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Though Halloween looks different this year, we are keeping the spirit alive with easy DIY costumes. Believe it or not, this is our first family costume ever and Jack and I were so excited to get our crafting on. One of my goals was to keep it simple and have the baby bump included, so I used many supplies which I already had and perhaps you have around the house as well. We were inspired by some of Jack’s favorite characters, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. HBO Max is streaming some totally awesome shows that JC and I used to watch back in the day that Jack loves now. Since we will soon be a family of four, the inspiration behind this costume really evolved from the baby bump looking like a shell and being able to include all of the ninja turtles together.

I gathered the green clothing we already had. The only things I needed to purchase for this costume turned out to be JC’s shirt, pants, and 2 colors of felt.

SUPPLIES:

- Green clothing items - can be anything from shirts (JC’s is actually scrubs!), sweatshirts, pants, a dress, skirt, shorts.

- Felt in green (half a yard) and gold (half a yard)

- Scissors (preferably one pair for paper, one for fabric)

- Fabric Glue

- Cardboard (can be from a box)

- Cardstock

- Pencil

- Green marker and black marker

- Hand Sewing Needle

- Craft thread or embroidery floss or twine

- Masks (I ordered a set as I priced it out and it would have been much more expensive and time consuming to make our own, plus there’s a shortage on elastic currently)

Make a template for the front of the shirt. You can just do 3 and cut through 2 layers of felt if you’d like, but I like the idea of it looking handmade and not so perfect, so I drew 6 pieces and cut each of them out.

Place the felt down on the front of the shirt and when you’re happy with the placement, use fabric glue in the middle of each piece to glue down. (If you don’t want to do the hand stitching steps coming up, be sure to use enough glue for the entire felt piece, but not too much as it can get messy and show through).

While the glue is drying, you can cut larger pieces for any of the other bigger shirts you plan on adding pieces to.

Once the glue has dried, thread the needle and use a single strand to hand stitch a border around the pieces.

Repeat on the larger shirt if you wish.

Cut a piece of cardboard (upcycle a box!) into an oval that resembles a shell. Cut a few templates for the parts of the shell. Jack really wanted to be involved as most 7 year olds probably do, so instead of using the felt on the shell as I had originally planned, I had him trace the template in pencil and then we filled in with marker. Use the template pieces to cut the parts of the shell using the green felt.

Cut 2 strips of the green felt for the straps and hand sew onto the cardboard shell, measuring on the one who will be wearing the shell for appropriate length and placement.

For the shell felt pieces on the baby, I simply put on the dress and glued the pieces onto the dress after seeing the placement in the mirror. Some of the pieces needed to be trimmed up a bit due to the stretching of the dress.

Last step to the dress was to glue the mask on and draw on eyelashes with a black marker. Put the masks and shells on and enjoy!

GIVEAWAY INFO

The sweepstakes will start at 9am PT on 10/26 and end at 5pm PT on 10/30.
Enter for the opportunity to win a 30-day free trial to HBO Max for you and a friend by doing the following things:
- 1. Follow @AmyTangerine and @hbomaxfamily on Instagram
- 2. Tag a friend you want to stream Halloween favorites with in the comments of my Instagram in-feed post
- 3. @hbomaxfamily will DM the winner on Halloween, 10/31. Winners will get one 30-day free trial for themselves and one for their tagged friend!
- No pur nec. 50US&DC 18+ Ends 5PM PT on 10/30.

Rules and regulations: http://hbomaxhalloween.dja.com/