Cool Homemade Gumball Machine Costume

I love to make my own costumes, I think its much funner than those boring store-bought costumes. And now that I’ve made a few creative costumes on my own for my work’s halloween costume contest, its pretty much expected of me to do something even better than the year before. This year another creative friend of mine gave me this idea in exchange for the use of my Jellyfish costume from last year(Which I won first place with at work and another local contest).

A Gumball Machine! I just knew this was going to be funny and fun to make!

So I bought a few yards of red fabric( I chose whatever was on sale) and a hula hoop for the skirt and I looked online for a flare skirt pattern ( which is very easy to do, just made the bottom measurement on the skirt a few inches longer than the top) sewed the skirt together, then took the hula hoop apart so I could slide it thru the bottom hem in the skirt. Elastic in the top hem of the skirt and Voila, you have the bottom on the gumball machine. Then used a silver gift bag for the coin slot.. folded up cardboard and wrapped in silver wrapping paper to make the wind up thing and just taped that on the bag and used a black marker to write 25cents..

Now the top was the hard part… I used a clear shower curtain liner and white tshirt. I sewed the liner with the part with the holes to the bottom hem of the tshirt, then sewed a hem at the other end. (had to cut off a lot of the shower curtain tho, so cut off as much length as you would need) put elastic in the top hem that will go around your neck and cut some holes in the sides for your arms. I also cut out some circles from felt and glued that to the front of the tshirt. Fill the top with ball pit balls and the top part of the machine is done!

Then with the remaining fabric from the skirt, i sewed a simple beanie hat and also a little drawstring purse that i carried real gumballs in and passed those out on halloween! I should’ve collected those quarters tho!! haha

So we had our costume contest at work in our cafeteria and as soon as I walked in, all eyes were on me!! After a quick scan of other costumes, I knew I had this in the bag!! So, needless to say, I won Best Overall Costume!! :)