Halloween Aquatic

After a long debate (granted, mostly inside my head), I have decided to jump head-first into the world of blogging. We'll see how this goes.

The end of October is approaching, and my 3 sweet monkey-noodles have come to me with their costume wishes. My redhead chose the little mermaid. (in the dress-up bin. Done.) My son chose Batman. (despite attempts to endear his Captain Hook costume to him. Nonetheless, in the dress-up bin. Done.) My youngest daughter chose.....A SEAHORSE?

A SEAHORSE. Not moved with talk of princesses, heroes, or land mammals. What do you do with that? Check online, of course. Found a (ridiculously ugly) toddler seahorse online. For $50! I don't know about you, but I am way too cheap frugal for that! So... after getting wise counsel and staring at dozens of seahorse jpegs, I got to work.


Here's the (mostly) finished costume:

Nice, huh? I'll post the side-view later!

It came together for about $8 (pink duck tape, 2 pink sponges, pipe insulation tube, and purple spraypaint) plus an old stained men's sweatshirt. Actually, it didn't even take long- mostly waiting for the hotglue to heat up. Which is good, because I am lazy try to be wise with my time. I didn't think to take pictures of the process, so you are stuck with my cluttered explanations.

First, I cut the sleeves off of the sweatshirt. Seeing as my petite 5 year old is much smaller than my 6"2" hubby, I also closed the armholes to a reasonable size. With hot glue. I. Don't. Sew. (I don't have a type-A bone in my body, and patterns and details make me crazy!) The sleeves were saved for later use on the tail.

I coiled up the pipe insulation 4 times and, after learning that hot glue and plastic foam are arch enemies, tied the spiral with a shoelace. Initially, I wanted a pool noodle. Not so easy to find in October.

I "sewed" the 2 sweatshirt sleeves together (with hot glue and duck tape, of course), and slipped the straight end of the pipe through. A little more glue and lots of plastic grocery bag stuffing later, I hotglued the tail unit onto the back of the (now sleeveless) sweatshirt).


For the head, I borrowed a play from last Halloweens playbook. Here is Slinky-dog 2010:

I took a baseball cap, then covered it with duck tape. A little scrunched newspaper for shape and loft and a paper towel tube were glued on, as well as a neckpiece coming off the back.


Next came the spraypaint. She was very clear that the seahorse must be purple.


What was missing?... Spines and eyeballs! The things you can do with pink scrubbie sponges (and a gluegun) is amazing.

Another October down... we'll see what crafty challenge comes next!
Here's a link to some other ideas around this week!