If you aren’t interested in just throwing on some lingerie and animal ears and calling it a costume, here are some ideas sure to get you noticed.
Shooting star
Materials:
- Shiny dress (or pants and top if you’re uncomfortable in a dress)
- Metallic crafting paper, cardboard and tin foil, craft foam or plastic glow in the dark stars
- Glitter
- Glue or tape
- Shiny shoes (you can spray paint old shoes with gold or silver spray paint)
- Toy gun (covered in glitter)
Estimated time: 30 minutes of crafting, not including shopping time
The base for this costume is a sparkly dress. This might be in your closet or you may need to pop down to Forever 21 to get something cheap. Any color is fine as long as it has some shine. If you don’t already have sparkly shoes, my favorite method is using old Converse and spray-painting them with metallic paint. Cut stars out of the metallic paper, cardboard that you cover in tin foil, or craft foam decorated with glitter (glow-in-the-dark plastic stars are another option.) Glue or tape the stars to your shoes, dress, slacks, head — anywhere. Add some glittery make up, grab your toy gun and you’re good to go.
Swine flew
Materials:
- Pink clothing
- Pig nose
- Pink headband and pink paper or pig ears
- White wings
Estimated time: 10 minutes of crafting, not including shopping time
This is a very simple costume to do. Wear your best pink clothing, add your ears (you can make them by cutting triangles out of cardboard and attaching them to a headband or buy them) and your nose (you can buy this or make your nose look pig like with makeup). Put on your wings, and you’re done.
King or queen of the spiders
Materials:
- Black dress or pants and black top
- White tulle, lace, or Halloween spider webbing
- Black shoes
- Fake spiders
- Plastic crown
- Black paint
- Tape or glue
Estimated time: 20 minutes of crafting, not including shopping time.
This costume is very basic and very easy to make. All you have to do decorate your black clothing with white tulle or lace on which you have attached spiders with glue or tape. Wear the tulle draped around you like webbing. If you want it to look tattered, you can use a lighter to melt holes into it. Be careful: The flame does not need to touch the fabric for this to work and always have water nearby. As an alternative, you can buy Halloween decoration webbing and wear it around your body — the spiders will just cling to the webbing. Paint your crown black and add spiders. To finish off the costume, off give yourself creepy make up and blood red nails. If you need some make up tips, Martha Stewart has a black widow make-up guide.
Silent movie star
Materials:
- Black dress (preferably with a drop waist) with white and gray accents or a black or white flapper dress
- Black or white shoes.
- Black or white tights (to exaggerate your skin color because silent movies were in gray scale!)
- Long black or white gloves
- Long strand of fake pearls
- Fake fur coat (if you’d like)
- Black or platinum blonde wig
- Easy to carry size of Bristol board, poster board or if it’s easier a small dry erase board
- Black marker
Estimated time: 20 minutes of crafting, not including shopping time.
Although there are a lot of materials, this isn’t a hard costume to assemble. The only crafting involved is with the Bristol board. Use the marker to make a nice border, and then write a sentences or sentences that will come in handy during the night. These are your lines because silent film stars are silent. (This isn’t a good costume if you can’t keep quiet.) You can write a simple “hello,” your favorite drink order or a clever insult. A white board is better if you want to vary your sentences. For the outfit, go for strictly black and white with a little gray. Your make up should be the same. Black liner, black lipstick and gray shadow and either lighten your skin with powder or darken it. You’re going for the actual look of the films.