DIY “Bun in the Oven” & Chef Costumes

I know that Halloween is long gone by now, but I always like to share DIY costume tutorials and can never seem to get my act together to post them BEFORE Halloween. I do enjoy looking back on them though, and in any case, the tutorials may come in handy for others before Halloweens to come, so I post them for that purpose.

This year, Jamie was a chef, and our baby boy and I were a bun in the oven! I wanted to do a fun pregnancy costume, and this one was easy to put together. You guys should know – I wouldn’t really call myself a crafty person. I can be creative at times, and in social settings, I enjoy doing crafts for fun, but it’s honestly not my favorite thing to do on my own. It’s just not generally how I prefer to spend my time, although the end results, if I love what I’m making, can certainly make it worthwhile to do every so often. And for some reason, I always love planning out a fun DIY Halloween costume, but I admittedly end up procrastinating on it every year until the last second. If you decide to make this costume, I would recommend starting it several days in advance, as the spray paint of the oven and the paint and glue on the shirt need time to dry. However, this ended up being one of my favorite costumes to make, because it didn’t feel too tedious, we didn’t spend too much time on it (despite the number of steps below – it’s pretty easy), and I think it really turned out well.

There are 3 components to this costume – the chef outfit, which was not homemade because I already owned most of the components, having graduated from culinary school (but as most people may not have the items, I will discuss where to find them later on in the post); the oven, which Jamie helped me with (especially important to have someone to help with this when you’re pregnant – more on this later); and the shirt with the cinnamon bun, which I made. Here are my step-by-step instructions if you’re interested in making this costume:

To make the oven, you’ll need:

A large cardboard box that you (or whoever is wearing the oven) can fit into. We had a large square one, and it ended up being shorter on my torso once I cut out the head hole than I would have guessed by looking at it, but we ended up taping the flaps down and painting over the tape so it was taller. You can also get a taller box to start, and then if you’d like to cut off the flaps instead of taping them down, it might be easier/sturdier.
Packing tape
Pencil
Ruler
Box cutter
Silver spray paint
Plastic condiment/portion cups (like these)
Wax paper
Scissors
Elmer’s glue
Aluminum foil
Black chunky knit velvet yarn (like this one)
Hot glue
Black sharpie (with a medium to finer point)
Black construction paper
Corner rounder (optional)
Silver sharpie, marker, or paint pen
Neon yellow or green chalk pen or paint pen

Directions:

First, ensure box is taped up on the sides and bottom to be sturdy enough to stay in place (no need to go overboard – just add tape if there are any corners where the box has torn, etc.).
Cut a round hole that your head will fit into in the center of the bottom panel of the box with a box cutter. I used a sharpie to draw a circle first (I did it freehand, as it doesn’t have to be perfect, but you can also use a round object as a stencil if you’d prefer). We started slightly too small, then ended up having to go a little larger so my head would fit through.
Put the box over your head with your head through the cut-out circle to ensure that it fits comfortably and to determine if you’d like to leave the flaps on the top of the box (now the bottom of the oven) on or off. As mentioned above, our box was a little short in the torso, so we opted to leave them on and tape the corners to make a longer box, but if your box completely covers your torso without the flaps, you can cut them off.
Draw and cut out circular arm holes in the sides of the box – where you cut them is going to depend on your body and what’s comfortable, so the best thing to do is to try the box on and see where your shoulders and arms naturally fall. Jamie helped me with this, and we measured down from the top on each side to ensure that they were somewhat even. Try the box on again to make sure it fits!
Next, identify the part of your stomach that you would like to be showing when the oven door is open, and then try on the box in the front of the box where the oven door would be, draw a rectangle-shaped door with a pencil (or Sharpie – it will get painted over anyway) and ruler to make your oven door. Again, this is going to vary with everyone’s body size, but on our box, which was about 2 feet tall (inclusive of the flaps taped down to make it taller), our rectangular oven door was about 9 inches down from the top of the oven, 2.5 inches from each side, and 5 inches from the bottom of the oven. I made the bottom side of the door a dotted line, which represents where it would fold, and the rest of the lines were solid, indicating where Jamie would cut. Cut out the top and sides of the oven door, then fold down.
Draw and cut out a smaller rectangle to make a window within the oven door – we made ours an even 2 inches smaller than the oven door itself. Since the oven door will stay open, if your cardboard door seems flimsy after you cut out the window, you can reinforce it with tape on the outside of the door where it won’t be seen when it’s open.
Spray paint the oven with silver spray paint. If you are pregnant, have someone else do this for you just to ensure that you avoid the paint fumes and keep your little growing baby safe! You don’t really have to spray paint the inside, but ensure that you paint the inside of the oven door thoroughly. Let dry for a day or two.
While you are spray painting, go ahead and paint the outside of 4 condiment/portion cups silver too – these will be dials for the stove burners. Let dry for a day or two.
Take 4 large squares of foil, and for each square, fold in corners to the center, then fold edges around inside to make a circle shape. If you turn over so the pieces are on the bottom, these will be the start of your stove burners. Hot glue them onto the top of the oven around the head hole.
Cut a nice long piece of the chunky knit velvet yarn and, starting in the center of each foil burner, begin hot gluing the yarn in a spiral shape on top of the foil. It’s best to glue small sections at a time, adding the glue directly to the foil and then pressing the yarn onto the glue, and then repeating until you’ve reached the edge of the foil. This helps you avoid having the glue dry before you have a chance to press the yarn onto the glue.
Cut out a rectangle of wax paper just a little larger than the oven window and use Elmer’s glue to glue to the outside of the oven door, so that when the oven door is down, the glued edges are not seen.
Hot glue the condiment/portion cups onto the oven in a row – we added them to the very top of the side with the oven door.
For the panel with the buttons – this is probably the part that seems the most daunting but it’s really not so bad – use a ruler to cut out a rectangle out of black construction paper, and then use a pencil (and ruler, if desired) to draw out buttons and the digital clock/temperature panel. You can model your panel after mine, or you can use your own oven’s panel as a model if it’s easier. If you desire, you can round the corners of the panel with a corner rounder.
For the digital clock panel, I colored in a rectangle with black sharpie (it barely showed up on the black construction paper but that was the look I was going for), and then I used neon yellow and green chalk markers to draw digital numbers – 375 for the degrees, and 1:23 pm for the time (1/23 is our baby boy’s due date, so that was just a fun little detail).
For the buttons, I used a silver paint pen to color them in, then used a finer point sharpie to label the buttons. I modeled mine after my oven. When you look close, you can see that my buttons are NOT perfect, but I promise – you can’t tell from far away.
Using the black sharpie, make a notch on the top of the condiment/portion cup dials to indicate what temperature the dial is on, then draw the temperature settings around the dials. I put “OFF” in a box on the top, then “LO” and “HI” on either side of it. I put number “5” on the bottom, and then filled in “1-4” and “6-9” around each dial. With that, you’re all done with the oven!

To make the cinnamon bun shirt, you’ll need:

A black t-shirt
Chalk
Ruler
Silver “puff” fabric paint
Beige or tan felt (I used some that I had leftover from last year’s Halloween costume) – you really only need one small sheet
Brown felt (I used some that I had leftover from a Halloween costume in years past) – all you need is scraps or one small sheet at most
Fabric scissors
Pencil
Fabric glue
White “puff” fabric paint (optional)

Directions:

First, you’ll want to put on the black t-shirt and determine how big the inside of your oven needs to be. The easiest way to do this is to put on the cardboard box oven and use chalk to draw marks on the shirt around the edges of the oven door.
Using the chalk and the marks as a guide, draw a trapezoid to give the inside of the oven some “depth of field.” Then draw a rack with a grid pattern with the chalk, using a ruler if needed. I actually took a photo of the inside of my oven and used this for reference when I was drawing.
Outline the inside of the oven and the grid with the silver puff paint. Let dry fully, and once it’s dry, you can use a wet washcloth to carefully wipe off the remaining chalk marks.
Using a pencil, draw a cinnamon roll shape on the beige/tan felt. I tried to create mine from a partial side-top view like you’d see it in an oven, but if it’s easier to make one from a top view, that will work too – the important thing is just for it to be recognizable. The best way to describe how I drew mine was that I drew a flattened circle/oval shape, and then made a rough/imperfect spiral that started wide at the bottom of the oval and got tighter/more flat as it got to the top, and ended about 3/4 of the way from the top of the oval.
I used the fabric scissors to cut out the oval, and then cut around the spiral that I had drew. One thing to note when I was cutting the spiral – I didn’t cut out any pieces at this point, but just cut the spiral and stopped to give it some “looseness.”
Then, using the beige/tan felt cinnamon roll as a guide, I cut very thin curved strips of the brown felt and pieced them together to fill in the gaps around the spiral. This is supposed to represent the cinnamon inside the roll.
Using the fabric glue, glue the beige/tan cinnamon roll onto the puff paint oven rack, and then glue the brown cinnamon strips on top.
Icing is typically added to cinnamon rolls AFTER they come out of the oven, but I opted to add the icing to my bun in the oven just for the cuteness factor. If you’d like to add icing, use the puff paint to draw icing on the top of the cinnamon and dripping down the sides. I googled “cinnamon roll” and used a photo as a guide, but I will say that it was more difficult than I thought to make the frosting look realistic. Again, it doesn’t have to be perfect – just so it’s recognizable. Let dry fully and you’re done with your cinnamon bun!

For the chef costume, you either need a chef coat (found at a costume store or a restaurant supply store – I already had one from culinary school that Jamie wore, as mentioned) OR you can use an apron of choice. My biggest chef coat was a little too tight for Jamie to button, so he left it open! I got a Jamie a chef’s hat and white bandana (you could also use a black one) from Hobby Lobby – here is a video on how to tie a cravat (neckerchief) if you’re interested. We always left the “tails” tucked out in culinary school, so that’s how Jamie’s looks in the photos, but other than that, we utilized the same method. I couldn’t find cheap chef pants for Jamie, so he just wore jeans. I just wore jeans with my oven costume as well, and it was nice to be comfy and no-fuss, especially while pregnant!