By Rebecca Hughes


Fancy dress costumes are a lot of fun. Not just because you can be someone else for a night, but also because assembling them takes a lot of thinking and creativity, and it becomes a very enjoyable process, especially if you are planning it with some friends.

While you can buy numerous kinds of costumes from stores nowadays, but in this way you will not only be missing out on all the fun of putting together the stuff all by yourself but they will also cost you quite a bit of money. You can save your money, and have a lot of fun by making your own costume.

Let's say, you are going to a theme night as a witch. Well, you probably have all you need to be dressed up as a witch in your own house. To start with, you need to figure out the clothes first. For clothes, you need a long black cloak or a robe that is black in colour. If you have neither, you can take an old white sheet, dye it in black colour and simply use your thread and needle to make it look like a cloak.

For this, fold the sheet in half, and cut out a hole for your head to pass through. Once you have cut the head put it on, and ask a friend to put needles where you need to sew it to make the arm holes. Just sew a straight line from there till your waist. When you put it on, it will look slightly like a figure eight shape, but you have successfully made a cloak without spending money.

Next, you need a pointy hat. For this, take some black cardboard, and mould it into a top hat shape. Put staples in it to keep it in shape. You will also need black shoes, and a broom as your own personal conveyance.

The most important part of a witch's fancy dress is to make sure you get the makeup right. You have to look very scary and very ugly, as that is how witches look. So, just take your makeup and get creative. Don't forget to put on a wart and a very dark lipstick.

In just one day, and with almost no money, you can transform your house supplies into a fancy dress costume for a witch. It is not difficult and certainly not expensive to do all this, and you will actually end up having fun trying to figure out how to get everything right without making a large mess.

Theme nights can be a lot of fun with costumes where everyone tries to look more authentic than the other. It is great to have some sort of a prize at the end of the party for the best costume, especially if people have worked to make the costumes themselves and have not bought them. With just a little bit of creativity, you can make your costume the best of the night.

By Rebecca Hughes


Children's birthday parties are usually a much larger event than any adult's birthday party, and obviously this means that a lot more effort has to be put in to make it a perfect event. Girls specially love having a fantasy setting with lots of other things such as games, beautiful cake, fancy dresses and lot of decoration.

One of the most popular themes at children's birthday parties is fancy dress. Since all children like dressing up as their favourite superhero or fairy story character, a birthday allows them to dress up and really show off in front of their peers and enjoy a night as someone else.

A favourite costume for girls is dressing up as a princess. Princess themes are really popular not just because of the many cartoons that feature beautiful princesses, but also because this allows the little girls to get their wish of dressing up like their mothers and look grown up.

If your daughter wants a princess costume, don't worry. It isn't as complicated as it sounds. While you can definitely buy the entire costume at a children's store, you can also save some money and conjure one up by yourself with the things you have in your home.

To start with, you will need to figure out the main dress. For this, you should look for a fancy dress that your daughter already has. If you don't have a dress in the house that you could use, ask friends who have daughters that are older than yours and see if they have an old one lying around which they can give to you. It's a plus point If the dress is in pastel colours, or is white. If it's in some dark colour, then you can either consider bleaching and dying it (with the owner's permission of course), or ask your daughter if she is ok with the darker colour.

Now that the dress is here, you need to change it (again, with the owner's permission). Feel free to add as many ruffles, feathers, beads, or any other fancy embellishments onto it as you think your daughter will like. Make sure, you don't make it too heavy or awkward to wear, and that it doesn't end up looking funny.

Moving on, you will need to make a tiara and wand, and other accessories. You can get your little tot to help you with this. Give her some tin foil and ask her to bend it into bracelets, rings, or other jewellery she wants to wear. While she does this, you can take plastic tubing and cut-out a star shape from some cardboard. Join these two into a wand shape, and then put some pink (or any colour that looks good with the dress) ribbon all around it and glue it together. If you want, you can make a tiara or a pointy hat with some cardboard too. Just make sure that the tiara is silver in colour and fits your daughter's head comfortably.

That's it. That's all it takes to make a perfect fancy dress costume for a birthday party at almost no cost.