This TR Family adores Halloween. Our kids love dressing up and trick or treating. We all enjoy decorating the house and feeling spooooooky for a bit.
We view Halloween as a chance to put our creative juices to good use. We ask the kiddoes for their costume ideas and brainstorm on methods to create their vision. Over the years our kids have been giraffes, zombies, tigers, astronauts, housecats, witches, devils, vampires and more. It’s always great fun to bring their ideas to life.
The process of choosing and making a costume helps make Halloween into a season, rather than a single night’s adventure.
Most of our costumes are fairly simple (we are effective, but not extremely accomplished tailors). We start at the base: what articles of clothing do we need to make this work?
A well chosen second-hand sweatshirt or pair of pants can become a great beginning to a costume. A yellow shirt fabric-painted with tiger stripes and the addition of an attached tail, and you are halfway to being a tiger. A different pattern and you could be a giraffe.
Tip: We live where it is usually quite cold on Halloween, so we buy the base a few sizes too big to make sure we can fit some warm layers underneath.
Once you have the basic framework, try to find a few small bits that clearly identify the character. It’s little details, like the right tail for a giraffe, that are easy to construct and make all the difference for a successful costume. We use an inexpensive hair band as the mount for ears, antennae, or horns that we sew on ourselves. We just get small pieces of cloth in the right color from a craft store- easy cheesy!
Tip#2: For little kids especially, but true as well for older ones, there’s not much need to worry about the design from the waist down. We just go with a pair of pants that match the general color scheme.
Likewise, a small amount of make-up can be applied at home without needing a degree in special effects. Whiskers, vampire blood and zombie paleness are simply achieved. A creative older kiddo might enjoy trying to make a scar or bleeding wound by sing some of the theater make up sold at a pharmacy or specialty store.
So skip the store-bought costumes and put your creativity into gear for the month of October. You’ll emerge with a fun costume that you and your kiddo made together, along with memories to last a lifetime.
You probably remember your basic art skills- combining primary (red, yellow, blue) colors produce the secondary (orange, green, purple) colors. And if you combine further, you can produce a whole spectrum of shades and hues.
