DIY Mermaid and Pirate Halloween Costumes
The time has come to plan your Halloween costume! Or if you’re like me, you’ve been putting it together since the summer. I always like to keep it a surprise every year, so you’ll just have to wait until next year to see our 2017 Halloween outfits. But here’s our last year’s costume!
I don’t think Joe is quite as into the costume thing as I am (you can find him setting up lights or music), but he’ll dress up if I give him a uniform 😉 One year we were Mother Earth and Father Time, and here are a few other gems from past years including Tarzan and Jane.
Lucky for me, he goes along with my ridiculous couples costume ideas. I love the challenge of finding things around the house or thrift stores to come up with DIY costumes. It’s 10x more fun than buying off the shelf. No surprise, there, right? Here’s our mermaid and pirate rendition!
DIY Mermaid Costume
The pirate is hands-down the easiest one. Although I couldn’t get Joe to take some eyeliner for the team 🙁 Otherwise a white puffy shirt and bandana are all you need.
As for the mermaid, start with some fabric. I found this turquoise scalloped stretchy material, and a small amount of a starchy, tulle fishnet-like material.
I had an old purple tank top to use.
First, find two large sea shells. Either Michaels or even Walmart sells them from $5-10 each. Using hot glue and super glue, I secured the shells. We also had a stash of beach shells from Florida to use.
Paint the nails shimmery green, of course.
Next, you’ll need a triton. Get a regular devil’s pitchfork (Goodwill or anywhere) and paint it green or blue.
Apply some glitter, more seashells, and fabric strips (remnants from the costume material).
Now you’ve got the top done! Excuse the myspacesque photo. Add some pearl and shell jewelry, curl or sea salt spray your hair, and you’re halfway done.
Pirates gotta rock the jewelry too, right? For me, I stuck some more fabric strips into my hair to look like seaweed. I found some stick-on pearls and jewels for my face as well. Warning: do not try any mermaid makeup tutorials unless you know what you’re doing. I tried to do the fishnet makeup thing on my face to look like scales, and it was a bigtime Pinterest fail for me. But, I feel body glitter is good enough.
Here’s the hard part – the tail. I’m not going to downplay it because it took some time. I’m sure there are loads of patterns out there, but I just fit the fabric to my body and sewed it like a form-fitting maxi dress, adding a zipper. Then I sewed the tulle to the bottom and attached it to the top to look like the fins were curled up.
Also, I held up the ends of the skirt by putting holes for my thumbs. It was long enough so I could carry it around on my thumbs like a train and that created the illusion of a tail flipping around.
So there you have it! There’s no right or wrong way to make this costume. It was a lot of experimentation and improvisation, so don’t be afraid to make changes for yourself.
Hint: Our costumes for this year may or may not be another Disney-esque theme from recent movies…
