Cheap, Quick and Easy Paper Bag Princess Costume for an Adult Woman

I had purchased my son a store bought dragon costume and was hoping to wear something that would go with it as we had done that the previous year when he went as a lion and I was the Lion Tamer. The first thing that came to my mind was the Robert Munsch book The Paper Bag Princess because we read it often in those days. If you don’t know the story the premise is that a dragon burns down the princess’ castle and carries off her prince. She has to put on a paper bag because her clothes burned in the fire. I also thought it would be easy to construct a paper bag costume, and it was!

I used a large paper leaf bag which I had anyway for cleaning up the yard. The only problem was I wanted the plain paper bag look and most leaf bags come with something printed on them. I decided to turn it inside out. I ruined the first bag trying to do just that, so for the second attempt, I cut the bag carefully along two folds and turned it inside out and carefully taped it back together using clear packing tape. I also constructed myself a crown that closely resembled the princess’ crown in the book out of a small cardboard box that fit my head. Ideally if I had more time I might have painted it yellow or gold but I left it plain cardboard as I felt it matched the paper bag nicely.

Last but not least I mussed my hair and smudged mascara on my cheeks to make it appear as though I had survived a fire. For people that know the book, they thought my costume was ingenious and many have threatened to make their own version. The thing I liked about it was that I could wear warm clothes underneath while we went trick-or-treating.

All in all this has been one of the easiest costumes I have ever made and cost me nothing. I highly reccommend it for busy moms of little dragons!

Related costumes:

Leave a Comment Cancel reply