Design With Safety
Whether you've waited until the last minute or are looking for frugal ways to make a creative costume, don't skip these simple costume-safety rules.
- Buy or make costumes of flame-resistant materials or materials that have no flyaway parts that might land in open flames.
- Opt for bright costumes or add reflective tape (to the costume or treat bag) to make your child visible to drivers. Glow-in-the-dark items make excellent accessories.
- Avoid tripping or entanglement by ensuring that costumes don’t drag on the ground. And make sure shoes fit — even if they don’t go with the costume. Tripping and falling is the leading cause of accidental injuries on Halloween!
- Don’t allow masks that impair vision in any way. Also, securely fasten whiskers, wigs and hats to keep them out of your child's line of vision.
- Allow only lightweight and flexible knives, swords and other props.
- Secure emergency identification (name, address, phone number) inside Halloween attire.
Use Your Imagination
Making your own costumes with ordinary garments and household items is one of the easiest, most cost-effective ways to be creative. Here are just a few simple ideas that you can "recycle" for your kids — or yourself!
- A bunch of grapes. You’ll need one purple, hooded sweat suit, green felt, brown pipe cleaners and a bag of purple balloons. Create a cap from the green felt. Measure head circumference and cut a strip of felt with straight edges with a 4.5-inch width. Stitch the strip to the edge of the circle, then complete the seam. Turn it inside out and attach on top of the hood. Wrap two or three pipe cleaners around a pencil. Affix to the cap with either fabric glue or a few more stitches. Blow up the balloons, and then attach (with safety pins or double-sided Velcro®) to the sweat suit.
- Lion or bunny. For the lion, you’ll need one brown, hooded sweat suit, fake fur, eyeliner and brown felt. Line the hem of the hood with fake fur using double-sided Velcro. Cut a strip from the felt for a tail and two half circles for ears. Use whip-stitching or double-sided Velcro to secure ears in place. Glue a tuft of fur onto the end of the strip of felt. Attach tail to the rear of the sweatpants using safety pins. Draw on whiskers and a triangle nose with the eyeliner. To create a bunny, use one white, hooded sweat suit, white and pink felt, a large pompon ball, an eyeliner pencil and pink lipstick in the same fashion.
- Tourist. All you need are loud clothes such as a Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses, a hat, a map, a camera and a duffle bag or other small piece of travel luggage. Stick the map in the brim of the hat and use the luggage as a treat bag.
Simple Care for Your Costume Creations
Check garment-care labels in store-bought costumes, since many contain instructions for proper cleaning — either at home or at the dry cleaner.
If you've made costumes of ordinary garments, remove any add-ons that you can. Then, pretreat stains and wash as usual with your favourite formula of Tide or Ivory Snow® (for delicates).
