Make it Monday - Dress ups

My children adore dressing up and being in character. They can spend hours pretending they're animals or circus performers or pirates. Happily, I love making costumes! This week I made some felt animal masks. I started with a rainbow parrot for Jemima's rainbow themed party coming up next month. Once they saw it completed the requests came in thick and fast.. koala, fox, pig, cat, lion!

The masks are really simple to make. I used an old paper mask we had as a basic template then added the various ears and noses for the different animals. They all have a piece of elastic attached at the back. I've made a template to print off if you'd like to try these yourself. It's available here: Felt mask template.

Now that we have a good supply of masks I'm looking forward to adding to our dress up box in the next few weeks. I saw these gorgeous DIY bridal veils from make and takes the other day and they're next on my list:

The tulle is gathered before being hot-glued to a white headband. The headband is then covered in white ribbon. Easy peasy!

I also love these Indian headbands with feathers from Dress ups Kids. I plan on making my own version using piece of ribbon or a white headband with some painted stripes and dots and some feathers.

These beautiful felt crowns are another one on the To Do list. There's something about working with felt that's so satisfying. I think perhaps it's no no-fray factor and the way it all holds together with some hand stitching.

Jessica Levitt of Juicy Bits has a great tutorial for felt birthday crowns including a pattern.

Back in January I made these costumes for Ben's preschool. Instructions on this superhero cape and the bird wings are available here.

From my little superheroes to yours, have a great week!