Hi.

Welcome to my blog. I mainly post about my sewing projects, as I’m building a colourful and comfortable everyday wardrobe suitable for a working mum of primary school children. I really love African wax fabric, so that features heavily. I also occassionally post about family life in Edinburgh and travel. Hope you have a nice stay!

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Kids DIY Beetlejuice costume

Kids DIY Beetlejuice costume

If you know me, you know I love Halloween. As a festival, it has decorations, and sweets, but no presents, and it's all quite low key and easy, and optional, none of the stress of Christmas, say. I also like that it's explicitly for kids, and I adore hearing all the jokes. We don't heave trick or treat here, we have guiding, as in, disguising, and the kids have to do a 'turn' or little performance. Mostly everyone just tells a joke, but some or the teenagers in our area have also gone all out with group riddles in the past, and one year there was a girl playing the violin! 

This year is the first time both my boys will go out independently, but I still decided to get involved with the costumes, cos I love them!

I didn't make anything myself this year, but I'm still putting up this post, because I think it's a simple and effective costume that you can do without buying some polyester thing actually sold as a costume. Milo had originally requested Jack Skellington but honestly I have no idea how you would do that, and then we saw Beetlehuice Beetlejuice in the cinema, and now we have two of them!

The clothes are all from Vinted. The jackets are ladies xs sizes, I think Ellis was £3 and Milo £4. Ellis trousers also from Vinted, and Milo is wearing school trousers. The ties are Dave's. 

There are some fairly elaborate Beetlejuice make ups on You Tube, but they are more along the lines of Beetlejuice but make it sexy, which we obviously were not after. The actual make up in the film is pretty straightforward anyway, so I just did all this with snazaroo face paints in black, white and green (only the green is new, the black and white have lasted as long as we have been doing halloween costumes!), and a sponge. Basically just paint the face white and dab the black on eyes and lips, and the green round the hairline and the side of the cheeks. The hair is dry shampoo and some green hair spray. Job done!

I am so pleased with these costumes!

Seamwork Jo in banana print

Seamwork Jo in banana print