With Halloween just around the corner we thought we could provide some last minute do-it-yourself costumes on a budget. You don't have to wait for the Great Pumpkin, you can create these costumes right in your dorm room. With a few simple items and just a few hours you are on your way to winning Best Costume 2009.
MATERIALS: iPod, black face paint, black clothing, black hat, black shoes, sunglasses
This costume is easy to do and you've probably got most of the requirements in your closet.
Dress yourself from head to toe in black. Black long sleeve shirt, black pants/leggings/black shoes.. then cover your face in black paint. You can use a cotton ball or make up sponge.
To really seal the deal, throw some wash out black hair dye. They sell packages of comb-in product at drug stores. If you are afraid of dying your hair, theres always the option of wearing a black skull cap.
This costume can become more fun with pure white accessories such as a belt, bracelets or a necklace. More importantly, don't forget to have your iPod on you! Pure white accessories like a belt, a string of fake pearls, bracelets, buttons or wingtips can really make this costume pop. Don't forget to wear the most important accessory: your iPod.
Another way to make your costume seem more like THE iPod commercial, throw a florescent piece of poster board behind you for the background.
MATERIALS: Duct tape, three wire coat hangers, three rolls of tinfoil, scissors, two feet of toilet paper, blue marker
Bend two wire coat hangers into a circle around 4 feet in diameter and fasten together with duct tape, making sure to cover the sharp tips. Make a second coat hanger loop that fits easily over your head but won't slip over your shoulders.
Carefully measure from the edge of the neckpiece to the edge of where the base would be if it were to hang slightly below your hips. Cut eight or so pieces of duct tape to twice this length and double them over themselves to form straps. Holding all the doubled tape pieces together, trim ends so all pieces are exactly the same length.
Use 1-inch bits of tape to fasten one end of a doubled tape strip to the neckpiece and another to attach it to the base ring. Repeat the process every eight inches or so around the base ring, being careful to keep the tape strips perpendicular to both rings to develop a cone shape.
Once the cone is complete, you can add some tape crosshatching to make the cone more substantial and less prone to twisting.
Drape cone over the back of a chair and roll vertical strips of tinfoil, shiny-side out, around the outside edges of the cone, overlapping each sheet about 4 inches on either side. Firmly tape foil to cone struts from inside.
Cut out arm holes near the top of the cone and reinforce openings with tape so your shoulders are completely out of the cone.
Finally, write "Hershey's Kiss" in bubble letters in marker on a two-foot piece of quality toilet paper and attach it to your head. A brown or black turtleneck adds a bit more to the whole costume.
MATERIALS: Crisp white button-down shirt, mono-color tie, blazer (preferably tweed), blue T-shirt, hair gel, thick-framed black plastic glasses
Trying to become superman isn't easy.. those tight blue pants are hard to fit into. Lucky for you, Superman's alter ego, Clark Kent, is a bit easier to suit up as.
Clark Kent has two distinguishing characteristics: the trademark curled forelock and those thick-framed glasses. The former is just a matter of clever hair gelling, and you can usually find cheapo reading glasses in pharmacies that will do the trick if you pop out the lenses.
You can buy yourself a Superman tee, but better yet, lets save some cash and print out that logo from a Google image. Cut it out and put that on your tee shirt.
Wear your Superman duds under normal office attire — when you dress up think your lit professor. Just keep most of the buttons to your shirt undone so the logo is peeking out and your tie undone.
Bag of JellybeansMATERIALS: One large clear plastic trash bag, scissors, duct tape, two packages of round multi-colored party balloons (about 30 balloons total), one long strip of colorful fabric or ribbon
This is an oldie but a goody.
Blow up the balloons to about twice the size of your fist — the smaller the better.
Cut two holes in the bottom of the trash bag just wide enough for the thickest part of your legs to fit through. Wrap around the edges of holes with duct tape to reinforce.
Step into the bag and hike it up. The bottom of the bag should ride near the top of your hips. You don't want it any lower or you'll be walking around with the bag falling off all night. If you have to, you can tape the bag to your thighs.
Now, cut armholes in side for your shoulders stick out. Keeping bag slack in the waist, gather extra material around neck and trim away until you have about eight inches left. Take off bag and reinforce armholes with duct tape.
When you're ready to get going, step into bag and fill it loosely with balloons until they the come up to slightly below your armpits. Tie fabric or ribbon into a bow around your neck and then roll the lip of the bag downward.
TIP: If you want a break you can keep a spare plastic bag with you. If you want to take off your costume, tack the second bag to a wall and transfer all the balloons into it before trying to step out of it.
MATERIALS: Neutral-colored thermal underwear, at least 14 yards of 2-inch wide gauze or bed sheets cut into strips, baby powder
A mummy is classic, but using gauze instead of toilet paper is a bit classier.
To make the bandages look older and more "mummified" boil a pot of extremely strong black tea and let it cool. Soak your gauze in tea for a minute and then hang over shower curtain rod to dry. Repeat if bandages don't come out grungy enough for you.
Wearing the long johns, start by loosely wrapping gauze around your torso. You should wrap each section of your body separately to prevent yourself from slowly unraveling all night. Powder yourself liberally to add to the effect.
If you don't want to completely cover your face, you can make a pretty gruesome rotting flesh effect by mixing 8 tablespoons of all-purpose flour with 5 tablespoons of warm water. Mix the resulting dough with a small amount of Elmer's glue and apply unevenly to your face and let dry for 15 minutes.
MATERIALS: One umbrella, clear boxing tape, shiny materials (paper party streamers, iridescent ribbon, Mardi Gras beads, metallic finish fabric or even scrim from draperies)
If it's a dark and stormy night, this is the way to go.
Essentially you are just going to tape strips of shimmery material to the inside of an umbrella. This will look best if you can find a clear or translucent dome-style umbrella.
To get the best effect, start by cutting a two-inch thick tentacle for each panel of the umbrella. If you have bubble wrap, it will make the outfit look even cooler, and to do that just cut the strips diagonally between the bubbles for a more natural texture.
Once the main tentacles are attached, decorate the rest of the rim with thinner tentacles. Go crazy! This is a strange costume as is, why not have a little bit of fun with bubble wrap?
Investing in a handful of glow sticks that you can tape inside the dome's lip or suspend from the umbrella's spokes will add even more fun to the mix. Try hot pink or mix green and blue.
If you aren't using a dome umbrella and don't want to have something in your hands all night, cut off the umbrella's top, mush it flat and attach it to a hat.
MATERIALS: Two pieces of 4-foot by 4-foot cardboard, laundry marker, ruler, duct tape, masking tape
Suduko isn't just a game anymore when you take it up a notch and turn yourself into a live action game!
You're going to need two large square pieces of cardboard. Grocery stores will often give you free boxes if you ask nicely, but their quality and size may not be ideal. If you're in a rush, it might be easier to buy a shipping box at the post office.
Using a ruler, make a mark every 5 1/3 inches — or whatever the length of a side is divided by nine — on all four sides of both boards.
You will need two colors of tape to create the Sudoku grids, one darker than the other. If you don't have two colors of masking tape, you can just use a marker to color it in after the fact.
Use the lighter colored masking tape and lay straight lines of tape between the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th marks on opposite sides. Use the darker colored tape between the 3rd and 6th marks and for edging along the outside edge of each board.
Search the Web for two Sudoku puzzles and copy the clues onto your grids with marker.
Make the costume even more fun, hang a marker on a string around your neck so people can fill out the board as the night goes on!
HINT: Make sure you're not unsolvable, print out an answer sheet for yourself!
These ideas came from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,225758,00.htmlOther ideas can be found at http://www.ehow.com/halloween/costumelist.html
Another great site with lots of options can be found here: http://www.costumepage.org/hallocst2.html#hallo-howto
Happy Haunting,
Savvy Student
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