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I have to admit, I’m not big into Halloween. But, when you’re invited to a Halloween party, you have to dress up! After an exhausting search online I was disheartened by the options before me. I didn’t want a costume that had “sexy” in the title, anything scary, or some vague reference to a play on words that I would have to explain to every person I came across. In short, I wanted something cute, playful, and obvious.
Then I happened upon this costume. It was perfect! But at the time, the website was out of stock and I was too last minute to order it anyway. So I decided to try my hand at making it.
This paper doll dress ended up being way easier than I thought it would be to make! I can be a perfectionist when it comes to craft projects like this, and this one really didn’t give me any issues. The best part is that you can easily make this paper doll dress your own. You can customize it any way you like with shape, designs, colors, and accessories – just like a real outfit!
This costume was a hit! Everyone (well, the girls anyway) knew exactly what it was when they saw it and just raved over it all night.
If you’d like to as well, here’s what you’ll need:
Cheap and Easy DIY Paper Doll Halloween Costume
- 3 Foam boards (I used two colored ones and one white one, but you could always just use white)
- 1 pencil
- 1 scissors or a knife
- 1 black paint or a sharpie
- 1 gold paint
- 1 medium-point paint brush
- 1 adhesive of some kind
- First, flip over your colored board and trace out a dress design. You can do anything you like, but I opted to stay close to my inspiration dress.
- Once you have the basic outline drawn, cut it out.
- Next, flip over your board and use either black paint or a black sharpie to go around the edges of the board. Make sure you cover the top and the cut side of the board.
- Next, you’ll add the detail lines on the dress. This helps your costume look more realistic.
- Let’s add the tabs! Cut 6 inch long, thick white strips. You only need 6 or 7 of them. Again, outline them in black, but this time it will need to be a dashed line instead of a solid line.
- Next, attach the tabs to the back of the dress using hot glue, spray adhesive, or whatever you like!
- If you want an accessory like a belt, purse, or hair bow, make those repeating the same process as above.
- Add some gold touches with paint.
- Voila! Your finished product! You’ll want to wear a black body suit or black t-shirt and black shorts and attach the costume to the shirt using velcro. Definitely use velcro – because if you need to use the restroom at any point, you’ll want to be able to get out of the costume easily.
One thing to note: This dress was a lot of fun to wear and I got a lot of compliments! One issue though was that I couldn’t sit down in it, so if that’s important to you – you might try making the skirt and top in two different pieces.
If you’d like to see more ideas like this, follow me on Pinterest!
