Wednesday, November 1, 2017

A DIY Halloween

A few weeks ago I wrote about starting my Ursula costume that I've been dreaming of DIY-ing for a while. Starting with just a black dress and a purple cape from thrift stores, it was time to get down to work.

Step 1: cut the skirt of the dress up to the thighs (however risque you want to go) into 8 strips. These will become your tentacles. Cut the cape into 8 long triangles, a few inches longer than the skirt strips, but tapering to a point.

Lay the purple fabric, back side up, on top of each strip of the skirt, pin in place, and sew such that the tentacle point and sides are sewn shut, and there is an opening at the top of each. There will be extra black fabric from each strip: don't trim this, when we flip the tentacles right side out, this will be part of the stuffing.


 Don't forget to have a little four-legged friend observe your work:


 Flip the each skirt strip right-side out. The seams will now be on the inside, and the shiny side out.


Now prepare some paint so we can add "suction cups" to the tentacles. I happen to have a bunch of craft paint laying around. If you don't, check out thrift stores that are focused on craft supplies like ReCreative.  I like add some fabric medium, which makes the paint a little less crunchy. An old deli container makes a perfect mixing tub.

 

To stamp on the suction cups, no special tools are needed. The top of an old shampoo bottle makes easy circles. 


Steps not pictured: to fill out each tentacle and also make them bendable, I stuffed them with the filling from an old pillow (free!) and some 1/8" armature wire. Once stuffed, I sewed each tentacle shut, using the couple extra inches of purple fabric to cover the filling. 

For finishing touches, I purchased a long sleeve purplish shirt ($7.99 at Goodwill), painted a shell gold and strung it from a necklace, and made myself up with bold eyes, red lips, and white hair gel. 


And voila! The sea witch goes on to party. :)


On Halloween, my co-workers wanted to dress up as Star Trek characters at work, but I couldn't let all the above crafting go to waste. One more piece, and I can be a sea-witch/alien mashup! I purchased this purple sweater (also Goodwill, $7.99), cut the collar off of it, and sewed on a purple dress belt as trim.


Not counting the purple tights, which wouldn't be included with other commercial costumes, here's the breakdown. 

Dress, $10, thrifted
Cape, $10, thrifted
Wire, $13.35, new (will reuse)
Purple top, $7.99, thrifted
Total: $41.24

A 50-70% savings over packaged costumes!

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