Quick, Cheap & Easy DIY Olaf (from Frozen) Costume

Like almost every other girl in the world, my daughter wanted to be Elsa for Halloween.  Since it is so close to her birthday, I gave in and ordered her an Elsa dress off of Amazon.  But don’t tell her, it’s a surprise!  I thought it would be cute for my 1 1/2 year old to be Olaf, but couldn’t find the right size costume and couldn’t justify spending $30+ on something that he doesn’t really care about and will only wear for 1 or 2 days.  So I decided to make one.  I was super lucky to find the all white hoodie at a local thrift store for $2 and then with the other materials, I think I spent $6 or $7 total.  Plus it came together in about an hour.  Not too bad.

What You Need:

White Hoodie

1 piece Orange Material/Felt

1 piece Black Material/Felt

1 piece White Material/Felt

3 Brown Pipe Cleaners (or something similar)

Fabric Glue

Hot Glue Gun

Scissors

Tip: The Dollar Tree didn’t have felt, so I bought a black placemat and an orange feltish pumpkin decoration that I cut up.  For Olaf’s hair, I bought a plastic leafy vine and just used the brown paper covered wire from the vine decoration.

 

I did not measure anything so you don’t have to either.  Haha Just eyeball it and err on the side of making things larger.  You can always trim them down more if you need to.  So to start, cut large outer eye circles out of the black material/felt.  Then cut a slightly smaller inner eye circle out of the white felt.  Cut a small black pupil out of the black and then a tiny small speck of white.  Layer from biggest to smallest and use fabric glue to put together.  Cut 2 thin happy eyebrows out of the black and adhere above eyes.  Cut out a carrot nose.  Lay on sweatshirt hood until it is the right size and shape proportions.  Cut a wide white rectangle for the tooth, leaving some extra material for glue and adhere it to the underside of the front middle of the hood.  Cut 3 big black circles out for the buttons down the front and glue them on.   Now you’re almost done!

The hardest part was figuring out how to attach the hair and keep it sticking up without being to heavy and falling over, this is where the hot glue gun comes in.  Hot glue your 3 pieces of hair together (pipe cleaners or brown paper covered wire, like mine).  Glue them well so they hold the right shape.  Cut a square piece of white felt out and poke a small hole in the center so that you can barely push the hair into it (it should be pretty tight, keeping them snug and sticking up).  Hot glue all around bottom and top (let dry), then fabric glue it down to the top of the hoodie/head.  Make sure to let everything dry really well before trying it on.  Add extra glue as needed for everything to be securely placed.

Now is the fun part!  Once everything is good and dry, it’s time to try on!  Here is my son in his costume….it was a little hard getting him to hold still long enough for me to snap a decent photo, but he liked it and did a good job at keeping the hood up.  He loved looking at himself in the mirror.  Now if only I could get him to say, “Hi, I’m Olaf and I like warm hugs!”

What are your kids dressing up as this year?  Do you make or buy their costumes?