DIY Super hero Halloween costumes

Its Halloween, and Vida has been asking me  for a while now to write a piece for maak’it. So here goes…

I know you will think I have an unfair advantage to this costume thing when you find out I am a primary school Arts and Crafts teacher. But I can assure you that most of my creativity is spontaneous and definitely NOT from years of studying art.

We were planning a Book Day at school and I was on a superhero mission. I was going to dress up as Wonder Woman because I happen to have a Wonder Woman costume, it is my everyday clothes! No, just kidding it was a costume I wore to a Super Hero birthday party some time ago, I never throw away old costumes… And the kids in my class would be characters from The Justice League and other comic books. They became ever more excited as I dished out characters to each them to be for a day. Book Day came and our Justice League blew the school away!

The point of any costume is that it should never cost you money. Luckily, my Narnia storeroom has lots of cardboard. It took me only a day to trace all the masks off the web and adjust them as needed. Capes we made out of black bags and scraps of material (also from the costume room). Yes, it seems like I have it all at my disposal, but I promise, you start looking in that passage cupboard and you will find something you can use.
Making costumes is all about using what you have, or spending at most R50. I’m a miser and I reckon you wear a costume only once, so it needs to be inexpensive! Make the cut-off bins at your local material shop your new best friend.

For Book Day we had: Batman, Flash, Hulk, Superman and Captain America. This is how we made the different costumes:

Batman

• paper mask (choose a template from the web, there are loads of them, but we like this one!)
• Black T-shirt
• Black jeans
• Add a black cape made from a dustbin bag
• Use yellow cardboard to make a belt, add some pouches from paper too. Staple belt around waist
• Walmart has a great Batman party guide can be downloaded from here

Flash (this was my favourite to make!)

• Dress the “flash” in red , top to bottom
• Trace the Flash logo, colour it in yellow, staple to the shirt.
• Trace a normal eye mask off the web, on red paper, add yellow flashes to the side.
• Using yellow cardboard, cut a belt. Flash’s belt is lightening bolts… but they are dead easy to draw.
• Cut a straight belt, and then at intervals, draw and cut out triangles. Staple around the waist.
• You can add yellow flashes to the red shoes too!

Hulk

Hulk needs to be green, but painting a person is just too much hassle to wash off. So here is what you do instead.

• Dye a pair of nude stockings green using food dye.  You can do two pairs, one for the legs, one for the arms.
• Hulk can wear any shorts but they SHOULD be purple!
• Wear a green t-shirt
• Use an old formal shirt and rip it up, wear it over the green t-shirt

• Draw a round shield on cardboard.  Paint it red, blue, white and add a star in the centre.
• Draw a big white star, staple it onto a blue t-shirt.
• Add blue jeans
• Trace a basic eye mask onto blue paper and add white “wings” to the side.

• Use plastic gloves and push cardboard ‘claws’ through them.
• Cover the claws with tinfoil.
• Wear blue denims and a white vest.

I hope you have as much fun as the kids and I had while making this.  Happy Halloween!