DIY Medusa costume

Dress, a pillowcase dress with prints similar to scales.
Fabric remnants €5.

There are many interpretations of Medusa. Sexy Medusa, scary Medusa and my version, "Euro-store" Medusa.  I refuse to spend huge amounts of money on costumes, when it is so much fun to come up with cheap ideas on how to create a costume.  It gets my creative juices flowing. Problem # 1,  Make a head full of snakes, #2 make a snake body or something similar, #3 be comfortable in it. #4 win that best costume price or else! Ha ha ha.

I will never forget one of the firsts halloweens I celebrated with my kids in our new home.  An old neighborhood from the 50's with all its original homeowners.  Average age 70-90.  I was so excited about creating my kids Mario and Luigi costumes and shopped all over for overalls, white gloves, bought fabric to make their distinctive red and green hats, and painted mustaches.  They looked perfect and we went trick or treating, and soon realized that none of my neighbors, knew who Mario and Luigi were.  Door after door, we knocked and they would ask us what they were, and I told them, and they would have this "????"  look on their face.  One of them even asked me if they where dressed as M&Ms.  Sigh!  I was heart broken, all that effort for nothing! Sniff, sniff.

Really.  They were identical to the characters!

Well… Back to the present.  Medusa costume…First, shopping for toy snakes, so I could glue them to a hat and be done with the head full of snakes.  No luck, there aren't that many craft stores around here.  I concentrated on the body next.  Wasn't sure what to do, so I bought green tights and spent several days painting snake scales with a sharpie marker and acrylic paint.  

€2 at the chinese store around the corner.

Later I remember I had some fabric that looked a bit like scales and made a tunic with a train our of it.  Simple sewing pattern. I looked for a pillowcase dress and made a Medusa version out of it.  Leaving the back much longer than the front.  For a video sample click here and for a written tutorial click here. Or you can google your own pillowcase tutorial.  

By the time I was done with Halloween, a few months later, for some reason all the stores had snake and python prints on everything, but why not when I needed them?  Such is life. So maybe, you already have something in your closet with snake print, use that.

Euro Store, 0.75€

I think these were 4 for 1€

One day visiting yet another Euro "chinos" store, I saw this really funky yarn that looked like green sausage links, and lightbulb went on, this would be my medusa head.  I braided the yarn and wrapped it like a turban, but if you like you could glue then to a cap.  With some additional snakes made from pipe cleaners, and lots of eyes glued to the green links, I finally had a head full of... "inchworms"??  Well let's call it, a kid friendly Medusa.  Too cute actually, so my make-up had to be a bit more scary.  

€5 of green sausage links at euro store.  Bag of eyes €1, pipe cleaners €0.70.

Once again, I used the makeup I already had, so the greens are not so bright. If yo have a store that sells halloween makeup use that, the colors will be much brighter.  Happy Halloween.

And here it is… What you think? Would my old neighbors recognize the character?

Braided my hair and put on the hat and pulled the braids through the holes
 for an integrated look.  Makeup, my own everyday eye shadows.

DIY Mummy costume

My little monsters are not so little anymore.

Halloween is not a Spanish festivity, but is really popular around the south of Spain.  It may be because of American movies, or maybe because a large community of Americans live in this area, or simply because everybody loves dressing up around Cadiz.  Carnival anyone?  Anyway, more and more schools and neighborhoods are celebrating it.  

I love costumes almost as much as I love dressing for Feria.  I just try to forget that there is candy involved.  I have to get rid of the lute bag immediately. My kids, on the other hand, don't like it period.  Are they really my kids?  So I try my best to make it fun designing their costumes and trying to build hype around the celebration, but it never works. So in the end, making the costume has to be fun for me, and I make it so I can use it too (see the last picture below). 

Mummy Costume
Making a mummy costume is relatively easy.  All you need is an extra large t-shirt and a white or cream old sweat pant or yoga pant.   If you don't have and old pair of sweat pants, you can make an easy pair of pants out of extra large white t-shirts.  I used a package of Fruit Of The Loom  xtra large t-shirts to make the top and pants.  

You will also need some black tea, bandages or gauze.  Basic sewing skills and sewing materials, a sewing machine, thread, and pins.  Or you can hand sew the gauze by hand. Maybe even use fusible web to iron on the bandages.  Haven't tried the fusible web, but looks possible.   

To make the pants from two t-shirts click here
If you happen to find white yoga pants really cheap, then you can skip, making the pants. 

I made the pants out of two t-shirts, and added an elastic to the waist.

For the top, 
Lay a t-shirt and starts pinning the bandages on one side, in a crisscross like fashion without wrapping it around the t-shirt.  Let excess bandages hang from the sides.  Then sew straight down the length of the shirt passing and stiching all bandages.  It is ok if some hangs and are not neatly attached. Don't cut the extra length.  Turn shirt around and pin the excess length of bandage in a crisscross fashion, like on the front, and sew down to secure the bandages. Now cut and rip the edges of the t-shirt to make it look old.  See the picture below.

Extra large white T-shirt

Dyed with tea and edges ripped and torn.  Dry line, the more wrinkled the better.

For the bottom, I ended attaching the gauze like a hawaiian skirts.  Most of the bandage hanging from the waist.  I also ripped some parts of the pant to make it look old.

Attach the bandages from the waist of pants.
Make holes and tears to T-shirt and pants.

Costume in tea bath

Brew some really strong tea and let the costume sit in the tea several days, I did not wash it afterwards, I just line dried it to keep most of the color and wrinkles.

For the head dress, you can wrap the bandages around several times, or sew together the bandages like a turban  which you can easily put it on and take off.  This was so comfortable and easy to wear, I took it to my zumba class and danced like a beast.  

Arriving to my Zumba class was fun