Coolest Homemade Nightmare Before Christmas Couples Costume

So, a month before Halloween, my boyfriend and I were looking at costumes. He came along a Jack Skellington one and said that that would be a cool one. However, looking at the shoddy make of the costume, I said “I can make one better than that!” and thus began my month long costume project (I had to make Sally too, because they go together, of course!)

First, I looked online for pictures of Jack and sally online, to use them as a reference. I decided that paper mache was the best for Jack’s head. I bought oversized balloons at a dollar store and went to town mache-ing it (about 4 layers). Wanting a really hard finish, I made paper Mache pulp. I tweaked the recipe I found online to create something that would spread easier but dry really hard.

Recipe for paper-macheing:

Lots of newspaper, shredded into tiny bits

Boil in water until falls apart

Mix in blender (or mix with hands)

Add LOTS of white glue

Mix in 2 parts flour and 1 part water until reaching desired consistency

I only had to do one layer of this super-mache and it was as hard as a rock! Look a little longer to dry though, because it was denser than regular mache.

After that was dry, I cut out eye holes and added the eyebrows and nose with the same super-mache. Painted it white, painted on the mouth, and super glued black jersey material to the eyes.

I was stuck for awhile on how to make the head stay in place, and then it hit me, foam! We got some random foam and super glued it to the inside in strips (think of foam in a helmet)

As an added bonus, we drilled a hole in Jack’s nose for a straw so my boyfriend could drink, which worked perfectly because that was where his mouth was.

The suit was found at a thrift shop, and I painted stripes on it using masking tape and fabric paint. The bat-thing is cut and painted foam board pinned to his shirt, and the gloves were found at the dollar store

Now on to Sally:

Her hair is a yarn wig made by using a hot-glue gun to glue yarn to a square fabric. I measured the yarn by wrapping a bunch around a pillow and cutting it in the centre. Perfect length for her hair! To attach it to my head I used bobby pins.

The dress was found at a thrift store. I was originally going to paint it all, but it was really time consuming so I did a mix of paint and glue-gunning scraps of fabric. Side note – Doing research, I noticed that in a lot of pictures, Sally’s dress is very bright, however, in the movie, it is more dark, and I wanted to follow the movie as close as possible, thus, the more muted fabric.

Since I had a lot of yarn left over, I got a big needle to sew ‘stitches’ with the yarn on her dress.

For the arms and legs I got two pairs of pantyhose, cut out the crotch for one of them to use for the arms, put them on, and used the same needle and yarn to sew stitches on them too. This was pretty fun because I felt like sally sewing her body back together.

For the face, I just grabbed some face paint at a drug store, and did white face dark eyes, and stitches.

Costs –

Jack:
Head – $6
Suit – $18
Gloves – $1.25

Sally:
Yarn – $10
Dress – $6
Face Paint – $7

Total under $50!!! WAY better than the $120 I would have had to spend in the store!