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Halloween Happenings And Our Homemade Medusa Costume

by on ‎10-29-2014 12:03 PM

My oldest daughter has always picked easy Halloween costumes. In the past, she has just pointed to a costume in a catalog and we are done. Princess Leia, princess witch, girly vampire, princess ninja... you get the idea. Princess with a twist. However, my five year-old  is never content with pre-made costumes. For the last two years, she has started planning her costume before Easter.


That may lead you to believe that we can get an early start on things. Not so. Unfortunately, she changes her mind about what she wants to be nearly every day. For a while, she said she wanted to be Frida Kahlo (she has loved my Kahlo coffee table books since she was about two, but that is another story). I was thinking "Great, give her a unibrow and we are done." Not so fast.. she is the type of kid that comes home from school with doodles of monsters, superheroes with "electrified hair"(her words), and aliens doing yoga. Being an artist was not going to be nearly scary enough.


Finally, she decided on Medusa for this year. You know, the mythological creature with living venomous snakes in her hair.. essentially, what every 5 year old girl wants to be for Halloween, haha!


With a week before her school Halloween parade, my husband and I had to put our heads together to create the perfect Medusa costume for her! Challenge accepted.


My husband started with the most important element of our soon to be Medusa miracle – the wig! After some research and time well spent in the arts and crafts store, he had all of the proper materials to get started.


 


He found green fabric tubes that were attached to a headband. I think the headband was part of a clown costume. He bought two of the headbands and cut off the green fabric. He then filled the tubes with batting and "snaked" a wire through each. This way he could bend and coil the snakes in all different directions once they were secured on the wig.



My husband really went the extra mile by adding individual tongues made out of red felt to each snake.



Once the tongues were added, it was only right to add a pair of googly eyes to really bring these snakes to life!




He then tied the hand-made snakes into a black wig. I was at Chaz Dean’s house getting my hair done when texted me a picture of his creation. I had to ask the hair guru what he thought. He suggested adding a some spray paint to the wig for extra dimension. By the time I arrived home to share Chaz’s suggestion with my husband, he had already added purple spray paint!! How funny! I guess great minds really do think alike!


Next, came my contribution to the Medusa creation – the make up! I used Tarte foundation primer and then a combination of Tarte and Mally eye shadow and eye liner. The face color is just Mally’s green eye shadow applied with a blush brush. I drew the snakeskin with eyeliner and colored it in with shadow using a liner brush! I found the dress at a Halloween store. It is from the Monster High collection, but it looked close enough to our vision of Medusa.




My daughter enjoyed showing off her costume during a parade with all of her classmates. Fortunately, no bystanders turned to stone.


    



So what do you think? Did we nail this year’s Medusa costume? I will share more trick-or-treating photos on Friday that you can see by liking my page on Facebook at Sandra Bennett QVC and by following me on twitter at SandraQVC. I would love to see your photos too! A couple of my Facebook friends have already shared some.  Just as a heads up – my daughter recently mentioned putting a twist on her Medusa costume for actual Halloween night… A Medusa Librarian??!?! I really don’t know where she comes up with these things!!