It's Halloween season again, which means I am, again, trying to make costumes with a minimum of money and effort. Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I don't! Our girl wanted to be
Hank the Octopus Septopus for Halloween, and although I could have purchased a costume, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Grace and I had lots of chats about what to do, and we used our old
Socktopus costumes as a springboard.
This isn't really a tutorial. It doesn't have pictures of all the details. (And I am a mom, not a craft blogger!) It's more of a post that I hope will inspire someone to make their own version of Hank. Maybe that person is you!
To start with, here's how ours turned out:
She and I had lots of debate about whether Hank should be orange or red, what materials we should use, what his face should look like, etc. It was quite the process! You would probably come up with different ideas and have a great result. Here are the materials we used and that you might need:
Red/orange oversized shirt or sweatshirt
Red/orange pants or leggings
2 pairs red/orange socks, stuffed with plastic grocery bags
Felt for Hank's face
Felt or flannel for suction cups
Sewing scissors
Elmer's glue
We did lots of looking around for the red clothing and had a hard time finding them. There seem to be zero in-store clothing items for little or big girls in red right now. Adorable Essentials and Primary (online retailers) both had good options, but we ended up buying a Hanes men's sweatshirt from Target and using jeans that were handed down to us. The red socks were very hard to find, also, but we found them at Kohl's in the men's department. The bonus with all the clothing is that we can use it again after Halloween!
For the suction cups on Hank's tentacles, I hoped to find peach felt or fleece. Felt, since it doesn't unravel, is so great for projects like this! But, peach is an unpopular color these days, and I couldn't find it in felt or fleece. We had to settle for flannel.
We looked around the house for circles to trace to make his tentacles. Smaller circles would have looked better, but would have taken longer. She was happy with this size, so we went with it! Here is a sideways picture of what we used. This is where felt or fleece would have been easier to work with because it doesn't ravel. Since we were working with flannel, we glued it down right away.
I used Elmer's glue to glue down the circle suckers. Since flannel ravels, I put glue all the way around each edge to stop the raveling. I also made sure my drawing lines were on the underside because I didn't want them to show. If you are using stretchy things like socks or leggings, make sure that they are stuffed before you start gluing, since Elmer's glue is not flexible after it dries. On a real octopus, and on Hank the septopus, the suckers would be on the underside of the legs and not show very much. But, my girl wanted them to show, so they do. Here's what the legs made out of socks and jeans look like for us.
For Hank's face, I used felt squares that I had on hand. We googled images of Hank. If it had been me, I could have liked a face with his eyelids slightly lowered and more folds under his eyes. Grace wanted his eyes to be very wide open. So, I cut a layer of felt for each color of his eye and used Elmer's glue to stick them down. This is another one of those times when I let her choose since it was her costume, even though my preference was a bit different. I should warn you that sometimes Elmer's glue does not work very well on felt. It can take a lot of glue and not stick until it is extremely dry. Our white felt took a second application of Elmer's glue to work. Hot glue would have been fine except for the layer that is sticking to the sweatshirt, since we want this face to be on temporarily.
To attach Hank's sock-legs to his body, I used duct tape. It doesn't have to match. It just so happened that I only had red on hand! I used a piece of tape to seal the top of the sock. After that, I duct-taped the top of the sock to the inside of the sweatshirt. We decided on two legs on the front and one in the back.
Here's what Hank's body and three arm/legs look like.
And here's what she looks like inside her costume. She was thrilled! That made it all worth it for me.
After she tried it on, I realized that the sock legs drag on the floor, so I did raise them up a bit later so that they wouldn't get dirty on Halloween. Also, we borrowed a little Dory toy from a friend for her to carry on Halloween. I thought that the t
oy with Dory in the coffee carafe would have been a really fun accessory, but since the idea was not to spend much on the costume, I didn't spring for it. If you already have it, it's a bonus prop!
And here she is in her costume. With a little imagination, you can see her as Hank. And she has plenty of imagination to spare, so she's thrilled! I'm thankful this project is done.
Maybe after Halloween, I'll update the page to show that I was successful in getting the Elmer's glue wet and turning the clothing back into regular, non-Hank clothing afterwards!
