peacock

Well, its costume time, that time of year where us parents can either fork out hundreds of dollars for satiny sheets of paper that our kidlets freeze in, rip and look well like everybody elses’ kid out there and like they came out of a box, or to spend hours and hours and attempt to be Martha Stewart and Coco Chanel rolled into one with our sewing machines that collect dust 10 months out of the year and not enough artistic ability to fill up our thumbs while still attempting to do the rest of our lives at the same time. Who has time for that? This year I have decided (thanks to so much inspiration from pinterest) to make all 5 costumes, make them for under $20 each, with little or no sewing (my machine is broken, of course!) and to make them in 2 hours or less.

So luck of the draw meant #4’s costume was first, I wanted to be spooky this year, a perfect funky little witch,

Source: etsy.com via Robin on Pinterest

but she hated the idea, and opted to be a peacock instead, but not just any peacock, a purple one…

For her costume I used:

3 yards purple large net tulle ( $0.97/yard @ walmart)

1/2 yard aqua small net tulle ($1.27/yard @ walmart)

1 1/2 yards blue small net tulle ($1.27/yard @ walmart)

2 1/2 yards purple small net tulle ($1.27/yard @ walmart)

1 inch elastic (under $2 for a huge roll @ walmart)

6 sheets of felt ($0.23/each @ walmart)

and a roll of ribbon ( > $3 @ walmart)

So about $15 for this costume. I spent 2 nights doing this the first night was the skirt (look up tutu tutorials for info. Tip: cut elastic 3 inches smaller than the childs chest) for about an hour while watching a movie with The Big Man, and an hour the second night making the felt feathers while he watched football (He tried to help cut out the felt, but his circles weren’t even close to round! lol!) Feather tutorial can be found with our inspiration here. I hot glued ours instead of sewing them.