5 Quick And Easy Last-Minute DIY Purim Costumes

by: Esther Pransky, Lubicom Marketing Staff

Was it the child that changed his mind at the last moment?

The online order that’s stuck in quarantine?

Or is it simply that life got in the way?

Whatever the reason, if you need some quick, easy costumes to save your Purim, keep on reading.

Here are five amazing DIY ideas with:

Easily available materials

Minimum time

Maximum cuteness

Anything Animal
Whether you want your baby to be a sweet little puppy or your grade-school son wants to be a fierce lion, it’s incredibly easy to make a simple animal costume.

Image by MakeIt-LoveIt.com

With a colored pullover hoodie, you can quickly turn yourself or your kids into ANY animal. Just add felt accents for the tummy, ears, and other features. Use yarn to add a tail.

For example, a lion would start with a brown hoodie. You could use orange felt for the mane and orange yarn for the tail. If you have matching pants, all the better!
Balloonatic
What could be simpler than balloons? You can have a costume ready in just minutes. And with their bright pops of color, balloon-based costumes give you maximum bang for your buck.
The only hard part about these costumes is blowing up all the balloons.

What can you do with balloons?

* A cluster of green or purple round balloons is a bunch of grapes.
* A red, yellow, and green balloon on the front of a black shirt is an instant traffic light.
* A clear trash bag with small, colorful balloons is a bag of jellybeans or bubble gum machine.
* White balloons and a rubber ducky make a bubble bath.

Use your imagination to come up with other ideas. And remember that balloons come in long, sausage shapes, too, to make a palm tree, an octopus, and lots more.
Box o’ Crayons
Here’s an idea for a coordinated family theme. It’ll look like you’ve been planning this for months instead of minutes.

Image by The House That Lars Built

Each child can be a color in a box of crayons.

Start with a pack of colorful, cone-shaped party hats. (You can also make your own.)

Once you have the hats, start raiding your closet to find clothes in matching colors. (If a t-shirt has writing on it, you may be able to get away with wearing it inside out.) If you have a bit more time, glue or pin on black felt accents to look like a crayon wrapper.

The best part is that you can effortlessly coordinate a colorful mishloach manot theme to go with this!
Umbrellas Galore!
Here’s a way to use those extra umbrellas that are taking up space in your house. Just kidding. We all know that umbrellas magically disappear with their first use.
That’s ok. With a quick trip to the store, you’ll have the base for all sorts of adorable, clever costumes. Match the color of the umbrella to your costume idea.

Image by Fun 365

Here are some possibilities:
* An umbrella decorated with pictures of cats and dogs becomes “raining cats and dogs.”
* An umbrella with big eyes and lots of streamers hanging down becomes a jellyfish.
* An umbrella covered in cotton balls with raindrops hanging down is a rain cloud.
Simply Stripes
Lots of cute costumes start with stripes. Think pirates, zebra, prisoners, Where’s Waldo, or a candy cane.

But where are you going to get the right striped clothes on such short notice? (Yes, it might even be too late for Amazon Prime to rescue you!)

With this simple hack, though, you can create stripes in less than an hour.

Here’s what you do:
* Start with any shirt and pants/skirt. White is the most versatile, but other colors can work too.
* Take wide painters’ tape and “mask” stripes onto the clothing.
* Then spray paint the clothing, preferable outdoors, but at least in a well-ventilated area. You may have to do one side, wait for it to dry, and then turn it over and do the other side.

For example, if you’re making a candy cane costume, mask stripes on a white shirt. Spray paint the shirt with red spray paint. Use a white base and black paint for a zebra or a red base with black paint for pirates.

When you pull off the tape, the parts underneath the tape will still be white. Instant stripes!