Art & Design of Kelli Murray

As I was posting these pictures, I was remembering this day last year when we all dressed up as cave people.  It’s insane that one year has passed since then.  Just as I feel like we are getting a little too old for halloween shenanigans, we have another, and even better, excuse to join in the fun.  From now until forever I’ll relish in making my kid(s) look ridiculous.  But I think this white swan costume might go down in the history books as my all time favorite.  It was actually kind of a last minute idea.  As I was having dinner with a girlfriend (hi Ana!), and I was telling her about my idea for a little lamb costume for Rylee, but I was worried I had procrastinated too long to actually have time to pull it off.  Her daughter is about 7 months older than Rylee and last year she made this Martha Stewart chicken costume for her little girl.  So genius.  I snatched it up, but instead of a chicken I wanted to make her a swan!  So I ditched the chicken hat and made a couple simple swan masks instead.  A white one for her, and a black one for me.  They didn’t take long at all to make, so if you are in a jam and looking to make a quick costume…here’s what I used to make them (sorry there are no step by step photos)

What you’ll need:  felt, feathers, elastic, sequins, orange fabric, hot glue gun, a needle and thread

Start by downloading my mask template: BABY SIZE / ADULT SIZE.  Cut out the masks and trace them onto your felt.  Cut out two identical masks.  For the white mask, I used black felt on the underside and white felt on the front side.  I made sure to cut the eyes slightly larger on the white felt, so that the black felt showing through underneath created an outline.  No need to do this for the black mask though.  After you have your two matching masks cut, take one of them and use your hot glue gun to attach a few feathers at the point on each side of the mask, just above the eye holes.  They should feather out beyond the size of your felt.  Once it’s dry, glue the other felt cut out on top of the first….sandwiching the feather ends.  Trim / shape your feathers and make sure there are not feather ends poking through into the eyeholes.

Now you can decorate the mask however you want.  For mine, I attached silver sequins.  For Rylee’s, I drew in dots and added little black felt pieces to the corners of the eyes.  Next,  you need to make a beak. On my mask template that you downloaded, there is a beak shape that you can use to trace onto your felt.  Just like you did with the mask shape, cut out two identical beaks using felt and glue them together (just to make it more sturdy).  Then wrap the felt with orange fabric to create the beak, securing it with glue.  (it’s amazing all that you can do with a hot glue gun!)  I tacked the beak down with a needle and thread to the bottom of the mask.

Last thing you’ll need to do is add elastic!  This all sounds more confusing than it actually is!  You should be able to make one mask in 20 minutes if you have all your supplies ready.

Happy Halloween!  We celebrated over the weekend, so I’m not sure what we will do on actual Halloween. (I posted some more photos here)  Hopefully we’ll just eat too much candy and watch a couple cheesy scary movies.  What are your plans?  Be sure to comment with links if you decided to go DIY this Halloween!  I’d love to see what you made!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2012 at 10:03 am and is filed under BABY, DIY, MY LIFE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.