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!

Halloween Homemade: Homemade Halloween Costumes

I must confess that I, like everyone else concentrate most of my efforts when thinking of fancy dress ideas towards buying costumes. Hiring a Halloween fancy dress costume seems old hat and well, making your own costume is just plain prehistoric and silly.... or is it? In this article I discover why Halloween Homemade may be the way to go.

One thing that really bugs me about Christmas is just how commercial it has become. In fact it bugs me so much that last year my partner and I decided to skip it altogether and we went traveling in The Gambia where the majority of the population is Muslim and Christmas passed us by almost unnoticed, it was fantastic. Then earlier on in the year we traveled again to the island of Malta, where they are very strong Catholics. It was so refreshing to see how they celebrated Easter in the traditional way. Don't get me wrong, I am not overly religious and I do think that it is great to buy presents for your loved ones over Christmas, I just also feel that the commercialism of it all has just gone too far. It is only the 1st of October and I have already seen the first Christmas advert on the TV!

What saddens me, is that I see Halloween becoming more and more commercial every year. It is just much easier to buy a fancy dress outfit than it is to make one. But think of it this way:

Halloween for teens & Children
If you just buy a Halloween costume for your kids, instead of making a homemade Halloween costume for them, you will be missing out on spending quality time with your children as well as it gives the kids something creative to work with and they can develop some core skills, like sewing, reading and understanding the patterns for the costumes.

Homemade Adult Halloween Costumes
Making your own Halloween costume can be fun as well although I think that most people would probably feel that if they were the only people at a fancy dress party with a homemade Halloween costume they may look "cheap" in some way. so if you are planning on hosting a party - why not insist that everyone makes their own costume? We were at a Safari Lodge on the Hwange National park in Zimbabwe over New Years eve once, this place was really remote and for a bit of fun everyone at the lodge had to come to dinner in fancy dress, making the costume out of anything that you could find in your room. I learn't that you can make so many different costumes from a sheet! It was also an excellent ice breaker as even though we did not know any of the guests, it put us all on a level playing field and we all had an excellent time that night.

So why not get back to basics and try making your own Halloween Homemade with some homemade fancy dress costumes this year!

Creative Halloween Costumes: Top tips to find the best

One of the hardest things about deciding what Halloween fancy dress costumes to make or even to buy is to come up with unique and creative costume ideas. Inspiration is what you need and with this in mind, here are my top tips on how to come up with the best Halloween costume ideas this year:

1) Take a look at websites that sell fancy dress. I know this sounds obvious, especially if you plan to buy your costume, but if you are looking to make your own Halloween costume and just need some inspiration this can be one of the best place to start. Some of the larger on-line fancy dress retailers have literally thousands of costumes and that means that they also have thousands of ideas for you to take a look at. Another advantage is many of them have their costumes divided into categories, making it easy to come up with the perfect fancy dress theme for your party. Jokers' Masquerade fancy dress have over 10,000 (or so they say) fancy dress costumes and accessories on their site and makes a great place to do some research.

2) Photos are also a great for coming up with inspiration and there are many places on the web that you can browse photos of Halloween fancy dress costumes:

Try Google's image search (http://images.google.co.uk), most people know about searching for websites on Google, but did you know that you can also search just for images? The great thing is you can also be pretty specific if the term Halloween costume is too specific, why not try searching for:
Kids Halloween Costumes, Infants Halloween Costumes, scary Halloween Costumes, Funny Halloween Costumes, Witch Halloween costume or Couple Halloween Costumes, anyway i think you get the idea, you can get loads of ideas this way and not only for fancy dress. One word of caution, you may want to keep the Safe search filter on, there are also plenty of pretty nasty photos out there!

Google are a bunch of pretty creative guys themselves, in fact you can take a look at what costumes some of their employees wear for Halloween here:

Official Google Blog: By the pricking of our thumbs...

Flickr (http://flickr.com/) is also another great place to search for fancy dress ideas: Just type in Halloween Costume into the search box on the homepage and you will get back a bunch of inspiration. What is great about Flickr in comparison to google is pretty much all of the photos will be from normal people, like you and me posting photos of the halloween fancy dress costumes and not fancy dress companies posting pics of their outfits. So many of the photos will be from people who make Halloween costume themselves. My thought being: if they can make their own costume so can you!

So there it is, those are my top tips to help you come up with the most unique, creative Halloween costumes this year!

Happy Halloween.

Homemade Halloween Costume Ideas

A little like Christmas, Halloween seems to come around earlier and earlier every year, this to me is because like Christmas there are many people including fancy dress companies out there that are relying to on Halloween to make money and so compete to get noticed first in the market place.

Halloween Costumes On a Budget
Sometimes I feel that we spend far too much on Halloween costumes and fancy dress in general and so if like me you are looking for fun and unique Halloween costumes on a budget what should you do? A good place to save money is with Kids, have you ever noticed that young children often find the boxes more fun on Christmas day than the presents? Well if you follow this logic, I think it is very easy to have homemade Halloween costumes for Kids and they will be more than satisfied with the result. In fact, if you include them in the process of making the Halloween costume that can increase the fun of Halloween and bring you together as a family.

Homemade kids Halloween costume ideas:
Gypsy Costume: Made simply by layering all of the necklaces you own and layering several skirts or putting scarves on as skirts as well as putting on a bit of make-up, makes excellent girls Halloween costumes.

Ghost Costume: The simplest Halloween costume of all made with a sheet and a pair of scissors or for a toddler Halloween costume of a ghost, use a pillowcase!

Clown costumes: Made from a sweat outfit and loads of make-up and buying a multi coloured wig is fairly inexpensive. Clowns can be made into scary costumes depending on how you use the make-up and always make great childrens Halloween costumes.

Zombie Costumes: Made using a old pair of jeans, a torn T-shirt, jacket and shoes. All you need to get then is a makeup kit and add dark circles, blood and whatever other creepy effects that will complement your face paint kit and hey presto a perfect zombie costume!

Unique Halloween Costume Ideas
Apart from the children, you too can make your own adults Halloween costumes for stuff that you already have laying about the house, these outfits are not only cheaper than buying, but can sometimes make the best Halloween costumes.

Quick Fancy Dress Idea for Halloween:
Dress up as a head on a platter by putting a table cloth on card board and gluing paper picnic settings to it. Then all you need to do is put the costume on around your neck so that just your head is sticking out of the centre. Not only does this take very little work but you will be amazed by the reactions you will get from this unique Halloween costume.

Homemade Halloween costumes

Many people rather than buying, make Halloween costume from what they have lying about the house as well using their own skill and creativity. These often make the best Halloween costumes, and are often more unique than what you can buy. For me the hardest part in making your own fancy dress outfit, is to come up with the initial idea. Sure you can always use an old sheet to make a ghost costume, but unless it is the best sheet ever made, it just isn't going to cut the mustard!

I have recently found a bunch of sewing books that have Halloween costume patterns in them. I haven't tried any of them myself, so can't really comment, but if you are interested in sewing and making your own Halloween costume, you may want to give one a try:

Illegally Easy Halloween Costumes for Kids by Leila Peltosaari
Creative Costumes and Halloween Decor: 50 Projects to Craft and Sew

Both of these have Halloween costume patterns and can be found on Amazon. There are also a bunch of other books on Halloween and Halloween fancy dress available on Amazon. Most books seem to be aimed at children's Halloween costumes, I guess they assume that most adults would buy or hire their fancy dress costume?

On the down side to buying a book for homemade Halloween costumes, is that by the time you have bought the book, and the material to make the costume, I am sure that in many cases it would work out cheaper to just buy the costume. So it is probably best to go down the route if the idea of making your own Halloween costume sounds like fun and not because you are looking for cheap fancy dress.

Anyway good luck and here is to a great Halloween!