Jack Skellington!

I figured since it's almost Halloween that I would go out of order and post my Halloween costume project!

My four year old decided this year that he wanted to be The Hulk. I wasn't too excited about this costume mostly because he would have to wear a mask for anyone to know what he was. And I knew he would end up refusing to wear it.

When the 1st of October rolled around we broke out the Halloween movies! I, of course, had to watch Hocus Pocus, but CJ became obsessed with The Nightmare Before Christmas. We watched it at least once a day. So I came up with the brilliant idea to convince him to be Jack Skellington. Luckily it didn't take too much convincing!

Now came the challenge of putting together the costume. I wanted him to be comfortable so I decided against a black suit. While on a shopping trip with my mother-in-law, we spotted a long sleeve black tuxedo t-shirt at The Children's Place. It was PERFECT! I later found a pair of thin black sweatpants at Target to complete the outfit.

Next it was time to decide how I was going to do the pinstriping. I wanted him to be able to wear the two pieces again so I didn't want anything permanent. I was trying to keep the cost down as much as possible on this costume so I searched around the house to see what we had. I came across white duct tape! This would be perfect! I wouldn't have to worry about getting the lines straight and if I messed up I could just peel it off and start again!

So I grabbed my used and abused craft mat, straight edge, razor blade, duct tape, and got started.

I knew the pinstripes would need to be thin so I decided on a quarter inch for each stripe. I laid the tape out on my mat, put on a movie, and started cutting away.

It took a few hours to cut all the strips and lay them on the pants and shirt. I did the pants first because I figured they'd be easier.

Then moved onto the shirt. That took a little longer because of the sleeves. You have to get creative to make it all line up but that's the whole point of the project: creativity!

Here is the final product on my little man. It turned out better than I thought it would!

Now, no Jack Skellington costume would be complete without his famous bat bow tie. I had looked up on the internet a couple of ways to make it and took the parts I liked from each post and put them to use. I sadly don't have any pictures of the process but I'll describe what I did.

I decided to use cardboard (since we have a million boxes from moving) as the base of the bat. I went to Michaels and grabbed 6 small sheets of black felt (I only ended up using 4 though). I wanted the bat head to have more of a 3D feel and was going to grab some batting to stuff into it, but they didn't have any small bags and I only needed a little. I knew I had some cotton balls at home and figured they'd be a good substitute!

With all my supplies collected I set out to put this thing together. I have never done anything like this before so it was a fun challenge!

1. I made a rough sketch of the bat head on the cardboard and cut it out. 
2. Then I traced around the cardboard cutout onto the felt, making sure to leave a lot of space on the edges since I was going to stuff it. 
3. I got out my trusty hot glue gun and glued the felt to the front of the bat head. I had to improvise a lot when doing this and was cutting off excess constantly as I went along. 
4. After I had 3/4 of it glued down (and pulled tight) I stuffed it with two cotton balls that I had pulled apart.
5. I cut a small piece of felt to glue down over the edges on the back to secure them down. 
6. The final touch on the bat head were the eyes. I forgot to grab white felt while I was at Michaels so I just used white construction paper, made some creepy eyes, and glued them on!

Next were the wings. I had to sketch them about three times until I was happy but finally got it right! I used all the steps above to do the wings except I didn't stuff them with anything. After they were all done up in felt I had to figure out how to get the white striping on them. I was going to use a white pen but that didn't work too well. So I decided to fall back on my duct tape method! And here it is:

I will post pictures of my little man all dressed up with makeup after Halloween!

All in all I think my first venture into Halloween costume creating went well! Thank goodness Little Miss's costume didn't need anything made for it! We'll see about next year though ;-)

Here he is on Halloween! And my little Minnie Mouse :-)

 Little Miss would not sit still long enough to get a good picture...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!