No-Sew, Upcycled T-Shirt Halloween Costumes for Kids!

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One of my favorite things to do with my kids is play dress-up – and whether it’s for Halloween or just for fun, we always have such a good time of play! The great thing about kids’ costumes is that they don’t have to clean out your wallet to be fun. Trust me, your kids won’t care if they cost $5 or $25 as long as they get to run around and play in them. As an avid Goodwill shopper, I’m always looking for ways to up-cycle and reinvent my thrift store finds, and this year, I set out to create some simple, no-sew costumes off of the extensive t-shirt rack. Most t-shirts are just $1.99 (sometimes cheaper if you hit the right tag sale) which makes them an inexpensive way to get knit fabric in lots of different colors.

With the t-shirts that we picked out, I was able to create a lion costume and a ladybug costume. But don’t let these tutorials limit your creativity! There are so many ways you could go with this idea – and so many colors to choose from on the t-shirt rack! Hopefully this inspires you to create your own dress-up costumes and let your creativity run wild!

For the Lion costume, I started with one orange Child’s size t-shirt, one small adult size orange t-shirt and one Medium adult size yellow t-shirt.

Next, I turned the child size t-shirt inside out and put it on my son’s head so it fit around his face like a hood.

From there, I took a sharpie and marked with dots where I wanted to add in the “mane” of the costume.

Next, I took the shirt off of him, and cut small holes where I had marked each dot.

To create the mane, I cut the yellow shirt up into small strips.

The size can be whatever you would like – shorter= shorter mane, longer=longer mane. Next I tied the ends of two strips together.

Then I threaded the two ends through one of the small holes I had created, allowing the knot to anchor them in place.

I took what was left of the yellow shirt and cut out a “tummy” piece, which I then hot glued to the larger orange shirt that I had.

After a quick face paint, the costume was complete! And lots of “roaring” ensued.

To make the lady bug costume, I used a large child sized red t-shirt, and an athletic spandex women’s shirt.

I started by putting the red spandex shirt on my daughter so that it fit around her face.

Next, I pulled the shirt sleeves back around her head and pinned them in place so that the shirt was more fitted on her head. Before taking the shirt off, I marked with a sharpie where I wanted to add the two antennae to her head.

Next, with the shirt off of her, I drew on dots with a sharpie all over the head piece.

To create the antennae I twisted two pipe cleaners together and bent them in half like a “V.” I cut two small holes on either side of the dots that I had marked on the head piece for the antennae, and threaded the pipe cleaner piece through each hole.

Then I twisted the two ends together, created a coil around my finger, and added a pom-pom to the end of each antennae. For the body piece, I turned the shirt inside out, and glued black pom-poms all over the front piece. With a little face paint, we were all done!

– Michelle Loss, Guest Blogger

Check out more of Michelle’s great tips on her video blog, Chic on the Cheap.