Frugal Halloween Costume Ideas Under $10

In this video, I’ll give you more suggestions on homemade costumes you can make from things you likely have already.

Homemade Costume Idea: Bag of Jelly Beans

Use a clear garbage bag (upside down, making neck and arm holes) for the bag of jelly beans.  Fill the bag with small colored balloons, and cinched at the bottom.

Homemade Costume Idea: Spider

Make the spider’s legs with by cutting off the legs of an old pair of black tights.  Fill with fiberfill or newspaper, and attach to sweatshirt with safety pins.  Create the joints in the legs by wrapping with fishing line or floss.  Spider’s belly can be made with felt and embellished with glitter glue.  Wear with black pants and hat.

Homemade Costume Idea: Scarecrow

This costume is cute by itself or with other costumes in the Wizard of Oz theme.  Start with a pair of overalls and a flannel or plaid shirt.  Use fabric scraps cut into squares for patches.  Then, use your hot-glue gun to glue some raffia behind the “patches” to look like straw.  Look for a straw hat at any craft store and add an artificial bird for good measure.

Homemade Costume Idea: Mouse

To make a homemade mouse costume, start with a hooded gray sweatshirt and sweatpants.  Make ears out of gray and pink felt, then sew or pin onto the hood.  Take a gray tube sock and fill with newspaper or fiberfill to make a tail.  Paint on a pink nose with a little lipstick and draw whiskers on with a little black eyeliner.

Homemade Costume Idea: Ladybug

Start with a pair of black leggings and long-sleeve t-shirt for this one.  Pair with a red vest, or cut the sleeves off a red shirt to use as the ladybug’s body.   Cut circles out of black felt for the ladybug’s spots, using a glass or jar as a stencil.   Using school glue, add them to the red shirt (they can be peeled off later). Or, use black fabric paint to create the spots.   For the antennae, glue 2 pom poms to the ends of fuzzy pipe cleaners that are secured to a headband.

Homemade Costume Idea: Bunch of Grapes

For this frugal “bunch of grapes” costume, I used a purple sleeper along with balloons and artificial greenery.   You could also use a purple sweatsuit.  Using small safety pins, attach around 15-20 balloons onto the outfit after you’ve put it on.  Be sure to bring along extra balloons when you go trick-or-treating to replace any that may pop.

Homemade Costume Idea: Bride

It’s so easy, you’ll be saying “I do!” to this cute Halloween costume idea.  When you’re done trick-or-treating, it’s sure to become a popular item in your daughter’s dress-up box too.  Using a hot glue gun, attach a yard of white tulle to a headband to make the bride’s veil.  For the dress, pair a white shirt with a slip as the skirt.   The “bride” can carry artificial flowers tied with a piece of the tulle leftover from the headband.

Homemade Costume Idea: Bumblebee

Use tacky glue to affix 1 1/2 inch black strips of glue to a yellow onesie, sleeper, or shirt with the arms cut off.  Use pipe cleaners attached to a headband for antennae, and hot-glue a pom-pom to each end.

Homemade Costume Idea: Dalmatian

Purchase white sweatpants and white hooded sweatshirt or plain white sweatshirt without a hood. Buy black felt and cut out dalmatian spots. Sew spots loosely onto sweats, or simply use school glue to adhere them to the costume. Cut doggy ears out of felt and sew onto sides of hooded sweatshirt or if you’re using a sweatshirt without a hood, glue the ears to a headband. Add a black nose and spots with Halloween face paint.

After Halloween remove the felt spots from sweats with a seam ripper or peel off if you used glue and wash the suit.  You’ll still have a sweat suit for your child’s fall wardrobe.