You might be wondering why I am making my Halloween costume in the middle of July. Let me assure you that I am not that organized and in truth I threw this costume together only days before I needed it.
The reason for Minnie Mouse is an annual moonlight bike ride that the hubby and I have participated in for the last several years. Its quite a lot of fun with thousands of participants and an easy ten mile route. Not everyone wears costumes but many people do. We enjoy the silliness of it all.
The hubby has been prepared with his costume for quite some time but I have been struggling with costume ideas for the last few weeks. I finally came up with the Minnie Mouse idea in the middle of the night, when most of my ideas hit me :-)
It fit all my necessary criteria. shoes I can ride a bike in, the helmet is part of the costume and of course most importantly all of the materials required were already on hand.
Materials list
1) Duct Tape (because almost every project is better with Duct Tape)
2) Corrugated Cardboard (If you are reading this I know you have some cardboard stashed somewhere)
3) White printer paper
4) Black trash bag
5) Red Plastic Table Cloth (If you don't have one you can use more black trash bag)
6) Small piece of Velcro (A safety pin would work too)
7) Red Ribbon (you know you have some with all that extra wrapping paper)
8) Yellow canvas shoes (or you can dye some white shoes with turmeric from your spice cabinet. That's what l did. :-)
9) Long sleeve black shirt
10) Red Tank Top
11) Black Bike Shorts
12) Black knee high socks
13) Bike helmet (or some hat or headband would work too)
14) White gloves
15) Polka dot-purse (or add some of the paper dots to a solid black purse)
Tools
1) Scissors
2) Stapler
3} E6000 Glue
4) Computer and Printer (or small round object to hand trace circles)
5) Tape measure
6) Clothes Pins
Once I had the idea the whole thing went together really easily. I love that kind of project don't you?
The skirt is made from a long piece of red tablecloth hand gathered onto a piece of white duct tape for the waistband.
I worked in quarter sections when gathering the skirt on to the duct tape so I wouldn't have to deal with such a long piece of tape.
The circles are made from white paper printed from the computer cut out and stapled into place.
I made the skirt about 4 to 6 inches longer than my waist measurement so that it wraps around and hooks together with a piece of Velcro that I stapled on to the duct tape waistband.
I didn't want the back of the staples to get caught on anything so I covered them with a small piece of duct tape.
I thought that I might have to add an another layer of plastic to make the skirt puffy enough but the one layer was stiff enough to make a full skirt.
I cut some circles from the cardboard for ears....
and used the duct tape to attach them to the helmet.
I covered the cardboard ears and the helmet with the black plastic from the trash bag. The red bow is made from part of the tablecloth, more stapled paper circles and attached with glue.
For the shoes I really did go to the spice rack for dye.
If you search on line you will find more technical ways to use Tumeric as a dye but for my purposes all I did was fill the sink with hot water and add the Tumeric stirred the water and let my shoes soak for an hour or so.
Then I tossed them in the dryer with an old towel. Made some bows out of some left over Christmas ribbon and glued the bows onto the shoes.
Happy Upcycling,
