Coolest Homemade Kali Goddess of Chaos Costume

I love Halloween and every year I make the costumes for my family and self and every year they get more and more involved.

This Homemade Kali Goddess of Chaos Costume is a little obscure but the challenge of making an 8- armed goddess was too much for me to pass up. I saw a photo of a fairly big Hollywood star in a similar costume from 2008. My husband and friends all told me she had unlimited financial resources and a professional costume designer to make the costume and there was no way I would be able to pull it off. So…I pulled an Ash Patel picture of Kali off Yahoo Images and got to work.

It cost me about $80 and it ended up being a lot of fun. I spent several weeks collecting supplies and put the costume completely together in about a week and a half, working evenings after work. I got GREAT reactions from everyone who saw it and won best costume at work.

Starting from the bottom and working up, I used royal blue spandex leggings (Forever 21) to make my legs appear to be royal blue flesh and thin royal blue flip flops (old navy) with blue grease paint to make my feet match the flip flops and give the illusion I was barefoot. Scraps of material from the skirt and some Velcro made the ankle wraps, which covered the line where the pants stopped and the paint started.

The skirt is a remnant of fabric from Joann’s, which I hot-glued onto an old belt. I spraypainted the belt gold and added some gems with hot glue. The severed hands are from a local Halloween shop. I used shiny brick red T-shirt paint to add more blood to the wrists, and for drips down the fingers, tying them to the skirt with twine.

The skull and bone came from a local Halloween shop. I painted the eye sockets red and attached the bone with fishing line and tied them both to the skirt with twine. The top is a royal blue ladies long sleeve V-neck shirt; I wore it backwards to get the most blue coverage. The skull necklace was made from a Dollar Tree Halloween garland. The beads are kids’ necklaces I spraypainted gold. The other necklace is a junk jewelry set – earrings and necklace – I found in the clearance at Wal-mart. I spraypainted them gold and hot-glued on red gems.

The 6 extra arms are made from 23 inch, royal blue, formal gown gloves purchased on Ebay. I stuffed them with fiberfil and used wire coat hangers to give them some form. Many of the arms are holding items: a shield, knives, a severed head and bloody fingers. (All these items came from Dollar Tree). I hot-glued the hands around them to give the illusion that they were actually holding the items. I strung the bloody fingers together with twine and embellished them with extra blood just like the severed hands. I used brick-red shiny T-shirt paint to add some extra blood and gore to the knives as well.

All the thick gold bracelets on the arms are foam shelf liner spraypainted gold and cut into strips. I embellished them with shiny gold T-shirt paint, attached gems to make them look more realistic and then hot-glued them around the arms. The thinner bracelets are costume jewelry gold bangles. The arms are hot-glued to a piece of foam poster board from the local hobby shop, cut to fit my back. I left the hangers sticking out of the ends of the arms and secured the arms at the edge of the board so they would stick out as far as possible. I then glued the hangers as far across the board as possible for extra stability, crisscrossing them over each other.

After I had all 6 arms on the board, I used two more coat hangers to make curved hooks, which went over my shoulders to secure the arms to my back. I layered the first board with liquid nails and put another piece of foam board over it all, like a sandwich, to give it extra stability. After this was dry, I hot-glued a scrap piece of fake fur to the front and back of the board, to give the illusion of a fur cape, and covered the edges of the board also for a more finished costume look. This was effective in making it light enough to carry and sturdy enough to wear all night.

I did cover the shoulder coat hangers with some cloth medical tape to add some padding for my shoulders and wide royal blue ribbon to hide them in the costume. I shortened one pair of the gloves for my own hands so that the thick bracelets on my wrists covered the seam between my shirt sleeves and the gloves, giving the illusion my flesh was royal blue. I secured them to my wrists with Velcro dots.

The spear I am carrying was a Halloween prop from Dollar General with some gold spray paint to make it more along the lines of my costume.

A black wig from Ebay with a built-in headband allowed me to make a head dress out of cardboard and to hot-glue on the painted foam shelf liner with more gems; I then hot-glued this to the headband in the wig.

Blue grease paint on my face and neck, red lipstick on my lips and yet more red lipstick used to draw a crescent on my forehead, finished the look.