HOMEMADE PEACOCK COSTUME

Up to this point, I have made things easy on myself and just purchased my kids' Halloween costumes.  Well, this year Renee wanted to be a peacock.  Dazzling idea but do they sell peacock costumes?  They do, but she didn't like them, because the "feathers" looked like wings–not real feathers.  I give her a lot of credit because she came up with the idea of using this dress she already had which was perfect. The only thing I had to do was now make it look like a full peacock by adding the feathers!

It's amazing what you can do with a hot glue gun! I purchased the feathers from Michaels.  (I did it on a few trips with 40% off coupons.) I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to attach the feathers without ruining the dress.  What I ended up doing was trimming the bottoms of the feathers, fanning them on a piece of posterboard and hot gluing them all in place.  I used posterboard because it's lighter than cardboard and figured it wouldn't weigh the dress down too much.  (I don't have a photo of this step because I really didn't know what I was doing, until I was actually doing it!) Then, I happened to have a piece of foam sheet in the perfect blue.  I covered the mess with it.  To make it look finished I purchased wide, wired ribbon, created curled pieces to finish off the tail. With bobby pins, I hung it on the back of her dress. The bobby pins are thin enough to slip in between the foam and posterboard so you don't see them.  Voila!

 Then with some thinner ribbon I had also purchased, and leftover feathers, I made a choker.  She was really happy with it, and so was I! It just might motivate me to make more costumes in the future!

What are your kids dressing up as for Halloween?!