Today I wanted to share the costumes I made for my family for Hallowe’en and then recycled for every Carnival event we’ve been to this year. The great thing about Carnival is that if you put in the effort in October of making your own costumes at least for half the month of February you can continue wearing them!
I’ve written here about why I think making costumes is better than buying them off the shelf. Last year we were the Rubbles Family for Hallowe’en and Carnival, and the year before we were Gipetto and Pinocchio.
In this case I had bought a few different thrift cowboy / sheriff costume pieces for my son and since I was at a loss for what me and my man should wear I just used his costume as a springboard for our own.
A Cowboy/Sheriff Costume + Robbers !
I’m one of those people who LOVES dressing up in costumes, but I am also cheap! I don’t want to spend lots of money on “real” costumes for the family, especially since I know we’ll only wear them one year.
So I try to search for costumes that are easy to make and with relatively cheap materials. In this case I used my son’s thrifted sheriff outfit as the base idea and turned myself and my husband into robbers. The total cost of our costumes was 7 euro !
These costumes were super easy to make!
DIY Robbers Costumes
- Buy a 2 pack of white t-shirts. It is important that they are in your partner’s size (or the bigger of the two of you). These were 5 euro for 2 t-shirts that I bought at the grocery store.
- In this case I took-in one of the t-shirts and modified the collar so it was “cuter” for me!
- Take black and red paint (any paint will do. In this case I used my son’s washable craft paint because it was the first paint I found. The only problem is I will never be able to wash these shirts since the design will wash out, but at the time I just wasn’t thinking that far it advance….good thing we’ll only wear them once….or in our case at least 10 times. They now smell, and it’s time they were retired!!)
- On the front draw out stripes on each t-shirt and paint them with black paint
- On the back add a few “bullet” wounds and some red paint splatters
I then used some fabric I had lying around the house to make two money sacks. The money sacks were filled with some recycling then sealed. I added a $ symbol on one and a € symbol on the other.
Our masks were bought from the grocery store for one euro each and TAA-DAA!!
His cowboy get-up turned into a whole family get-up for 7 euro and only 2 hours of effort!
A few days ago I wrote about the importance of masks in the history of the Venice Carnival. They were a way for all of society to undergo role reversals, where the normal population could become part of the elite aristocracy and vice versa. I thought this would be a perfect occasion for our toddler to be the man inforcing the “laws” for once with the two of us on the receiving end of rules and regulations!
In the next few days I will be posting the last in my Carnival series describing the famous masks of the Italian Carnival from the Commedia dell’Arte tradition and sharing the pictures from Modena’s own Carnival parade.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series! I wrote about how Carnival is everywhere in Italy, even in the smallest towns here, and I shared my experience with the Venice Carnival here.
What are your cheap and easy family DIY costume ideas? I’d love to hear them (can you tell I’m already planning Hallowe’en 2014 and Carnival 2015!!!)