Coolest Day of the Dead Costumes (La Catrina)

This was our costume last year. I had been working on my costume for a couple of days, but the day of the party my husband decided he wanted his costume to go with mine so his was last minute. We were the hit of the party! We even included our dog and painted her as a skeleton with animal safe paint.

For mine, I bought a black dress and shoes at a thrift store, long black gloves, and a hat. I spray painted the hat black, hot glued red roses from the Dollar store and a big black feather on one side. I painted the roses black on the ends of the petals to give them an old look. I bought a spool of black lace trim and hot glued to the rim of my hat. Since La Catrina wears a feathered snake, I also made it to make my costume complete.

I bought a feather boa used to make wreaths at the craft store and carved a snake head from Styrofoam and painted it to look like a snake skull with fangs. For the tail I glued together Styrofoam balls of different sizes.

To complete the look we bought Halloween make up. We painted our faces white, with red eyelids, and black around the eyes as the hollows of the skull.

For my husband, we bought a hat that came with a black bandana at a thrift store which was perfect to cover his head, and spray painted the hat black. I hot glued one of the red roses and a black bird on one side of his hat. He wore a black suit with black gloves and a white shirt and a bow tie. He bought red contact lenses to give it a spooky look.

Everyone took pictures with us and they all loved our costume! We had fun making it and seeing how people reacted to our home made costume.

We hope you like our costume and it gives you ideas to make your own!