Halloween is right around the dark, scary corner. If you planned on dressing your adorable pooch up this year but haven’t gotten around to tracking down a costume yet, have no fear: Sidewalk Dog is here! We assembled a list of five DIY dog Halloween costumes that you can pull together in mere minutes. Halloween is saved!
1. Beanie Baby
Turn up the Spice Girls and Nirvana because we’ve got a ’90s throwback costume for you! Best news? You can make this one with stuff you’ve almost definitely got hanging around the house. Just head to your craft closet and grab some scissors, markers, poster board, a ribbon, and a hole punch.
- Cut a heart out of poster board.
- Color the heart like a Beanie Baby tag. Bonus points if you write one of those little Beanie Baby poems for the back of the tag.
- Punch a hole in the top left corner, thread ribbon through it, and loosely tie it to your dog’s collar.
2. Skeleton Dog
To transform your pup into a spooky skeleton, use non-toxic, water-based white face paint on your pup’s fur. (Obviously, this’ll work best on black dogs.) This sort of paint will keep your pooch safe even while he’s scary.
The one danger in this activity, though, is that it has to be done freehand. If you’re artistic enough, your pup will look like a scary skeleton. However, if you’re less artistically inclined, there’s a chance your pup’s coat could skew more zebra, which still counts as a costume. So paint away.
3. Dolled-Up Granny
Let your pooch rock the ridiculous in this granny-inspired swag. For this look, all you need are some hair rollers, a square scarf or bandana, bobby pins, and sunglasses (optional).
- Fold a scarf in half into a triangle.
- Tie the folded scarf loosely around your pooch’s head.
- Fit rollers under the scarf and bobby pin them into place.
- Tighten or loosen the scarf as needed.
- Add sunglasses.
4. Martini (AKA Bark-tini)
If your pup is sporting a cone during Halloween season (or has one hidden in a closet from a past surgery or injury), might we suggest a bark-tini? All you’ll need are three styrofoam balls, green spray paint, three red felt circles, and a stick (optional).
- Spray paint the styrofoam balls green.
- Glue one red felt circle to each green ball to create green olives.
- Put olives in cone. You can either let them roll around the bottom of the cone or, if your pup is relatively chill, you can thread the olives onto a stick and place into the cone.
- Don’t let your dog eat the olives.
5. Football Player
Is your dog an athlete? Or maybe just thinks she is? Let your pup shine on Halloween in a football-inspired costume!
- Grab your favorite sports jersey out of the closet.
- Put said jersey on your pooch.
- Carefully apply black non-toxic facepaint or black powder eye shadow to the fur under your pup’s eyes as eye black. This is key, as it distinguishes your dog’s regular Sunday night football attire from her Halloween costume.