So I’m not big on the whole homemade clothing thing, but when it comes to Halloween costumes, I not only do not want to spend too much money on a mass-manufactured, overpriced, and cheaply made store-bought costume, but I also want my kids to be unique. It seems to me that Halloween is the one time where having something made just for you isn’t lame. It’s creative, right? Well, that’s how I remember it as a kid anyway. I remember one year being so proud that I had found this weird stick in the yard that had this hole through the middle of it, and we used it in my hair so I could go as Pebbles from the Flintstones. I don’t remember anything else about the costume, but I remember thinking the bone-like stick in my hair was awesome because nobody else would have that. Now, maybe it was lame, but I didn’t think so at the time, and so far my own kids aren’t complaining, so here’s my how-to on our Halloween costumes this year!

For the major part of this last year Emma has been saying she wanted to go as a big m&m for Halloween. I don’t know where she got the idea, but she seemed pretty fixed on it. Then one day she randomly decided she would much rather be a flower, so all my m&m plans were forgotten and I moved on to focusing on how I was going to create a flower. Of course, she wanted her face to be the middle of the flower, and she wanted the flower to be pink. I thought of a lot of dumb ideas, and then one day came across a costume in one of my magazines for the Queen of Hearts. This is relevant because the face of the little girl was surrounded by a giant heart—similar to how I needed the flower to be. So I stole the idea and decided to make the flower out of stiff felt (which I only vaguely knew existed before reading about this costume).

I looked at some pictures of flower costume designs, but as usual, decided to just wing it. I knew the flower needed a center piece to go around her little face, and then pink petals to surround it, so I bought a bunch of white and pink felt, and some green for leaves, and headed home. Then Emma and I sat down to watch Anastasia and create her flower. I started with the easiest part of cutting a circle in the center of my white felt. I cut it very small and then continually annoyed Emma by holding it up to her face to see if it fit yet, while cutting more and more out of it. Eventually we had a perfect little Emma-hole. Now I wasn’t sure what to do. It needed to be thick enough to support the petals, but the piece of felt was only so big. And for once, I got smart. I got out some paper, and made a little petal stencil. I wasn’t entirely smart for the next part, but I did get lucky. I started placing the petal on the felt and tracing around it to create my center flower petals. Fortunately, the size I chose ended up fitting perfectly around the Emma-hole, without having the last one being smushed. Then I cut it out.

Next, I used the small stencil to create a large stencil that still followed the same shape, and I cut out as many petals as I could from my remaining felt.  I had 7 petals to work with. Here are my supplies thus far:

Then I placed them how I wanted them around the flower, and once again got to bust out my new hot glue gun! I glued it all together, and was actually very pleased with it. I could have bought more felt and put one more petal at the bottom, but I had originally planned not to have petals down on her chest because I thought they would get in the way. Maybe it would be better with petals all around, but I still like it anyway. I then took some elastic (3/4 in. thick) and hot-glued it to one side, measured it around Emma’s head, and hot-glued it to the other side as well.

Her first time trying on the flower. She was very excited!

The leaves are basically the same process, except I procrastinated and was making them the night before she needed them, so I just free-handed the cutting out. I had originally planned to have leaves around her neck or maybe on her arms, but she’s so tiny, and the flower petals cover most of her neck, so instead we decided to make a Tinker Bell-like leaf skirt.  I cut, glued, and then added some white felt cut into strips as ties so it can be put on like an apron.

The worst part was the store-bought part. I thought for sure I could find some plain green pants and shirt, but I couldn’t! I had bought some plain pants with a matching top that had a little picture on the front that I thought the leaf-necklace would cover up, but since we made it a skirt that wouldn’t work. I had also found a plain long-sleeve shirt that she ended up wearing, but the green was really clashy with the green in the pants, so she’s just wearing some pajama shorts she had, which don’t really match either, but aren’t as obtrusive. Anyway, at the end of the day Emma was really happy with her costume, and that’s what matters!

The Little Flower

As an end note, I think I spent maybe $4 on felt, $2 on elastic (which I also used in III’s costume), and $3.50 on the shirt (which she can wear normally), so I think it was worth it money-wise, too! Stay tuned for my little gnome . . .

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Tags: crafts, Emma, Halloween

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Wanderlust Wednesdays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.