Homemade Butterfly Halloween Costume

 My daughter has to dress up as an animal for her Noah's Ark party at school this Tuesday. After spending several weeks discussing which animal she wanted to be (it changed daily from alligator to lion to dog to cat to mouse), she settled on a butterfly. So I made a trip to Wal-Mart for some poster board, acrylic jewels, felt, glitter glue, and Velcro straps. The first step was to cut wings out of the poster board. I had her lay down on the poster board so I could draw the wings the right size for her body. If you have an older child who wants a butterfly costume I suggest using two pieces of poster board for the right and left side of the wings, or top and bottom. After I measured, I free-handed some wings onto the poster board and then cut them out. The wings were not perfectly symmetrical, but I think that just gives a more realistic impression of a butterfly in flight.

 The next step was to let my daughter paint the wings with several shades of pink, acrylic craft paint. (We used "cranberry", "fuchia", and "baby pink".) She had specifically asked to be a pink butterfly. She painted one side of the poster board and we let it dry. Then we painted the other side and let that dry. After the paint dried we used glitter glue to create designs on the wings and put some acrylic jewels on the wing to add extra sparkle. After drying, we did the same to the other side of the wings.

 I then cut a sheet of black felt into approx. 1/2 in. strips and hot glued the strips around the edges of the wings. I made sure that I could fold the felt over the edge and then hot glued the overlapping felt onto the other side of the wings.

The last step was to attach straps. Maddy picked pink straps. They are the loop and sew straps in the sewing aisle of the craft section of Wal-Mart. I hot glued the rough textured strap to the back of the wings and then measured the soft strap to size on the front and trimmed it to fit. I crisscrossed the straps across the body to hold the wings on more securely. I found a black and white polka dot headband at Wal-Mart as well and twisted black pipe cleaners around the top of the headband to create butterfly antenna. 

Now I have a little girl who is in love with her butterfly wings and can't wait until Tuesday to wear her costume to school. She will wear a black turtleneck, black pants, and black gloves to complete her costume.