Homemade Christmas Elf costume

How to make a Christmas Elf Costume

There are plenty of fancy dress elf costumes available to either hire or buy, but if you would rather make your own childrens elf costume, I managed to find this very easy way to make an elf costume that will also be a great way you can spend some quality time together with your children doing something creative as you make the costume together.

This elf costume is recommended for children of 4 years or older.

To make your own elf costume you will need:

• About two yards of red felt per elf costume (Fabric other than felt can be used, but it will probably require hemming.)
• A few smaller pieces of other colours of felt like green, white, yellow and black
• Non-toxic glue
• Measuring tape
• Tiny bells
• Needle and thread.

Measuring and cutting out the fabric

• Start off by folding over the felt, then ask your child to lie down on it. This fold will become the shoulders of the elf costume which is great news as you don’t have to sew them!
  
• Use a marker to mark the sides of the neck, the lower edges of the armholes and the length of the costume that you want.
  
• Cut out the costume and try it on over your child’s head.
  

The Elfs Hat

• Measure the circumference of your child’s head and mark it on the felt leaving about an inch as spare.
  
• Then Mark the desired height around 1 foot is about right, if it is too long the hat will tend to easily fall off
• Cut out the rectangle that you have just marked out
• Roll it into a cone and place it on your child’s head, it should go down over their ears, to get the right size.
  
• Keep the shape and size, but remove it from your childs head to pin it together.
  
• An extra flap of material will be left over – don’t worry about this. It won’t be seen once the hat is turned inside out.

Time for the Sewing

• Don't worry, there is not much sewing involved and so and it won’t take very long. It is probably best you do this away from your child for safety reasons.
• If you are sewing the costume by hand, use a double thread.
• Sew the sides of the tunic together leaving ample room for the arms.
• Then Turn it inside out so the seams don’t show.
• Then sew the cone hat along the line of safety pins in the hat and turn it inside out.
• Finish by sewing a little bell onto the point of the hat.

And that is the main part of the costume done, you can then encourage your child to decorate the costume by sticking the other pieces of coloured felt to the costume. If he / she is old enough they can cut out shapes.

And that is it - The Easy Peasy Homemade Elf Costume for Kids!

Womens Santa Claus Costumes

Christmas Fancy Dress Ideas: Santa Claus Costumes for Women
In this modern world Santa does not HAVE to be male, in fact if take a look there are almost as many Santa costumes for women as there are the men's version.

Sexy Santa Costumes
Ok, so we all know that the traditional Santa is supposed to be a big fat bloke with a beard, well for a far more sexier alternative, there are plenty of sexy Santa costumes available out there. Possibly more of a Christmas present for your partner than for yourself though! I also have a sneaky suspicion which version of Santa most teenage boys would rather have deliver their xmas presents to as well!

So for a little bit of fun and if you have got it why not flaunt it this Christmas in a sexy Santa costume! Amazon is a great place to start looking, they have a large selection of just about everything, but also many sexy Santa outfits for Christmas:

USA
Sexy Santa Costumes on Amazon.com



UK
Sexy Santa Costumes on Amazon.co.uk



Womans Santa Costumes
If dressing up in a sexy costume is not your thing there are also plenty of womens Santa Clause costumes available that whilst can never be fully traditional (Santa is a man!) they focus a little more on tradition and a little less on sexy than the one featured above!

Crazy Santa Costumes

Fancy Dress Ideas For Christmas
If you are a little bored of the traditional red and white image of Santa, here are a few alternative fancy dress ideas for Santa this Christmas that I have managed to find on the web.

The Grinch Santa Claus Costume
The Grinch Santa costume is also fun. If you do not know the story, the Grinch is a character that was developed by Dr Seuss and it was he that stole Christmas and I think makes a fun alternative to the traditional white bearded Santa. This Grinch fancy dress costume comes with the Grinch mask with attached green fur fabric whiskers. The Headpiece has the red Santa hat attached. Red long sleeved Santa jacket and completed by a wide black belt with an over-sized brassed belt buckle.

Bad Santa Costumes
Red and White not the colours for you? How about black and white? I managed to find this Bad Santa costume that has the words 'Bah Humbug' written on the Santa hat, perfect for the Santa with a bad streak in him!

Take a look here if you are looking for a Traditional Santa Claus costume

Traditional Santa Claus Costumes

The Traditional Red and White Santa Outfits
So where did this iconic image of Santa in his red suit come from? Some people incorrectly think that the Coca-Cola Company invented the red Santa costume in the 1930's. Coca-Cola only used the character because his well-known colour scheme is similar to that of the company logo. So even though Coke were not the first to put the red suit on Santa, the company did play a large role in making the character much more popular. It was way back in 1885 that we find the first Christmas card depicting Santa Claus in his famous red suit. Printed in Boston by by Louis Prang although I am not sure if he was the first to put Santa into the red and white. The original inspiration came from Saint Nicholas of Myra, in the Netherlands. In Dutch he was called Sinterklaas, who was helped by his servants called Zwarte Pieten, who we now call his elves.


Fancy Dress Santa Claus Costumes

I guess these days when we think of Christmas, the first name that comes to mind is Santa Claus. The great thing about Santa as a character is his well known fancy dress costume. The red and white Santa Costume, or Santa suit with long white beard and Santa hat is about as well known an icon in the fancy dress world as you can get. If you are looking to buy a Santa outfit there are literally thousands to choose from and all from the outside look fairly similar. From the super deluxe Santa suits to cheap Santa beards and hats, you are sure to find a costume that will suit your needs as well as how deep your pocket goes, but all this choice can also be a little daunting. My advice with so much choice would be to shop around, spend a bit of time and you are sure to fined the right xmas costume for you.

A great place to start is with a shop like Amazon who have a huge variety of costumes that you can quickly browse through:

USA:
Santa Costumes on Amazon.com


UK:
Santa Costumes on Amazon.co.uk

Top Selling Halloween Costumes for 2008

Jokers' Masquerade Halloween Costumes recently published an article on their website, featuring the best selling Halloween costumes for 2008. It actually makes quite interesting reading and is a nice insight into how well certain costumes do over the busiest time of the year for the fancy dress industry. I have listed the top 10 Halloween costumes below in order of popularity.


Interesting points:

• The Ghostbusters costume has been number one for the last two years!
• 8 out of the top ten Halloween costumes are adult male costumes, I would have thought more womens Halloween costumes would have made the top ten? Perhaps girls like trying different costumes and to make sure that they are not wearing the same dress as someone else at the fancy dress party!
  
• The Jigsaw, Wizard Wanda and Joker Costumes are new costumes for this year.
• 6 of the top ten Halloween costumes are inspired by movies. (Ghostbusters, Edward Scissorhands, The Saw, Batman, Nightmare On Elm Street and Harry Potter)
• There are 2 zombie costumes in the top 10 and no Ghosts costumes

Below are the top 10 best selling Halloween Costumes at Jokers' Masquerade in 2008:

1) Adult Official Deluxe Ghostbusters Costume
I find the popularity of the Ghostbusters Halloween costumes somewhat perplexing, sure during it's time way back in the 80's it was a great film and yes the fancy dress costume is pretty cool, but for it to be the No. 1 selling Halloween costume for two years running is quite an achievement!

2) Adult Edward Scissorhands Costume
Again, like the Ghostbusters costume, the Edward Scissorhands Costume comes from a film, and this one is not even really about ghosts or Halloween, so again for me it is pretty interesting that it is one of the most popular Halloween costumes.

3) Adult Grave Groom Zombie Costume
Finally coming in at number 3 is a typical Halloween type fancy dress costume. It aint a ghost but what could be better than a scary zombie Halloween costume.

4) Adult Tinkerspell Costume
The first womans Halloween costume and it is a twist on a scary witch costume with a hint of a fairy costume included. I think what makes this costume popular is that most girls want to look good at a party, even Halloween parties, so who would pick a witch costume when you can dress in a sexy evil fairy costume!

5) Complete Zombie Adult Costume
The second Zombie costume, and still no ghost costumes (only a ghost killer) - kind of obvious who is winning the zombie / ghost popularity contest at Halloween!

6) Adult Official Saw Jigsaw Puppet Costume
Another costume that takes it's inspiration from a film, this time it is the very scary Saw series of horror films.

7) Adult Evil Jester Costume
One of my favourite themes as being the most scary costumes are scary clown costumes and you don't get much better than this very popular evil jester costume.

8) Adult The Joker Deluxe Costume
I thought that with the popularity of the Dark Knight Batman film and the sad passing away of Keith Ledger, that The Joker Costume may have been higher up the list than in 8th place.

9) Adult Freddy Krueger Costume
A Nightmare On Elm Street is another popular Halloween film and so makes a popular Halloween Costume.

10) Adult Wizard Wanda Costume
This is an interesting one at number 10 as it comes from the Harry Potter films, so I guess will be more popular in the UK than the USA and only the second female Halloween fancy dress costume in the top 10.

Lewis Hamilton Costume

I have some friends that work for Vodafone and they were saying that the new and youngest ever Formula 1 world champion, Lewis Hamilton was coming in to visit their offices as part of his sponsor obligations. They were really excited and said that some people were going to be given the change to race against him on a simulator. This got me thinking are there any formula one fancy dress costumes or even better Lewis Hamilton costumes?

Lewis Hamilton Costume
Well to my surprise there are! The Official Lewis Hamilton fancy dress costume is actually the Mclaren Racing overalls which could equally be called by Lewis's team mate, a Heikki Kovalainen costume. What ever your favourite driver, the F1 racing suit only comes in childrens sizes for ages from 3 to 7 and is fully quilted and has embroidered sponsorship logos.

lewis hamilton costume on Amazon.co.uk


There are also Fararri costumes available, but I could not find any other F1 teams fancy dress costumes out there.


Valentino Rossi Costume
If cars are not your thing and you child is into motorbikes, you could also be the current MotoGP world champion in the Valentino Rossi Costume, which also only comes in childrens sizes.

Valentino Rossi Costume on Amazon.co.uk

Sexy Batgirl Costume: Superhero Costumes

As a fancy dress theme, superhero costumes are one of the most popular, it seems that everyone secretly wishes that they had superpowers. Well if you can't manage to learn how to fly or lift cars with your small finger the next best thing is to dress up in a Superhero costume and pretend.

Batgirl Costumes
One of the best selling superhero fancy dress costumes for women is this sexy Batgirl costume from the super sexy secret wishes DC super hero's range. The costume includes the black one piece dress with attached cape and embroidered bat logo, two burnished glovelets, rubber belt, matching knee high boot tops plus the distinctive Batgirl eyemask. This Batgirl outfit comes in most adult sizes including plus size and there are also teen versions of the costume as well.

I guess one of the reasons that the Batgirl fancy dress costume has become so popular has to do with the Batman film The Dark Knight. Since the release of the film both Batman and The Joker costumes have become extremely popular, this is especially true for the Joker Costume which was one of the best selling Halloween costumes all around the globe this year. So I guess why should the girls not join in the action with Batgirl? Created by Bob Kane and Sheldon Moldoff, Batgirl first appeared in a Batman comic (#139) way back in 1961 where her name was originally "Bat-Girl"

US Shoppers
Batgirl Costume on Amazon.com

UK Shoppers
Find the Batgirl Costume on Amazon.co.uk

If you are looking for a similar costume, sexy and still a Superhero, try the Catwoman Costume

oogh and one last thing: Did you know that the image of a bat on the Batman and Batgirl fancy dress costume is there to frighten criminals... woo scary stuff!