Homemade dinosaur costume

I asked my dinosaur-loving 5-year-old what she wanted to be for Halloween, and NOT-to-my-surprise, she answered “Deinonychus”.  No, she did not want to be a cute little Dinosaur Train dinosaur, she wanted to be a MEAN, SCARY looking dinosaur…This is my child that 
announced during her pre-k graduation that when she grows up she wants to be a PALEONTOLOGIST - stunning the teachers and parents.

My first thought was, “great…how the hell am I going to pull this one off!?”  I have a limited budget, and of course, want her to be happy with her costume.  The challenge was on.  I started with a Google search for dino costumes, only to find cute and cuddly toddler dinos - nothing over size 3t.  I also Googled “How to make a dinosaur costume” which gave me lot’s of helpful ideas, but the cost of gathering the materials to make some of the elaborate things could end up close to $100!!  No way!  I moved on to searching Craigslist.  A few hits - but those in my price range, and big enough were not scary enough for her liking.  Time began to run short with just over 2 weeks left to go so I needed to get cracking! 

My goal was to make a dino costume as cool as possible by spending as little as possible.  I had to start somewhere.  Some of the “How to make...” sites used foam to shape heads for costumes, so I figured this is where I should start.  I had some foam left over from an Alice in Wonderland themed Halloween 2 year ago, and our older daughter’s old bicycle helmet.  So with a few cuts and forming the foam to the old helmet with hot glue, an idea was born:

Once I had the first of the foam glued on, I kept my imagination going, forming the eye sockets and nostrils, and adding batting around the mouth to make fuller lips: 

Then I used an old stretchable Jersey sheet to glue over the foam and form the skin:

I deliberated for a couple of days on how I would manage to create a body so the costume wouldn’t just look like a kid wearing a dino head, and would not require a great amount of sewing, or purchasing more fabric.  After noting the shape of theropod (my 5-year old taught me the meaning of that word) dinos, I dug in the kids costume cabinet and came across some old spandex, took them in to fit her snugly, and cut and glued layers of foam over the thighs and calves to make them appear more like animal legs. I then deliberated again how to cover her body.  My best bet was to dig up some old clothes and take them in where needed.  I found an old t-shirt and pair of sweatpants and took them in to fit over the shapen legs:

It took a couple of fittings, and pin pricks suffered by poor munchkin, but I finally got it (nearly) right.

For paint, someone with time, patience, and a bigger budget may choose to use fabric paint.  Since I didn’t really expect the costume to get much use, and because you get more paint for the $, I decided to use spray paint for the costume.  It was quick, easy, and came in a larger variety of colors. 


The head was completed by gluing on and painting a Styrofoam egg cut in half for each eye.  I cut a jagged edge on 2 long strips of craft foam and glued them to the top and bottom of the mouth for teeth:

After the base color was applied, I finished off the costume using a polka-dot stencil I re-fabricated to achieve the scaly effect:

I completed the body of the costume by stitching up the excess sleeve and pant length to create “fingers” and “toes” stuffed with a bit of batting (one could use pieces of old paper instead), and wrapped black duct-tape into cones to serve as the claws, which I secured on with a bit of hot-glue.


And the finished product turned out better than I could have imagined!

I spent nearly nothing on materials, other than replacing a $2.99 bag of hot glue sticks.

Fabric: $0   (old bed sheet, t-shirt, and pants)

Foam: $0   (repurposed from previous halloween props)

Teeth: $0.25, (1/4 of a .99 cent sheet of craft foam)

Eyes: $0.50  (one styrafoam egg, out of a $3 package of 6)

Hot Glue: $2.99

Paint: $ 8.18,  (used 1 and 2 halves of 3 cans of spray paint –$12.27)

Claws: $0.10 worth of Hubby’s gorilla tape


She was thrilled with the costume, was in full character whenever she had it on, and won 2 costume contests :)