Skeletons in the Closet

I love Halloween time, it is really just so fun to me. But I guess the more modern take on it is what thrills me, not so much the gory gloom and doom of it that goes way back in its making. I guess it comes down to I love being creative and dressing up, and who doesn't love candy? Then with my husband's family we have taken on a new Halloween tradition that we eat pizza and candy and watch some sort of Halloween movie after the trick or treating is done for the night. I love the fun factor of it all.

Well since I am about to pop, with a wee little one growing inside me, I thought I would get an early start on sharing our costumes, just in case this little girl wants to grace her presence before the actual fun Halloween day. We went to a Halloween carnival last week, so we at least got to share our get-ups at least once, hopefully we will still get one more chance next week.

So long story short, and back to the title of this post, here is what we did. In my browsing on pinterest, I came across this, and knew that would be a perfect theme for our costumes this year, and would be very reasonable to get together in my lazy and awkward state.

So here is how it all worked:

1. I googled different images that we wanted for skeletons and stomach areas. For my little girl, we thought it would be fun to put an "apple" in her tummy, since she loves to eat them. We also did a juice box, but free handed it from our own memories.

http://www.arthursclipart.org/silhouettes/plants.htm

2. Get some hand freezer paper, which can be found in most grocery stores with the plastic wrap and wax paper and stuff. It makes great stencils. We could have printed this apple on paper and then traced it on the freezer paper, but because of its simple design, we just free handed it on the freezer paper and saved us some printer ink!

http://www.clker.com/clipart-ice-cream-silhouette.html

 Then we did an ice cream cone for my husband's stomach. Our life is just not complete without ice cream. I also free handed this since it is a very simple design.

http://www.playingitcooley.com/2011/10/my-baby-skeleton-costume-extra.html

 Then for my stomach, we did print this. I placed it underneath the freezer paper and traced it. It is best to write on the non shinny side of the freezer paper, especially since that is the side that you will want to use to iron on to the clothes later.

http://www.zazzle.com/rib+cage+mousepads

Again, for saving on printing, I free handed the rib cages, and made rough estimates to make sure it would fit for each of our rib cage sizes. Ours don't look exactly like this one, but it gave me a start of how I wanted ours to look.



http://bang-on-wholesale.com/transfers.php?my_category=Add%20On&sub_category=Costumes

Then lastly, we found an image for our arms and legs. I know this isn't entirely biologically correct, but I am lazy, and it isn't only one night, one holiday, so I didn't really care. But I used the basic look of these bones and did rough sketches for all our arms and legs.

3. Then after you have traced or drawn all your bones on the freezer paper, using an exact-o knife, I cut out the shapes. The baby took the longest, for obvious reasons, and I actually didn't cut out all the little details in full scale, because I didn't have the patience. I will explain later how I made up for that.

 4. After they are all cut, you iron on the parts to the clothing. We got our black clothes from our local thrift store. Make sure they are ironed on really well to keep the paint from bleeding out of the stencil.

5. Then you paint away! Depending on the texture of the clothing, some needed more coats of paint than others, but for the most part I did two coats of white paint, and then topped it with a coat of glow in the dark paint.

 And wall-ah! There you have it! Here is a stepped back look of our costumes (sorry, I hadn't finished my hubby's legs yet while taking this picture, but you get the idea).

 Then for a fun close up look at the baby in my belly. It looks more detailed here right? Well after I was done painting (and the paint was dry of course), I went back with a permanent black marker and then used the above skeleton baby pic as my guide and drew in the details. I drew the eye, and underneath the chin, and then the hallow parts of the rib cages and around the legs. Before all this touch up, it kind of looked like a yellow baby blob. Then I don't have it pictured here either, but I sewed a little bow on the top of it's head, since it is a little girl!

And there you have it! So if you are stumped for last minute Halloween costumes, this is always an easy out, and it is was a blast to put together!
Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and thanks for stopping by!