Halloween DIY

It’s getting towards the end of September which means spooky season is coming, folks! Now obviously October is filled with the normal autumn activities – orchard visits, haunted houses, and corn mazes – but we all know that these activities lead up to one of the best holidays ever: HALLOWEEN. On Halloween you can be whoever or whatever you want to be. You want to be a princess? Be a princess. You want to be a dog? WOOF, be a dog. You want to be a murderer? Dress up like one (please don’t murder people). Now, I know what you’re thinking Halloween costumes can get expensive and a lot of times they don’t fit right or they’re itchy or you want to look cute but not too scandalous. Lucky for you, I can help you with some DIY Halloween costumes that are PERFECT for college students. I’ll let you know what some typical college outfits consist of, tips and tricks for finding low budget outfits, as well as examples and pictures of a couple Halloween costumes I’ve worn the past two years here at Ball State.

Over the years, most of my Halloween outfits have actually been store bought. In elementary and junior high, my mom had a lot on her plate, so she didn’t really have time to figure out how to make a DIY Halloween costume, especially for four kids. My range of costumes is rather large as well. I’ve, of course, been a typical princess and a cat, but I’ve also been a pirate and a monster (basically just an evil-looking mask with black clothes). When I was younger, I also always wanted to be a sumo wrestler (let’s be honest, I still want to be one, one of these days). I wanted to get the fat suit that you blow up, and I think all I really wanted to do was bump into people and make them fall down, but sadly, that dream never came true. Nonetheless, I have finally come around to loving the DIY outfit. It’s cheap, easily searchable, and (usually) easy to do, especially for costumes most college-aged people want to wear. Although I haven’t been doing the DIY stuff for too long, I already have a pretty good grasp on it to know where to search, when to start searching, and how to execute the DIY Halloween costume.

If you’ve gotten this far and you still don’t know what DIY means, I’ll ask you to crawl out from under that rock you’re living under so I can tell you – Do It Yourself. The draw for DIY Halloween costumes wasn’t as prominent when I was younger for some reason, but that may be because I simply didn’t know about them since my mom always took us to a costume shop to pick ours out. However, once I got to college, I realized almost everyone makes their costumes themselves. Now when I say, “makes their costumes themselves,” this almost never involves sewing. Most college students wear something that is already in their wardrobe or go out and find the right clothes to match the character or creature they want to be. Usually the costumes are not very complicated at all, which makes the DIY even easier to do. Also depending on which day of the week Halloween falls on compared to the closest weekend, people may go out to Halloween parties multiple days during the week or weekend; many of these people wear a different costume at every party, which goes to show just how easy DIY’s can be because we all know college students typically don’t like to try very hard, and we honestly don’t have the time to make some elaborate DIY costume (we’d also need help from our mothers for sewing). That being said, if you have the time and want to sew for a DIY, go for it! I’m sure you’ll be the center of attention with the costume you worked so hard on.

The obvious first steps to beginning your Halloween DIY is figuring out what you want to be. When deciding this, you should think about the adjectives you would use to describe your outfit (don’t worry about what someone else would think; they’re not wearing the costume so who cares?). Some adjectives I try to think about when choosing my costumes are scandalous, funny, recognizable, and cheap. I ask myself just how scandalous of an outfit I want to wear (you’d be surprised at some of the costumes you’ll see at college parties). I also think about whether I want my outfit to make people laugh because that’s one thing I love to do. Recognizable is usually the most important to me because I don’t necessarily want to have to explain to people who or what I am dressed as – I feel like they should be able to tell. Finally, cheap is because I am a penny pincher and don’t want to waste too much money on some clothes that I may never wear again.

My personal costume theme since freshman year of college that I always dress up as a character with red hair (for obvious reasons). Every year when I am looking for a costume (usually around the middle or end of September), I google “Halloween costumes for redheads.” I get a list of characters and based on the adjectives I’m looking for and who I think I could pull off, I start to look up how others decided to do the costume. I do this by looking at Google images, Pinterest, YouTube, and various other websites. While I look at these outfits, I think about the clothes I already own and if I could use any of them in the costume. I also think about the clothes that I would have to buy and if I can easily find the item I need either online or in a store. Thinking about this helps me make sure I keep the cost down on my DIY, and I highly recommend you try to think about yours this way as well.

The past two years, this process has led me to two great outfits. My freshman year costume was Kim Possible – a classic redhead character that almost anyone my age would recognize. I was lucky enough to have an older sister who had been Kim in a previous year, so she let me borrow most of the items I needed. She gave me her belt and her long-sleeved cropped turtleneck. She also gave me some cargo pants, but I didn’t like the way those fit on me, so I had to buy new ones along with some plain black shoes. Overall, it was a very cheap outfit, and one that was a hit at the party I went to. My second year costume was less recognizable to some – Misty Williams from Pokémon. I only had to buy two items for this costume as well – a pokéball and red suspenders. I already had a yellow crop top and jeans, and I borrowed red vans to complete it. I liked this outfit more because it was cuter and although people didn’t recognize it as much, once they saw the pokéball they mostly understood what I was going for.

Once you have pinpointed the exact costume you want to wear, you need to think about what you have and what you need. Both of my DIY’s, I only needed four to five items to complete it, and I had at least half of those items already. I encourage you to always utilize your resources (siblings, friends, maybe even parents) when trying to find what you need. You want to make sure you start this process early, though. You could also always borrow something from someone, try it on, not like it, and go find the item in a store that better suits you, but it’s harder to do that if you’re trying to make your outfit two days before Halloween starts. The best part about this process is the time you put into your costume is less time spent on homework or cleaning or any other boring activity college students have to do (although it still counts as procrastinating, at least it’s PRODUCTIVE procrastination). You also may want to consider how many costumes you plan on doing when figuring out when you want to start the process. Clearly the more costumes you want to do, the longer it will take, but it also depends on the complexity of the costume and how much time you actually want to put into it.

Now that you know what you need after asking friends and family to borrow stuff, you need to determine your budget. How much do you really want to spend on this costume? If you decide that you have too many items to get and the DIY will end up costing more than you expected, you can always change what you want to be or buy a non-DIY costume if you think it will be cheaper. If you decide you are ready to start shopping, I have some tips on where to start. Goodwill and Plato’s Closet are the best chain thrift stores (at least, that I know of here in Muncie), so I highly recommend starting at these stores. Plato’s Closet is especially nice because not only are they picky about what clothes they choose to buy and display, they also arrange their clothes by color, making it especially easy to find (or not find) exactly what you’re looking for. Goodwill is more of a hidden gems thrift shop, but still very good when looking for singular items for a simple Halloween DIY. Both are obviously very cheap, too. My other suggestions for finding the specific items you need would be sales and clearance racks in regular stores and online shopping on Amazon in particular (especially if you have Prime for FREE SHIPPING – on eligible items).

Finding what you need is the last step to finishing your college Halloween DIY so congratulations! However, if you’re new to college or college Halloween parties (or if you don’t base your costumes off your hair color like me) you may be wondering what people typically dress up as, either to avoid copying others or to not stand out too much. I will start out by saying most boys do not try very hard at all. Most of them generally wear a sports jersey, toga, or cowboy hat (typical frat party themes, as well). Girls, on the other hand, are all over the spectrum of trying REALLY hard and not trying hard at all. There are always some of the more artistic girls who dabble in the fake blood but great makeup costumes – usually as murder victims. There are also girls who just wear jerseys, like the boys (most likely because their planned costume fell through; they didn’t start thinking about their costume early enough; or they are going to multiple parties over Halloween and this is their “I’m not trying” outfit). Some girls also go the more typical, scandalous route – devil, angel, cat, mouse, police officer – and sometimes they get a real costume for those. However, there are always the girls who simply just want to dress up as their favorite person and not look too scandalous – Taylor Swift, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe. In other words, girls are all across the board on their Halloween outfits (DIY or not), and I’m sure whatever you choose to wear will be great.

I hope from this post you have learned a little bit more about college Halloween costumes and especially DIYs. If you could take away three things from this post, I hope they are to start the outfit search early, to utilize your friends and family for costume items, and to try to shop from thrift stores or sales racks to get the most bang for your buck. I know I am especially excited for Halloween this year and I hope you are, too! If you happen to see the Powerpuff Girls walking the Muncie streets this Halloweekend, make sure to wave at Blossom!