A few months ago, Elise requested to be “paint” for Halloween. This was her first ever Halloween costume request, so I wanted to honor it, but I made the subtle switch from “paint” to “painter.” She was more than agreeable.
But even though I had months advance warning, I didn’t start on the costume until two days ago. That’s OK, though; it was super quick and easy.
To make the smock, I started with a white button down dress shirt I didn’t need anymore and made a few alterations. I tucked the collar inside and sewed it down. Chopped off the sleeves and hemmed the raw edges. And I hemmed the shirt tail just to even it out a bit. (This was a women’s shirt, so it didn’t have much of a tail.) All the sewing took less than 30 minutes.
The smock was still pretty wide for a tiny girl, so I tied a length of white ribbon around her waist to give it some shape.
The beret came to us from a friend (thanks, Mary Sue!) and was originally off-white. After a mini-debacle trying to dye wool with watered-down acrylic paint (fyi: doesn’t work), I ended up spray painting it red with some paint I had on hand. It’s a bit sticky, so I wouldn’t recommend spray paint for fashion purposes, but good enough for a costume.
For the palette, I cut a scrap of foam core and mixed up a rainbow of acrylic paint. And the brush, well those are in abundance around here.
It’s funny to me because Elise has no idea what an artist or a painter costume should look like, but this seemed to satisfy her. And I’m really happy with the way it turned out, especially for such little effort on my part!
Great job! There were lots of compliments about it.
Of course there were! Ha! Thanks, bud.