Halloween Costume Hacks

 

To make a flamingo mask, I  paper mache'd a beak onto a pink mask bought at the store. Then we hot glued a stick for the handle and feathers on the front of the mask. To finish and reinforce the handle, we taped and wrapped it with duct tape. I painted the beak with acrylic paints to finish it.

 

 

Audrey Hepburn needed a cigarette holder. I found a bag of paper straws at the Dollar Store. We taped two together with black electrical tape. The white faces had to be colored in with black marker. For the cigarette we used a shortened McDonalds straw. We taped that on too, and covered the stripes on the side with white electrical tape. Cut to desired length.We also taped the "mouth piece" so it did not get soggy during use.

For Audrey's gloves, I ordered some on-line, but they did not arrive until after Halloween. What to do? At first I planned to make some out of the excess material I cut from the thrifted prom dress that I altered for her. Then I realized that black socks would have elastic already. Trouser socks would be even better, since they have no heel. One pack of three sets cost about $6. It took about 30 seconds to snip a chunk (as below) out of each folded sock and make simple "fingerless" gloves.

 

 

And, the wolf. I could not find fur that was appropriate. Since W. will use her pretend animals more than once, early on I ordered her a wolf tail off of Etsy. It was a reasonable price and designed much better than one I would have thrown together. Win! Finally I had the idea that maybe I could find a dog or wolf stuffed animal that I could cut up and use for a mask. Did not find one, but found a teddy bear for $2 that had great fur. I dismembered him (which disturbed the girls) and made the ears out of his front paws sewn onto a headband. One of his legs became the snout, which I glued to a plastic Halloween mask. The rest of the bear "skin" went to covering more of the mask around the eyes. At the end I hot glued some more fur onto the ears to make them larger and more in proportion to the face. I painted the nose on with black acrylic paint.