When my 5-year-old told me he wanted to be a tree for Halloween, I quickly agreed, then thought, “Oh, no! What have I gotten myself into?” After doing some brainstorming, and a trip to both the craft store and the fabric store, here is my Tree Halloween costume.
The “hat” inside the tree is made of blocks of green florist’s foam. I used hot glue and duct tape to hold them together and an ice-cream scoop to scoop out a place for the top of his head. I then spray painted the whole thing, including the bowl for his head, with brown spray paint. This kept the foam from losing pieces all over his hair.
Next, I took about a 1/2 yard of brown felt and hot glued it around the outside edge of the hat, with the opening in the back. I cut out holes for the arms and face by putting it on him to measure where they should be. The back is closed by hot gluing pieces of Velcro and overlapping the two sides. No need for the soft side of the Velcro. The hooky side of the Velcro works really well on felt.
I purchased 15 tree branches from the craft store to make the leafy part of the tree. These, I strategically stuck into the foam and shaped the wires so that it was bushy. I did not use hot glue to secure them, but if you have to pull one out and put it back in for any reason, I would recommend hot gluing.
At this point, we realized that it was not going to stay on top of his head very well. To fix that, I hot glued a couple strips of the extra felt to fashion a chin strap. I also used the adjustable plastic headband thing out of a toy hard hat. Using hot glue, I covered it with felt and attached it to the hat.
I used an extra branch of smaller leaves to make his “bracelets.” I used florist wire to anchor them. Then wrapped and hot glued strips of extra felt to cover the base so it wouldn’t poke his wrists.
A brown shirt and pants completed the costume.
Overall, I spent about 2 hours actually building the costume. This is not counting time spent trying to find the tree branches and waiting for the paint to dry.
Cost:
$1.39 each for 15 tree branches
$3.00 for 1 yard of felt
$4.00 for spray paint
$6.00 for florist foam
I already had hot glue, duct tape, and the toy hard hat and brown shirt and pants.
While a little bit expensive, this costume was pretty easy to make and everyone loved it! The kids in his class thought it was awesome, and he thought he was the coolest tree in town!
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We created this tree costume for my 4 year old and won 1st place in his halloween costume judging!! We did do it a little differently though. We used a baseball cap and cut the bill off and glued that to the styrofoam. Then around the outside of the cap and the foam we had to put rolled up felt to keep the hat secure on his head. Oh top of the styrofoam I put on a .99 brown stocking cap (so I didn’t have to buy the spray paint) and then put the branches through the hat. I did find it easier to hot glue most of them in place (we wore the costume 3 different times over a week’s time)…We also bought 2 little nests and hot glued a tiny bird in each and put them on elastic bands that I slipped over my son’s branches (his arms). That really added to the costume. Thank you sooo much for the ideas. I also wanted to add that I had to help him hold his ‘helmet’ on because it was a little too heavy for him. My husband thought it was better idea for a little bit older child
I saw this on your website and made a tree costume out which he really liked and looked quite good, although not exactly the same as in this article.
But thank you for posting it up and the original creator for your inspiration.
Keep up the great work.
My 4 year old told me she wants to be a tree for Halloween. With no idea what to do I googled it an found this great costume. I am taking your ideas and heading out today to pick up all the supplies. Thanks for the ideas!
My daughter was just chosen to act as Otto, the magic tree, for a Magic Treehouse children’s play. This costume looks perfect – she and I will love making it together! Maybe we will fashion a little treehouse to put in the branches. Thanks for the ideas!