Book character dress up day

On the Friday before Halloween, the kids' school had "Book Character Dress Up Day." While I think this is a way for the school to allow kids to dress up for Halloween without really allowing them to dress up for Halloween, this mean ol' mama would NOT let her kids wear their Halloween costumes, partly because they weren't really book characters, and partly because I didn't want the little knuckleheads to mess them up. 

So, I thought and thought and came up with a pretty cool (and cheap!) costume idea: they both went as Merlin, the magician from the King Arthur legends.  It just so happens that Braden had recently read about Merlin in a book about knights and castles, so he totally bought into the costume. Then, once Garrett heard about it, he too wanted to be Merlin. 

 

I bought two $.49 black posterboards from Kroger and a $2.49 glitter paint set.  We cut the posterboard into a pie-shaped wedge, painted stars and a moon, then rolled it into a cone. I added the "Merlin" just in case the other second-graders couldn't tell who he was (kindergartners can't really read, so Garrett just got an M, plus I did Garrett's first and didn't really think about adding the entire name).

I cut a beard shape out of quilt batting then stapled it to the hat and cut a mouth hole. For Braden's, I pulled apart cotton balls into strands and spray-glued those on the beard.

Garrett didn't want the cotton balls on his beard, and I don't think his looks as good as Braden's.

I borrowed the graduation gowns from the stash of them at school (the teachers wear them at graduation every May). I used a long stitch length to baste the bottoms of the gowns up, and then basted the "new" bottom hem.  These stitches easily pulled out the next day so that I could return the gowns.

So, for $3.50, some time, and some supplies from around the house (and school), my kids had original costumes for book character dress up day!