My goal was to make a homemade dinosaur costume as cool as possible by spending as little as possible in only 2 weeks. I had to start somewhere. Some of the “How to make…” sites used foam to shape heads for costumes, so I figured this is where I should start. I had some foam … Read more
Anybody can be Johnny Depp’s version of The Mad Hatter, but I decided to take the Hatter’s madness to its (il)logical extreme. In my vision, the poor Hatter was so confused as to which hat to wear to the Queen’s Tea, that he decided to wear EVERY hat he owned at once. Now, of course, … Read more
This year my son picked Mickey Mouse as his costume and every year we have to incorporate a costume for the wheelchair. We start with a heavy cardboard form that slips right over the wheelchair. We then layer 2″ foam core on top of the cardboard. We layered outwards for each piece that we needed, … Read more
BrainStorm is made mostly of aluminum, along with PVC, plastic salsa bowls, and a good amount of electronics. I used EL wire, an infrared security camera, a toy voice modulator, several LED’s, vacuum tubes, and a tiny laser pico projector. This robot costume took three months of solid work to design and build it in … Read more
This swamp monster, officially dubbed as Seymour Fishgerald, started out as a simple concept sketch. The idea came to me as I was talking to the supervisor of a local haunted walkthrough. As we discussed our ideas for how to scare the pants off of poor, innocent people for the seasonal Haunted Hollow, I realized … Read more
This Zombie LEGO Minifigure Costume was made for the pop culture convention, Supanova in Perth, Australia in 2011. I used cardboard for the torso and legs, resin/fiberglass to make the structure strong, foam for padding insides and arms, straps with Velcro inside the legs to strap the LEGO legs in place, old fly wire for the … Read more
With the passing of New York’s Gay Marriage, we thought Bert and Ernie should get married. I found foam padding at a local thrift store for only $3. We proceeded to sculpt, cut, tape, glue, carve, and tape some more the basic shapes of their heads. Using the right color felt, we attached to the … Read more
My wife, being an elementary librarian, came up with the idea of honoring Maurice Sendak with this year’s costume. We always do homemade costumes, but these took more work than normal. Papier Mache Heads: Each head was constructed out of paper pulp papier mache over a punch balloon. Each layer took 2 days to dry … Read more
My husband has a few of these awards lying around (he is a television camera operator) and I thought it a great idea to go as an “Emmy”. But just like all costumes on this website, it just takes time and patience. I started off by researching the length of the dress (floor length) and … Read more
Run in terror from the Catskill Mountain Yeti! This is my 3rd home made costume and was by far the most difficult and expensive yet. Due to the thickness of the faux fur I had to hand stitch almost every inch of this costume. I used my full face ski helmet covered in furniture foam … Read more
Voltron! Defender of the universe! Definitely one of my favorite childhood toys…. so this year I decided to go big and try my hand at building a costume and also doing an instructable on it. First I’d like to give a couple shout outs, my girlfriend and our kids for putting up with my mess, … Read more
My first thought for Halloween 2011 was to be a giant. That should make some impression on the other guests. Of course, the ceiling is a problem when the party in inside so I had to make do with a half-giant: Rubeus Hagrid. I wanted the effect of the costume to be big so stilts … Read more