Halloween Costume Tricks

I love making costumes but they have to be inexpensive and use common materials. As well they should be fairly easy to make.

This is not about making the complete costume. This is about some simple ideas to put costumes together. The loincloth and boot covers were sewn from leather and other cloth and that won't be detailed here. The head covering, in the form of a bandana, was made from the spider tablecoth. The arms and collar are from a leather jacket. I just cut away everything I didn't want and kept the rest.

Materials:

Whatever you have on hand. For this I bought the skulls, masks, leggings, spider tablecloth, chain, and swords from a dollar store. The leather was bought in the form of jackets from thrift stores. Total cost maybe $30. Oh yes, a needle and thread.

These are women's tights. They work well enough, even for men.

This is a spider tablecloth. It was cut to the width of my body, poncho style, with some overlap. Then five hooks were sewn on to each side edge to hold the cloth tight against my body. The hooks just hooked into the holes in the cloth on the other side.

These were complete skulls and the backs were cut off to fit on the costume's shoulders. Then they were sewn on to the shoulders with a needle and thread.

The chain originally had five skulls on it. Four of them were used for the weapons. The swords are from a child's ninja set. The skulls were sewn on because I didn't have a hot glue gun and I really don't trust hot glue holding well enough on plastic. The thread made a very nice and strong mechanical connection.

This was made from two masks, a lower half skull mask and a masquerade mask. Again no glue was used. The masks were sewn together by the temples and in the nose.

This is what they looked like completed.

My spunky sidekick Ninja Beaver!!! Just strips of leather and toy weapons sewn on from a dollar store figurine. Ninja Beaver was from the dollar store too.

This instructable is not about just Halloween costumes. It's about simple tricks to enhance your costume ideas.

Enjoy!