Broke & Bougie Halloween Costumes

It's Halloween! The most wonderful time of year for those of us who are extremely Type A and DIY-centric! Every year I resolve to DIY the shit out of Halloween, and every year on the night before Halloween as I rush to freaking Arlington to the closest arts & crafts store (really, DC? no Michael's? No Hobby Lobby? NOTHING?), I swear I will never ever do a DIY Halloween again. Old dreams die hard though.

These are my all time favorite group costumes- who doesn't love group costumes? A time to get creative, show off that you have friends, and boss everyone around (I SAID WEAR THE HAT TO LEFT SIDE. LEFT. SIDE.). Check out my DIY instructions as well as where to order the costumes (time to order now!) if you have learned your lesson about DIY Halloweens.

Note: None of these are my pictures, but they are all costumes I have done at some point in time. Man wasn't college great?
 

1. Tetris Pieces: This is an easy DIY, but not so easy to wear to the bar. You can either tape boxes together and cut out room down the center for your body and a hole for your face, or do what I did in college. We cut out cardboard squares, painted them, duct taped them together to make the shapes we wanted, and then taped those to our clothes. This method was much more mobile, and you can make your tetris pieces any size you want.
2. Legends of the Hidden Temple Teams: Who doesn't love this show? My brother and I used to save the 30 minutes of precious TV time we were allowed just to cheer on our beloved Blue Barracudas. This website is devoted completely to Legends of the Hidden Temple gear, and nothing is more than $20. 
3. M&Ms: This is a SUPER easy DIY. Envision a sandwich sign. We bought a few yards of green, red, yellow, orange and white felt and cut them into large circles (about 2-3 feet in diamter). We cut "m"s out of the white felt and hot glued them onto the circles. Then using the leftover fabric scrap, we cut strips (about 10" by 3"), hot glued one end of the "strap" to the top of one circle, and the other end onto the corresponding circle to serve as "straps" and hung them over our shoulders like sandwich sign M&Ms. If you don't have time to make them (slash venture all the way to Arlington for fabric), Amazon has $5-$20 options .
4. Power Rangers: Great group costume, not as easy to DIY.Amazon has $25-$50 options. While that seems like a lot of money, it's a REAL badass costume, and let's be real- there will be plenty of opportunities over this lifetime to wear this costume.
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: My old go-to! It's so easy. Supplies needed: 1 yard of yellow felt, 4 yards brown felt, green tshirts, string, newspaper. We got green t-shirts and hot glued yellow felt squares (i.e. the abs) onto the front of the shirts. For the shells: cut 2 large circles out of the brown felt (the size of a backpack- about 2' by 2'). Stack the two circles on top of each other and hotglue them together around the edges, leaving the top open. Once the glue is dry, stuff the "shells" with wadded up newspaper, then close off the top with hot glue. Glue the strings onto the shells as "straps"- just like backpack straps- that you can slip your arms through. We just cut up old sheets to be our face masks. If you need to,Amazon has options for real turtle costumes.
6. Crayons: This doesn't have to be "sexy". One year we kept it simple and each chose a color, wore that color on top and bottom (i.e. blue tshirt, blue shorts), and painted pointy party hats (you can find these at Target) our color to be the tip of the crayon. If you want to be elaborate or "cute" you can make tube dresses out of fabric from Michael's, but that's a lot of work. This website has $10 Crayon Costumes too.