Three Cheap and Easy Halloween Costume Ideas

     Halloween is rapidly approaching.  If you are looking for a Halloween costume for yourself or for your children but don't have a lot of money to spare, here are a few costume ideas that are inexpensive and require little time to construct.

 

Zombie

 

Materials:
*Light colored shirt
*Scissors
*Red food coloring or red marker
*Leaves
*All purpose ashesive
*Red undershirt (optional)

Directions:
*Take your light colored shirt and cut holes in it to make it look ragged and torn.
*Take the shirt outside and rub in the dirt or grass to make the shirt look dirty.
*Using red food coloring or a red marker, color around the holes to make it look like you have been bleeding.  Add some splotches of food coloring or marker to other places on the shirt as well.
*Glue on some leaves.

 

The Paper Bag Princess

 

If you have never heard of the Paper Bag Princess before, she is a character from a children's book by Robert Munsch.  For more information about the book, see Amazon or the book's Wikipedia page.

Materials:

*2 paper bags
*Cardboard cereal box
*Gold permanent marker or paint
*Scissors
*Tape

Directions:
*Take one of the bags and cut along the side seams, then cut out the bottom of the bag.  Discard the bottom of the bag.  Your paper bag should now be in two pieces.
*Take the second paper bag and cut about halfway up the side seams, starting from the opening of the bag.
*Slide the two halves of the first paper bag into the second paper bag and adjust until the two bags are the appropriate length to fit the intended recipient of the costume.  Tape the bags together.
*Cut out arm holes.  If the slits along the side seams of the bag do not reach the arm holes, cut the slit up to the arm holes.
*Cut out a neck hole.  Add slits going diagonally from neck hole to the corners of the bag so that the costume will slide over the head of the costume wearer.
*Once the costume recipient is wearing the costume, she or he may find it helpful to tape the sides of the costume together.
*To make the crown, take a cardboard cereal box and cut out the front side.  Only the front piece is needed for this project.
*Flip the piece over so that the side with the pictures faces the table.
*Draw a rectangle as long as the cereal box is tall and add triangles or other shapes resembling the spikes of a crown to it.
*Color the crown shape gold using a permanent marker or paint.
*Cut out the crown and tape the ends together.

 

Decade costumes

 

(Photo taken by Rachel Hirsch)

     This one isn't really a craft, but it is a great idea for an inexpensive costume.  Start by searching your own closet.  Do you have any wardrobe pieces that resemble clothing from a decade or so ago?  It turned out that I had 70's attire right in my closet.  If you can't find anything that works or don't have anything that you want to wear for a decade costume, check out your local thrift shops.  You can usually find tons of great clothing items from previous decades there.