DIY Costumes

Halloween is Coming!!! Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year (except my birthday). How could you NOT like a halloween that is about candy, talking to strangers, and best of all: COSTUMES. I love dressing up, and I always have. If you have not already subscribed to my blog, you are missing weekly emails with CLASSIC #tbts of me in costume. I have dressed up as everything from a drag queen princess to a gypsy; you can see I have loved costumes since the beginning of time. At least the beginning of MY time. Also, I love love love crafting.

Growing up, I often had handmade or hand-thrown-together costumes, and I have been a fan of the DIY costume ever since. The best part about making your own costume is that no one else will have it. Anyone can go into a Spirit of Halloween popup and buy a sexy nurse or sexy army girl costume. But not everyone can put together a super-not-PC gypsy costume complete with crystal ball made of tin foil.

Which brings me to my next point: the point of Halloween is NOT to be sexy. October 31^st is not an excuse to forego half of your clothes. I don’t know who decided that a costume is just leaving half of your outfit at home and putting on cat ears, but that will not cut it. Reminds me of the infamous scene in Mean Girl, the epitome of this:

There is a meme that makes its rounds on Instagram every year, about “sexy girl Halloween costumes vs. me,” and that perfectly personifies my idea of Halloween costumes. The weirder, the better. This all started in 2009 when my best friend and her sister (and I) decided to be Treasure Trolls. This was LONG before the Troll movie. We made the most amazing troll costumes ever known to man. Photos are coming. Get excited.

So why and how are my ideal DIY costumes 100% awesome but 100% NOT sexy?? Let’s break it down step by step:

The base of the costume must ALWAYS be a unitard.

This is a tradition that has been unbroken since 2009. The most epic unitard was definitely the 2009 treasure troll one, because it was see-through. And ordered from eBay. According to the reviews, it was supposed to be used for fetish play. As in… there was a hole. In a choice place. In fact, one of the reviews recommended wearing it backward… depending on what you’re into. You catch my drift. Anyway, after this year, we realized that the hole was incredibly convenient because a unitard made of pantyhose material is not easy to take off and on! Think about how tough it is just to put on tights! (Ladies, you know what I’m talking about.) When you are pub-crawling, you are most likely drinking in excess, which means you are taking bathroom trips in excess as well. That hole in the unitard came in handy. These unitards were especially epic because they matched our skin and people thought we were naked. The next year we used a unitard as the base of our costume again, and a tradition was born.

The next year we were a huge wolf pack. The fetish unitard only came in two colors, “nude” and “black” (racist, much?). Anyway, I chose to be the one black wolf in the wolf pack, like I’m the black sheep in my family. JK JK. Anyway, it was a hit yet again, with cutoff shorts and amazing hair and makeup to top it off, done by our friend who is a makeup artist.

The next year, I did a costume all by myself, and I knew I had a lot to live up to. I kept all of the preparations a secret! How could I outdo the Treasure Trolls from years past?? If you dream it, it will come. I became the World’s Tallest Oompa Loompa, and it was terrifying. Face paint, wig and all. I made the entire costume by hand, all the way down to drawing the stripes on my soccer socks, and buying long johns from Walmart.com. This was 2011, the year of the Halloween Blizzard. I was still living in Brooklyn and I knew I couldn’t miss the Halloween party in Manhattan, so I camped out at my friend’s house all day, scared that they would shut down the subways if I waited longer to go into the city. Painting myself into an oompa loompa in secret in a friend’s bathroom is NOT an easy feat. This look took some real determination, but I did it! For this look, I actually used Rit Dye to color my unitard the perfect orange-brown-skin-shade. Talk about dedication to the cause.

Around this time, for some reason, unitards became avant-garde. Of course, they were not avant-garde to us, but the addition of the word “morphsuit” to the Halloween lexicon was a gamechanger. Don’t get me wrong, we would never dare to purchase a morphsuit skeleton and that be the end of the costume. I like crafting too much for that. At first, they only had about 6 colors available, and we did our best with those. The first year we made use of morphsuits we were uni-corns. Get it? Unitard – Unicorn? I thought it was a great idea. We made horns out of Crayola Model Magic, and we painted and glittered ourselves into oblivion. Then we put on some false eyelashes. Then we added a tutu. TADA! Done.

This brings me to my next step to ensure ugly but classic costumes: DIY no-sew tutus! I originally learned how to do this from youtube, and I have mastered the skill throughout the years. I can now make a tutu with my eyes closed. Literally. I currently have 5 tutus in my closet. I will have 6 after I craft my current costume tonight (tutorial coming soon).

This brings me to the next and last step to ensure a not-sexy costume: stuffing your belly! You know how some girls diet so they can fit into their (lack of fabric) costume? I do the exact opposite! There’s nothing like covering your belly with some extra belly, so people can’t tell which part is natural and which part is just extra padding! It’s like they say in Miracle on 34^th Street, “since I carry my own padding with me, I got the job, see?” Often when I am researching DIY costumes and looking at how to make mine better (pinterest has been a lifesaver here, and I’m not even a member!), I have noticed that I often pick costumes that are picked by pregnant women. This is extra fun, because when people think I am pregnant, and they see me drinking in excess, it provides for some great looks and comments. LET ME LIVE, OK!? When I began stuffing my belly for Halloween, I used pillow stuffing that you can buy by the bag from Michael’s. Last year, I discovered a much easier way, I stuffed an emoji pillow in my unitard! The stuffing stays together and it’s perfectly round!

The best part about making your own costumes is that you can repurpose the different parts for different things. I repurposed my wolfpack black unitard to make it a bee unitard by making a new last-minute tutu. I have used my yellow unitard to be a Minion and a Care Bear (Funshine Bear), and Winnie the Pooh. I’ve used my blue unitard to be a Unicorn and a Smurfette (terrifying, really). I’ve used my silver unitard to be the Tin Man and a Hersey Kiss. It’s all about repurposing and #BallinOnABudget.

I wish I had this blog years ago years so I could have shared my ideas and steps to make my costumes.

My costume for this year is a surprise, but considering I was supposed to be in a big group costume that only fell through last week, you can be sure I will be repurposing a few items from my costume box! (Yes, I have a costume box… it takes up valuable closet space in a New York apartment but it’s #WorthIt.)

I will be posting a DIY blog specifically for my 2017 costume next week, after the big reveal this weekend at the traditional annual pub crawl. I hope you guys like it!