why not cover yourself with multicolored balloons, and then a big clear plastic bag, tied at the neck with ribbons, for a ‘bag of jelly beans.’
• Make a spaghetti and meatballs costume starting with a red sweat suit, a baseball cap, string mop heads, black pom-poms, and lots of safety pins. Use one mop head, pinned to the baseball cap, for the headpiece. Cut the strings off of more mop heads and randomly pin them to the sweat suit with the pom-poms to make the spaghetti and meatballs. A colander worn upside down on the head completes the costume.
• An easy skeleton costume can be made with a set of black sweats or leotards, a commercially made glow-in-the-dark skeleton wall hanging, a black knit cap and gloves, and a glue gun. Simply disassemble the skeleton, and glue the parts to the clothing. Be sure to leave room at the joints so your child can move. Make eye and mouth holes in the skull, and attach it to the cap to make a pull-down mask.
• There are any number of simple animal costumes that can be made with leotards or sweats. Paint a white line down the back of a black outfit for a skunk, or add commercially available ears, nose, and tail for a black cat. You can make your own ears by attaching construction paper to a cheap plastic headband. Use large pom-poms for bunny tails. Pieces of poster board can be painted as a turtle, and attached to the back with straps made of thin elastic. Spots can be achieved simply by pinning pieces of felt or construction paper to the clothing.
• Boxes, and a little paint and imagination, are another base for lots of great Halloween costumes: silver paint and a few additions made of construction paper make a robot, use wrapping paper and ribbon for a Christmas present, white paint and a few black dots make dice, white with a black handle makes a refrigerator.

Make Up Tips For Do It Yourself Halloween Costumes

More and more people are discovering the satisfaction and fun of making their own Halloween costumes. Do it yourself Halloween costumes don’t have to be complex or time-consuming ventures. With a little bit of creativity and some planning ahead, you can have wonderful do it yourself Halloween costumes that stand apart from the rest.

Makeup is a wonderful addition to most costumes and with a little bit of planning, it can really take a costume to new heights. One of the biggest mistakes made by excited costume wearers, is not allowing enough preparation time. Therefore, if you are using makeup, know exactly what you will need, buy it early (to ensure that supplies will last), and do a trial run or two so that you will know exactly how you will apply it, and what you really want it to look like.

Wonderful bases for frightful makeup are baby powder (which can be used in hair as well) and basic skin foundations (some of which are now available with glitter). Decide whether you want to put your costume on before applying makeup (sometimes this is easier with a complicated costume), or after (to ensure that your costume stays clean)

With dark shadow you can create sallow circles under your eyes or you can produce very sunken eyes. If you mix colored tissue with corn syrup, you can produce stomach-curdling scars and sores. And for that really creepy facial hair, just remove a little hair from your hairbrush and stick it on your face and hands with a little double stick tape!