As a college student, I do not like spending a lot of money especially on something I will wear one night. With Halloween right around the corner though, I have been trying to decide on a costume to wear while volunteering for the Safe-Trick-or-Treat hosted at my school. We are planning to have a costume contest among the volunteers too, so I want to put a lot of thought into my costume without too much of the cost in COSTume (teehee I made a punny!).
Obviously, one idea is to recycle an older costume from high school that people at college probably haven't seen me in. Unfortunately, I only actually purchased one costume in high school and I am letting my sister borrow it. The rest of the times I've dressed up, I've just made up costumes out of clothes and such I already had. Some costumes I wore using my own everyday clothes and accessories over the years include: cow girl, Native American, a boy, and Tinky Winky the teletubby. I bought a FrenchMaid costume my freshman year of college, but I never got the chance to wear it and I decided it is not an appropriate costume to wear around little kids anyway lol. It is actually pretty modest for a French Maid costume. I just think the whole idea of it isn't very wholesome haha. As a backup costume, I have the children's fairy costume I wore two years ago, but it is missing the wings, so I will need to transform it into a forest nymph costume or something instead I guess... haha. But hopefully, I will come up with something cool as I brainstorm through this blog :)
One easy idea is the Princess. To just be a generic princess, all you need is a fancy dress and a tiara to be honest. I have lots of tiaras at home, but I didn't think to bring any to school, so I might go out and buy a plastic one if I decide to use this costume idea. They can be found for as little as a dollar at party stores or Five Below. Or if you want your costume to be a little more "legit" and don't mind spending the extra money, Claire's has some more "real"ish tiaras for under twenty dollars.
I could potentially go as a cowgirl again, but I think I left my straw cowboy hat at home also, but this costume is really simple if you have cowboy boots and some kind of flannel shirt and a cowgirl hat. You could add a rope belt or carry a lasso around with you if you so choose for some more fun accessorizing.
I also noticed that Five Below has some pretty fun wigs for only five dollars which leads me to the following ideas:
(Insert profession) Barbie- All you need is a blonde wig and you can pretty much wear whatever you want and call yourself Barbie. For example, you could combine one of the previous costume ideas with a blonde wig and be "Princess Barbie" or "Cowgirl Barbie". I highly recommend watching the movie Never Been Kissed if you need a good visual of what a Barbie costume could look like. Here is a clip of the specific scene though if you don't feel like sitting through 2 hours of a great movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRpaEi3iKaE (You can skip to 4:22 to see the costumes!).
Five Below also has some fun colored wigs (pink, purple, green, etc.) which would be great for an ALIEN costume if you paired it with some crazy fun glittery and metallic makeup and shiny spacey-clothing.
Long-haired wigs are great if you want to go as a hippie and pair it with bell-bottom jeans and tie-dye or bright floral prints and giant earrings and tinted sunglasses and flowers in your hair and maybe a nice flowy top or a fringed vest. There's a lot you can work with here and you probably have stuff in your own wardrobe that you can use for this kind of costume.
I also found this site which has a lot of really awesome costume ideas. Some of them are really original and fun too! I especially liked this section: http://costumeideazone.com/A9eShopYourCloset.htm
Have fun with your costumes and make it your own! I hope everyone has an awesome Halloween with some really fun costumes :)
