6 Easy Homemade Halloween Costumes!

Check out our list of homemade Halloween costume ideas, including an easy to make bingo card costume!

Now, I'm sure a lot of you are starting to plan out your last
minute Halloween costumes, and especially your kids' Halloween costumes. There's only about a week or so until Halloween, and we all know we could pick up a costume or two from the local department store or mall, but this week I have a few budget-friendly costume ideas that are cheap, easy, and allow for lots of imagination. Best of all, you can make them at home! Nothing beats homemade, and perhaps you could even recruit the kids' help for some of these.

1. A Bingo Card!

Using two large sheets of poster board for the front and back of the costume, copy a bingo card design onto each piece of the poster board. Punch holes at the top of the poster board, near the shoulders, and tie the two pieces together with the yarn.

Draw numbers on the card at random, but in one direction highlight each number to emphasize a bingo. The bingo cards can be worn over black or dark-colored clothing.

2. Static Cling

Wear anything solid coloured - all white or all black is best. With safety pins, pin anything to yourself (eg. Socks, underwear, bounce sheets, etc.) You can also spray your hair straight up in the air.

3. Quasimodo/The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Build the hump or "hunchback" out of foam or cardboard. Find an old coat several sizes too large to accommodate this. Old ratty clothes work perfectly. Wear a snaggly wig and keep putting your hand up to your ear and muttering "eh?"

4. Pirate - A classic!

Create a fake wooden leg by wrapping one leg in brown felt, or use cardboard rolled up and taped around one leg. Wear sailor pants, jean cut-offs or any type of short pants, with a striped top. Tie a bandana around your head, wear an eye patch, carry an empty bottle marked XXX (for your bottle of rum) and mutter "argh" a lot. Trick or treat, matey!

5. Cereal Killer

Make an outfit using cereal boxes (eat the cereal first!). You could also attach mini cereal boxes to your shirt or pants. Cut slits in the boxes and glue on plastic knives (or make your own cardboard knives). Glue them into the holes, and drip red paint running down from the knife holes in the boxes.

6. A Bunch of Grapes

Wear green or purple sweatpants and shirt, and attach balloons of the same colour using safety pins. Paint face and hands the same colour.