Cool Homemade Slinky Dog Halloween Costume

Our family theme for Halloween was going to be Toy Story because of our 3 year old wanting to be Buzz. However we didn’t want the same characters as everyone else. While talking with friends, I had the idea of making a homemade Slinky Dog Halloween costume. If you search for costumes, there are none (that I could find) that actually looked like slinky dog. So the creating began.

My husband and I brainstormed together. The costume cost was approximately $50. The supplies were ½ inch foam, dark brown felt, light brown felt, white felt, black felt, black pleather, brown pleather and elastic.

My husband was the front of slinky since he was taller. I traced his outline on dark brown felt starting at his neck. His outline was rounded out as it got below his waist and traced to his knees. I cut two of these out and then sewed them together and turned them inside out to hide the seam. So he basically had a brown body suit with neck, arm and leg holes. We then added black eyebrows out of pleather and eyes made out of black and white felt.

I used brown pleather for the ears. I just cut out long ears the length of his arms and sewed them to either side on the shoulders. They covered his arms. I also used brown pleather for the legs. We cut light brown felt for the paws. We had holes to put our feet through and then sewed elastic to keep in place. They were cut larger than our shoes so that it hung over and covered them.

For the nose of the dog, we folded in half a piece of foam and turned in the edges and pinned it to shape the bottom and top of the mouth. We then covered it in light brown felt and the cut out a piece of red felt for the bottom inside of the mouth to hid rough edges. For the back of the dog, we made a rounded body suit out of felt to fit me. I then added the legs as I did for the front. We added tabs of felt to slide the tail on. We made a tail out of craft wire coiled around. I made a gum drop shape out of black pleather and stuffed it for the end of the tail. I also, stuffed a pillow in the back of my costume to make it a bit more rounded.

For the spring in between us we used about 14 yards of 16 gauge of craft wire. We had tabs on the back of the front of the dog and the front of my end so that we could disconnect when we needed. We would have liked for our spring to be a bit larger but ran out of time.

Overall this homemade Slinky Dog Halloween costume was great. It would have been better if our 3 year old had not changed his mind about his costume :) and our whole family went as Toy Story as originally planned.