DIY Halloween Costumes | Monarch Caterpillar Costume

DIY Halloween Costumes | Monarch Caterpillar Costume

I’m a huge proponent of buying items off season when they are on clearance.  I usually do this with my kids clothing, including seasonal items like costumes.  In fact, I found this Monarch Butterfly Costume on clearance on Walmart.com sometime last winter for just $6!

I snagged it right away for this season’s Halloween & Harvest party events for my 6 year old daughter.

I also have a 2 year old daughter that I just thought would be super cute if I could make her the monarch caterpillar to go with the butterfly.

I looked around for a costume to purchase, and not only did I not find an inexpensive one, I didn’t find one at all!

So that’s when my crafty brain had to go to work and figure out an affordable way to make the monarch caterpillar costume myself for little one to wear.

FAIL #1

It took me a few tries to figure out how to make this costume pair happen.  I started with this idea – thinking maybe I could just get some yellow and white striped washi tape and tape that onto a black shirt and pants.  I ended up finding white and yellow electrical tape and snagged a black turtle neck.  But it didn’t work.

This one I think looked the most accurate to the monarch caterpillar, but the electrical tape stopped the shirt from being stretchy and there was no way I was getting this over my child’s head!  I scrapped it.

FAIL #2

Since the tape was stopping the material from being stretchy, I thought maybe I could just draw on the caterpillar stripes with some fabric markers.  I found out that it took forever and looked – well…eh….let’s just say not good!

So then I did some more browsing and found this black and white romper on Amazon.  It’s not an exact representation of the monarch stripe pattern, but I knew I could easily just use a yellow fabric marker and put some yellow stripes in it.  I also loved that there was a hood – so that it looked like a caterpillar head.

In order to complete the head, I made this easy antennae with a black headband from Walmart (for $3) and some black pipecleaners ($0.87 at Walmart). I grabbed a set of fabric markers too and used up all of the yellow!  I snipped 2 holes in the top of the romper hood and stuck the antennae through to complete the caterpillar look.  I also made sure she had on some black “gloves” that are really black socks, to camouflage her hands.

This picture shows the antennae a little bit better.

Total cost for both costumes was $25 – not bad for my cuties!

So there you have it – my butterfly and caterpillar duo for this year’s Halloween festivities!!  🙂