Homemade Halloween: My little Spider!

I love, love LOVE Halloween and always have done since I was a little girl. The excitement of planning what to wear, the pumpkin carving and the trick or treating. I love that it seems to get bigger in the UK every year now. It doesn't need to break the bank though, there are plenty of budget shops around that sell Halloween goodies plus if you use your imagination you can create a fab costume, decorations and food goodies.

Having a sister nine years younger than me meant Halloween was always fun. I remember sewing layers of black net onto a hairband and black dress to create a budget Bride of Dracula outfit for her - she certainly stood out amongst a crowd of witches! She'd then come home from trick or treating to 'eyeball stew' - grapes floating in Cola and 'snake slime' - gummy worms set in green jelly!

Now this Halloween is rather special for me, as I now have a little one to make a costume for! Although she'll only be 3 months old, I still wanted her to celebrate it with us. Plus I plan to make a scrap book and photo album of her first year and wanted some cute photos to mark her first ever Halloween. As she's so small I didn't want to spend a lot of money on something she would only wear for a very short time.

After much thinking on what I could make simply and cheaply, I came up with a spider outfit. Here's how I made it...

Take 4 pairs of your old, laddered tights and stuff!

This costume is also great for recycling, what else are you going to do with those old, laddered tights?! If you don't have any old tights about, Primark do a multipack for £4. I stuffed mine with anything I had about, bubble wrap from parcels, carrier bags - anything will do.

Stuff each leg to however long you want it to be, then knot.

Stuff each leg with enough filling to make it long enough for your child and then knot together.I then cut off the gusset of the tights and sewed it onto the back of a  plain black body suit. Black baby bodysuits did prove hard to find in the shops but I eventually found one on Ebay for £2.50.

I picked up some black baby tights from Peacocks for £2.00 and a black ribbon hairband from Ebay for £1.30.
I then twisted a black pipe cleaner at the top of the hairband. I got a pack of 80 pipe cleaners from Poundland for £1.00.

And here is the end result!

Total cost of costume is £6.80, I haven't included the tights as technically I was recycling them but if you had to go out and specifically buy them then £10.80. I will be using the bodysuit, baby tights and hairband again so I'm quite pleased at the overall cost.


The spiderweb background in this picture is a plain paper tablecloth with a web drawn on in black marker, I got a 4 pack of paper tablecloths from Poundland for a £1.00 - great for your Halloween tables. The spider LED lights are also from Poundland for... you guessed it, a £1.00!

I'm looking forward to next weekend when I'll be carving up pumpkins for lanterns and making pumpkin soup!

Moneysupermarket.com are running a #homemadehalloween competition with prizes for the best costumes in 3 categories (adults, kids and group), why not try a budget homemade costume yourself, blog about it and enter?