Autumn is my favorite time of year, the weather starts to cool, the leaves begin to change and the month of October is full of Harvest Festivals, Haunted Houses and of course, HALLOWEEN!
This year, I’ve put together the 31 Days of Halloween, 31 hand-created or styled costumes in addition to some costume tutorials. One costume will be posted each day of October on my Instagram account and I will have a corresponding blog post here. Many of the costumes I have made, but there isn’t always time to make a costume from scratch, sometimes you have to make do with a “styled” costume which is a costume you create with items on hand or with minimal purchases.
Day 11 – Elsa (Frozen) – I know we didn’t make it through every Disney princess, but we did make it through quite a few of them when L was younger and Elsa is no exception. This fabric was leftover from a prom dress I had made for a friend’s daughter and I was really excited to put this together with supplies that I already had on hand. The capelet was made from white polar fleece (which I also had on hand), it would have been a longer cloak if I had had more fabric to work with. You can’t see them well, but the snowflakes around the dress hem are lightweight dollar store ornaments, unfortunately, they caught on everything and I would not use them again.
Previous Days’ Posts:
Day 10 – Queen of Hearts Tea Cup Fascinator – This is a quick and easy project if you need accessories for a simple Queen of Hearts costume.
Day 9 – Wednesday Addams – I am a huge fan of the Addams family and Wednesday is officially my favorite character after watching the Netflix series. Its super easy to put a Wednesday costume together – black hairspray (totally optional), braids, pale face make-up and a black outfit. Add the “murderous don’t care” attitude and you’re done!
Day 8 – Cruella’s Gloves – For years I was terrified to make “fingered” gloves, but they are easier than expected. This is a quick and dirty video on the making of the red gloves that L wore in the Cruella photos yesterday.
Day 7 – Cruella de Vil – I have always wanted to dress as Cruella for Halloween. Instead, we styled a Cruella costume for L and had a mini photo shoot. I love how the photos turned out and we found some really cool filters to play with too!
Day 6 – Dark Angel Wings – Last year my daughter came across these incredibly sad looking wings at our local ARC thrift store. They were half off that day ($2.50) so I told her I would revamp them. I’m not sure how much I spent on replacement feathers, but I think they turned out pretty good for the dark angel costume she put together. The video of my process can be viewed below.
Day 5 – Belle – My daughter’s favorite fairy tale is Beauty and the Beast and I had so much fun making her Belle costume that year. I found the perfect buttery yellow satin and glitter rose fabric at JoAnn’s.
Day 4 – Skeleton Costumes – Each fall in Manitou Springs, CO, there is an event called the Emma Crawford Coffin Races, its a great day of fun and many people dress up for the occasion. The year we went, my husband and son dressed up as skeletons. My husband’s costume was themed after James Bond’s costume in Spectre, unfortunately, the stick-on bones I had created were a fail and wouldn’t stay in place. Next time I will use paint and it will be a dedicated skeleton jacket. His tie is hand painted. H’s costume was a fun mix of items that I pulled together or repurposed for the costume. I hand painted the bandana using stencils.
Day 3 – Flesh Wounds – Years ago, I found a cool tutorial online that showed me how to make realistic looking wounds using toilet paper and Elmer’s glue. Add some coloring and fake blood and you have a pretty realistic flesh wound. I think they turned out totally grotesque, don’t you?
Day 2 – The Zombie Family – Learning how to make fake flesh wounds became useful when we did a zombie crawl one year, it was a lot of fun to dress up and pretend that we were part of the un-dead.
Day 1 – The Madd Hatter – Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite stories and I love the different adaptations that have been created over the years. The Madd Hatter is one of my favorite characters. I styled this costume several years ago for a company Halloween celebration and I actually won the costume contest that year. Most of the items were things that I had on hand, I only purchased the tights to add to the costume. The hat/fascinator had been purchased a few years before, but I did make some changes to it to better fit my “vision”.
Have a Happy and Safe Halloween!