Halloween is almost upon us, giant pumpkins are already piled up waiting to be carved into ghoulish faces and all the chatter around here is about costume planning and apple bobbing. We always make our own costumes and every year the older children’s get more ghoulish while I am always a witch with broomstick and smoking cauldron. We usually stick to the traditional Halloween costumes and over the years we have made skeletons, giants, pumpkins and all sorts of ghosties and ghoulies, most of them are really simple to make and can then be jazzed up as much as the children’s imagination allows. Here are three easy Halloween costumes for kids with love from us!
Easy Halloween Costumes for Kids
Most of the materials you need to make these costumes can be found in your wardrobe or charity shops and there are no difficult DIY skills needed – if you can stitch a few wobbly stitches and spread some glue you’re good to go!
How to Make A Halloween Bat Costume
To Make a Halloween Bat Costume You Will Need:
- Black fabric (I always use fleece because it cuts without fraying and there is no need for hemming)
- Black gloves
- Black trousers and shirt
- Black woolly hat
- Scissors
- Needle and thread or 3 safety pins
Instructions for Making a Halloween Bat Costume
- Get your child to hold the fabric between thumb and forefinger of each hand and stretch their arms as wide as they will go so you can measure their wing span. Cut a rectangle of the fabric this wide and long enough to reach to the back of their knees.
- Fold the rectangle in half widthways and chalk a semi-circle from bottom left corner to top right corner.
- Chalk smaller semi circles all the way up your large one
- Cut along the chalk lines
- Sew or safety-pin the middle of the fabric at the top of the wings to the middle of the black shirt collar
- Sew or safety-pin the tips of the wings to the wrists of the gloves
- Add black hat and, Hey Presto, one spooky black bat! Easily jazzed up by adding some glow in the dark paint for extra spookiness!
How to Make a Halloween Cat Costume
To Make a Halloween Cat Costume You Will Need
- Black tights and fabric scraps
- Black head band
- Black and pink felt
- Cardboard
- Fake black fur (optional)
- Black trousers
- Black shirt
- PVA glue or a glue gun
- Scissors
Instructions to Make a Halloween Cat Costume
- Cut one leg off an old pair of tights and stuff with fabric scraps to make a tail. Tie the end.
- Cut four triangles of black felt, two slightly smaller triangles of card and two even smaller of pink felt.
- Glue one of the black triangles, pop a card triangle on top, add another layer of glue then another black triangle, some more glue and a pink triangle so you have an ear sandwich. This makes the ears stand up perkily rather than flopping about.
- Allow your ears to dry and then glue them onto your hairband (we added some fake fur to ours, just for good measure!)
- Safety pin the tail to the trousers (if they have belt loops you can just tie the tail on to a loop)
- We added a cat mask we had in the dressing up box but it would be easy to make with black card, elastic and pipe cleaner whiskers
How to Make a Minecraft Creeper Mask for Halloween
Moving away from the traditional with a costume to appeal to all the Minecraft fans – this Creeper mask is really simple and very effective!
To Make a Minecraft Creeper Mask You Will Need:
- Cardboard box
- Green paper or thin card in various shades
- Black paper or thin card in two shades
- Scissors or paper guillotine
- Glue
Instructions for Making a Minecraft Creeper Mask
- Paste glue all over the front of the box and cover with a sheet of green paper as the background.
- Cut strips of green paper in various shades – make them the width of a ruler so they are easy to measure.
- Cut strips of the two shades of black paper.
- Cut all your strips into evenly sized squares – use one as a template for all the others or cheat and use a paper guillotine! They don’t have to be perfect.
- Lay your pieces onto the box so you can perfect your Creeper face – use ours as a guideline. You can be pretty random with the greens but do use a dark black for the pupil of the eye and lighter black for the iris.
- Poke a hole through the pupils with a pencil so your Creeper can see where they are going!
Which one do you think your little devils will choose?! I’m quite keen on this cheeky bat!
The mornings are now REALLY dark, half term is almost upon us and our Halloween decor is coming along nicely. Giant pumpkins are piled up waiting to be carved into ghoulish faces and all the chatter around here is about costume planning and apple bobbing. We hope you enjoy our easy DIY Halloween costume ideas – all that remains for us to do is to sort our outfits for this year and cook up some spooky grub!
Happy Halloween!
If you’re looking for more easy Halloween costumes check out these super simple Mummies, this easy skeleton costume and this super cute Halloween Witch!
My eldest is dressing up as a Minecraft Creeper as she already has the head! Such a simple idea x
Simplest are definitely the best!