Cute and Easy to Do Costumes for the Kids!

Here's a cute and fun idea for kids costumes. I recently was involved with homecoming for my university, and we needed a few quick and easy animal costumes for our spirit skits. I got a few headbands from the craft store and a few sheets of felt and let the magic unfold.

The trick to animal ears is to keep it simple. For most felines, small pointed ears will be just fine. You can usually find felt for this in many different colors.
For tigers and cheetahs, orange felt and a bit of black paint will render either the tiger stripes or cheetah spots desired.

• What I do is I lay the felt out on a table or flat surface where I'll be working. I get a pencil and mark out where and how big I want the ears to be. I'll usually make the ears about two or three layers thick depending on the thickness of the felt. I usually sew these layers together on my machine, but if you don't have a machine available tacky glue works just fine (I recommend Aleene's Original Tacky Glue... it comes in a bronze bottle).
• Let the glue dry and then position them on the headband. I'll usually put the headband on and mark where I want the ears to be. To get the ears to stay on, once you put the glue on the base, I recommend tacking the ears down with a bit of thread and a needle. If you don't have these, then hold them in place till the glue dries. Make sure the headband is shaped as if it's on the head. Otherwise, the ears will scrunch weird when you put it on. Roll a big towel or use a pillow to keep it open.

For lions and panthers, rounded ears are better. Yellow or black felt, cut into half circles will usually do the trick.

• To add a mane on the lion ears, there are two ways. The simple way is to buy a small amount of fur fabric from the craft store. They usually have some kind of taupe or brown colored fur that will be perfect for a lion mane. For a small child's headband, you will probably only need about 1/6-1/3 of a yard depending on how much room for error you want. to attach the fur, I use needle and thread and tack it on. I'll usually use a craft glue along with the thread just to make sure the fur and ears stay in place.

Monkey ears are similar to lion ears, with the exception that they are slightly larger and placed on the sides of the headband rather than closer to the top.

Bunny ears are more of an oval shape, with a point at the top. I'll usually reinforce these with an extra layer of pink for the center. I also will curl the edges together when I glue them to the headband so they have a bit of a curve. What I mean by that is I glue the ends of the bottom of the ears close the the front edge of the head band and pull the center towards the back edge, making a curve out of the bottom of the ear.

- Miss Ashley