Ideas for creating your own Halloween Costume

It’s Halloween month and one of our favourite months of the year!

We’re feeling in the mood for all things ghostly and ghoulish and looking forward to the Halloween period filled with pumpkins, toffee apples, bat bunting, candles and of course, costumes!

We’ve been thinking about all the weird and wonderful costumes we’d like to try this year; from subtle to extravagant, we want to try them all! Unfortunately, Halloween costumes can end up being expensive and when you’re buying for just yourself or a family of 5, it’s important to think how you can cut down costs.

In order to help you (and ourselves!) we’ve come up with a list of homemade Halloween costumes that are pretty easy to make and are gentle on the old bank account.

Whacky Witch Costumes

A simple and easy costume to create yourself! Choose pretty much any black dress and cut tears in the bottom of it; you can even rip parts off as long as it doesn’t tear too high! Wrap a belt around the middle and craft yourself a silver cardboard buckle to attached to the middle of it. There are a couple of easy ways to make your own witches hat: create one our of cardboard or use felt and sew one. The key is to make sure it’s firm so that it stands up on it’s own so the cone top is very important!

Ghastly Ghost Costumes

You can either go super simple for this or make it more complex! For as simple as simple gets, you really can use remnants of an old sheet and cut it so that leaves room for your eyes and then draw on a mouth. Alternatively, you can craft yourself a tighter fitting piece of attire that leaves your head free to move and chat! Use a white floaty dress to create your base and bring it together with a grey belt. Complete the look with white tights, white coloured hair spray and pale white/grey make-up!

Killer Kitten Costume

Ideal for a child; use black leggings and black t-shirt to create the kitten’s body and then grab some haberdashery bits to make your own tail and ears! You can choose to make these black too, or be a little more creative and head for something less traditional such as covering the tails and ears with our glittery stardust sequin tulle netting.

Wretched Wolf Costumes

“But Grandmother! What big teeth you have!” Disguise your true self in a wolf costume made from grey clothing covered in faux fur! Use glue (even PVA) so cover some cheap grey clothes in fur. Change the colour of the fur on the tummy to be white and grab a mask to complete a semi-realistic wolf costume!

Cunning Clown

IT has been the film buzzing around Halloween this year and will undoubtedly be the inspiration for many costumes this month! The main part of creating the perfect clown costumes lies in the make-up. As well as this, you need a bright and vibrant costume to make your clown really come to life. To save you some cash, we recommend buying some plain white, baggy pyjamas and jazzing them up yourself! You can use many different haberdashery arts and crafts such as bright buttons, ribbons and patchwork squares – whatever look you want your clown to have…

Vexed Vampire Outfit

Whether you’re more of a Cullen or a Dracula, make your own look through both clothes and make-up. Create a cloak from some fabric and cut it in whatever style you want. You can also create a matching belt out of the same fabric and cover your shoes with it for a co-ordinated and funky vamp.

Jazzy Joker Costume

The joker is an iconic villain who has been imitated year after year during the Halloween period. Make your Joker stand out by covering an already existing jacket with a bright purple fabric such as our organza rainbow purple fabric. Complete the look with messy white, red and black face paint!

We hope these have given you inspiration and that we've been able to save you some money this Halloween with your own homemade Halloween costume!