How to make your own Spiderman & Green Goblin Halloween Costumes:

There are certain memories you have from childhood that stick with you.  My mom always made our birthday cakes even though she could barely make mac & cheese from a box.  She also made the majority of our Halloween costumes – including a very unfortunate Troll Costume that I’d rather not remember.

So, as a mom, I try my best to do these same things for my kids.  I’m not sure why it’s important to me, but somewhere deep down I feel this need to do it.  Besides, I also love a good arts and crafts project.

This year with a newborn, toddler and preschooler I am opting out and going for classic store bought costumes to be revealed next week.  Instead of making anything this year, I’m going to share the last two years of costumes on the blog, starting with last year.  The boys went as the Green Goblin and Spiderman.

GREEN GOBLIN:

The Green Goblin was BEYOND easy and not really D.I.Y. except that I didn’t buy an actual ‘costume’ per se.  I found this amazeballs green knit hat on Etsy from Crochet By Carla.  Sadly it is no longer listed in her shop, but there are several other shops that offer a similar hat.  Then I ordered a green zip romper and purple bodysuit from Primary.com and voila – costume complete.

SPIDERMAN:

Spiderman required a little more work and channeling memories of my high school days.  I was a cheerleader and we were each assigned a football/basketball player depending on the season who we would decorate lucky pillows for with puffy paint.  In hindsight it was a kinda super creepy tradition and I seriously wonder what the boys did with those pillows and where they are today…but I digress.

Here is how I made my son’s awesome glow-in-the-dark Spiderman Costume.

Items Needed:

• Red slim fitting long sleeve cotton shirt
• Blue fitted pants/leggings
• Red baseball socks
• Scissors
• Card stock paper for stencil
• blue fabric paint
• black puffy paint
• black fabric marker
• glow-in-the-dark puffy paint

I borrowed my son’s beloved Spiderman action figure and set is beside me as a guide for making the costume.  For the base of the costume I used a long-sleeved pajama shirt in Red from Primary.com, pajama pants in blue from Primary.com and red baseball socks.

Step 1: Make a Stencil

I used card stock paper to freehand draw a Spiderman symbol for the chest of the costume.  I drew it in pencil, then cut out the card stock to use as a stencil on the actual costume. 

Step 2: Draw Spider onto Shirt

I placed the stencil in the center of the shirt and placed an old Real Simple Magazine inside the shirt to give a nice firm surface to draw on.  Then I used a black fine pointed fabric marker to trace the stencil onto the shirt.

Once the spider was stenciled on, I filled in the entire spider in black with the fabric marker and cleaned up the edges of the spider legs where the stencil lines weren’t great.

Step 3: Paint blue stripes on sides

I used blue fabric paint with a paint brush to paint the blue strips on the sides of his costume. Again, I mirrored this after the Spiderman action figure.

Step 4: Add Webbing

This is the most time-consuming process and will take a couple of nights because you need the paint to dry on the front before you can continue on the back.  Start with a line down the center of your spider.  From there draw vertical lines about 1/2 an inch apart from the center out to the arm.  Once all your vertical lines are drawn, then go back and do slightly curved horizontal lines from line to line across the shirt.  After you finish the front then do the same on the arms, back and each of the socks.

Step 5: Add Glow-in-the-dark

Use glow-in-the-dark puffy paint to outline the spider with a thick line of puffy paint.  It will make the spider ‘pop’ and look super cool when it gets dark and starts glowing.

Step 6: Add Accessories

We finished off the costume by ordering this great Spiderman Mask and matching gloves that make a ‘web-shooting’ sound.