I know it’s long past Halloween, but it’s a tradition for me to make my own Halloween costumes (always no-sew and fairly easy to put together) and then post a tutorial after the holiday has passed (check out this post for links to the previous costumes on my other blog). I want to continue this tradition on Thursday’s Child because it’s fun and festive, but also because it’s so nice to be able to reference the costume archives later on!
This year, Jamie was a pizza delivery guy, and I was a pizza. These were super simple to throw together. I had looked on Pinterest and kind of came up with my own version of a pizza costume, and I think it turned out pretty cute. The only downside is that it wasn’t as durable as some of my previous costumes, and over the course of the evening, gravity took its toll on the cheese! It was “dripping” off the costume a bit. But I know how to avoid it (more details on how in the tutorial below), and it was still fun to wear and very recognizable. Here’s how to put both of our costumes together:
For the Pizza Costume, you’ll need:
- Nude-colored dress (I ordered this chiffon A-Line version)
- About 1 square yard of beige, tan, or light brown felt
- Cardboard toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls (I used 3 TP rolls and 1 paper towel roll cut in half)
- About 1 square yard of reddish fabric (I used one that was orange-ish-reddish and had a pattern that made it look like it had a bit of texture – see photos below of “sauce”)
- 1/2 lb (or a little less) of light ivory crinkle-cut paper (I used this kind from Amazon)
- A tiny bit of yellow crinkle-cut paper, if desired (I used this, but would recommend a much smaller bag of it, since I hardly used any)
- 1 sheet of red foam
- 1 sheet of red paper (I used a shiny red paper that I got in the scrapbook section of Michael’s)
- 1 sheet beige, tan, or light brown foam
- Brown pipe cleaners (I only used 1)
- 1 roll of 3/4-inch satin green ribbon
- Black buttons (I got a bag of different sized ones)
- Hot glue gun (dual-temperature, as low temps are best on fabric and foam) and glue (this project requires a lot of gluing, so I would recommend a whole package of glue and a larger glue gun if possible to make it easier/faster)
- Safety pins (I pinned my pizza to my dress so I could use the dress for other projects later on, but you could also try hot-gluing the pizza to the dress)
- Nude hose, if desired
- Nude shoes
Directions:
- First, cut a triangle out of the beige, tan, or light brown felt to make the shape of a pizza. Because I wanted the crust on the bottom of my dress, I put the dress on, held the felt up to it, and marked how wide I wanted the crust to be. Then I added about 6 inches so that the crust would wrap around the toilet paper rolls. I decided how long I wanted the pizza to be (imagining the crust rolled up), and then I folded the corners of the wide end in to the middle to make the triangle even and then cut it out (I didn’t try too hard to make it perfect… food is imperfect!)
- Cut the reddish-colored fabric about the same size as the felt triangle (or slightly smaller) to make the sauce, and lay it on top.
- Line up the toilet paper rolls along the wide edge of the triangle, and roll the crust around them to decide where to trim the sauce. Cut it where you want it and hot-glue the sauce onto the felt triangle, and then roll the crust around the toilet paper rolls and glue in place. (Tuck the felt in under the toilet paper rolls.) Trim the felt on the ends if needed.
- To make pepperoni, cut circles out of red foam and shiny red paper. I used a glass to draw the circles, but you might consider using something to make larger circles, because I thought mine could have been a tad bigger. I tried not to make them too perfect so they looked more realistic. Glue the shiny red paper on the red foam with hot glue, and trim if needed so the foam doesn’t really show.
- For the mushrooms, cut imperfect mushroom shapes on the beige, tan, or light brown foam. Then cut tiny pieces of the brown pipe cleaner, curve them just a little (like little eyebrows), and glue onto the mushroom shapes to form the gills.
- Cut little imperfect squares of the green satin ribbon to make green pepper pieces, and then pick out some black buttons to use as black olives. Arrange ivory crinkle-cut paper on the pizza and add some yellow strands if desired to get the “cheese” looking the way you want it, and add toppings.
- Then start hot-gluing! I actually removed the toppings after I got an idea of how I wanted it to look and began with the cheese, starting with the end of the pizza and moving towards the crust. This takes a little time, and be extremely careful because it’s easy to burn yourself in this step as you press down the crinkle paper. You can use however much cheese you want, but I ended up adding much more than what’s show in the photo above to make it thick. Then glue the toppings on, covering some up with a little cheese and arranging some on top. TIP: You will have to hot-glue WAY more than you think you will, as when you start lifting the pizza, the cheese will move and you will have to glue more pieces in place. Be sure to test this to see what gravity moves when the pizza is hanging vertically, so that your costume doesn’t fall apart when you put it on. I would even recommend hanging it if possible for a couple hours to see what starts falling off, and then use your hot glue to clean it up and get things back where you want them.
(This photo above is grainy, but you can see how gravity brought the cheese down… this is why I would recommend hanging for a few hours and then fixing to ensure that it stays the way you want it.) - You can then either hot-glue or safety pin the pizza to your dress. I used 11 medium-sized safety pins to pin to the inside of my dress, since I wanted to have the option of using the dress again for other projects. I couldn’t feel the pins at all, but it can be tough to get the pizza pinned without the dress being gathered in a few spots. You can see in some of the pictures that it doesn’t look perfectly smooth. If I hadn’t been in a hurry, I may have been able to get it looking better, but I felt like it looked decent enough to wear! You will most likely have to try it on a couple times, then take it off and pin it, and then try it on again to get it right.
- Add nude-colored shoes and nude hose if desired, and you’re done!
For the Pizza Delivery Guy Costume, you need a red and white baseball tee like this one, a plain red baseball hat like this one, jeans, sneakers, and an old pizza box! You can order pizza boxes on Amazon, but we couldn’t find anyone selling them by the each, so we literally ate pizza the night before and used that. Easiest costume ever!
They turned out pretty fun! Can’t wait to see all of YOUR Pizza and Pizza Delivery Guy costumes in 2020!
P.S. Lots of other costume ideas, and cute outfits for the kiddos to celebrate Día de los Muertos.
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