Halloween Costumes: 5 DIY materials that won't break the budget

Planning and executing a DIY costume can be a fun creative project for kids and parents to work on together. Check out these five materials that can make for costumes on the cheap.

3. Wrap-up a fun fabric costume

Kim Conner/AP/File
Kim Conner, a Burlington, Vt., marketing director and mother of three, designed this mermaid costume for her daughter.

Purchasing some fabric remnants can be less expensive than buying a readymade costume. Parents and older kids that are prepared to invest a good deal of sewing time into a costume may want to check out the pattern section of the store. However fabric costumes don't have to involve extensive sewing skills. Capes, skirts, dresses, saris, and togas are all examples of minimal or no-sew costume ideas.

3 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.