Tag: dog costume

DIY No-Sew Care Bear Dog Costume
It’s that time of year again! Time to make a cute costume for my dog that she will not enjoy wearing. I love Halloween and I love my dog, but as much as I try, my dog does NOT love Halloween. That being said, she is a really great sport about wearing costumes and gets lots of love from passersby as we walk around the neighborhood trick-or-treating with our kids. Read on for instructions on how to make this DIY No-Sew Care Bear Dog Costume.

This year, being a child born in the 80s, I decided to make a Care Bears costume! This costume is SUPER easy to make. The only real work is finding a stuffed animal similar in size to your dog and cutting with a scissors. As you can see below, the Care Bear I bought is a little small for my dog. It would have been better if I could have found one a few inches taller as my dog has long legs, but it still worked out ok. You could make your dog a teddy bear, tiger or any stuffed animal that is big enough.

DIY No-Sew Dog Costume Materials:

Make sure to pick a stuffed animal large enough to fit your dog! Some ideas are:

14″ Bear with Cap: https://amzn.to/3AWfTxU
20″ Sloth : https://amzn.to/2WqgMja
23″ Alligator: https://amzn.to/3a2ZdsN (You’d have to cut a circle around the eyes for your dogs face and leave a the mouth/snout area intact)

Dog Costume Instructions:

Step 1: Find a stuffed animal similar in height to your dog. Any stuffed animal that is standing (this is important, a stuffed animal in different positions will not have the legs in the correct place for your dogs legs) will work, I chose a the Care Bear above. Here is a link to the 14″ Care Bear I used – https://amzn.to/2Y3TEri

Step 2: You are going to cut out the face on the stuffed animal where your dogs face will fit through. Next, cut a slit up the back of the stuffed animal and holes on the bottom of the two lower legs/feet. See photos below. You may have to get creative and cut holes behind the bottom legs depending on how the stuffed animal is sewn.

Step 4: Remove stuffing inside costume. I left stuffing inside the upper arms. In addition, I left a separate section of stuffing in the belly because it was sewn to the rainbow and it looked cuter.

Step 3: Finally, fine tune the costume. To do this I cleaned up the hole around the face a little by cutting it more evenly along with the sides once I found the correct sizing. You can also hot-glue some ribbon to each side of the slit up the back. Then tie the ribbons together for added stability when your dog is walking.

Time to try your DIY No-Sew Care Bear Dog Costume on your dog:

Your dogs face goes through the face hole and their front legs through the bottom two legs of the stuffed animal. The top two legs/arms will stay stuffed, you will not cut any holes in them. As you can see in the picture above, I originally stopped cutting just below the back of the head. Because the hole was not large enough, I ended up cutting much further up the back. You will have to try it on your dog and see how much you will need to cut.

Look how happy she is. Is it the costume or the treats I was holding just off camera? Who knows? What I do know is that I took her to the bus stop with my kids in this costume and she was the talk of the bus that day. And there you have it, our DIY No-Sew Care Bear Dog Costume! Happy Halloween all you dog lovers!

Finished Product

Look at her doing her best Blue Steel modeling poses. 😂

More Costumes:
September 30, 2021
DIY Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dog Costume
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent collar is an instantly recognizable icon of women’s rights and the trailblazing woman who worked so hard to secure them. In honor of her legendary life, I wanted to create a DIY Dissent Collar for Halloween this year. Once the collar was crated I couldn’t resist fashioning a full costume for my sweet girl Wrigley. Read on below for my DIY Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dog Costume, no sewing involved!

Note: This tutorial will focus on the costume I made for my dog, but the collar turned out so nice my daughter wants to wear it! And you know what, it fits her too. If you want to dress up as the Notorious RBG this tutorial will also work for people.

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Craft Supplies

Michael’s:
– One 9 x 12 inch sheet of black felt for the collar
– One 12 x 18 inch sheet for the cape.
Amazon:
– Self-Adhesive Rhinestone Stickers
– Gold Cording
– Black Pipe Cleaners

RGB DIY Dissent Collar

I hand-drew a template on paper to trace for the main collar shape. It turned out so well that I created a graphic version of my template to share with you! See below. Save the image to your desktop and then print it for your own costume. You may need to resize before printing depending on the size of your dog!

Dissent Collar Template

Once I cut the collar shape out of felt, I added adhesive rhinestones to each of the vertical sections. The rhinestones I used are similar to these: Self-Adhesive Rhinestone Sticker

I started at the bottom by adding one rhinestone to the lowest sections (the ones that stick out a little lower than the others). I then went up from there adding more stones in a straight line up to the neckline. After that, I added a horizontal row along the neckline. Reference the photo below for rhinestone placement, you will see that some are larger than others.

After the rhinestones were completed, I cut out two strips of felt for the necktie. These you will need to size to your dog. Finally, I used hot glue to secure the strips to the top of the collar. You can add Velcro or a snap on the ends for a smoother look.

As you can see my dog looks utterly thrilled to be trying on her new RBG collar 😂. She looks adorable, but something was missing so I decided to add gold cording between the rows of rhinestones.

The cording I used was actually up-cycled from the handles of a gift bag. You can find similar cording here: Metallic Tinsel Cord Rope

I cut strips and hot glued them between the rows of rhinestones, around the edges and along the neckline. And voila, a totally beautiful collar worthy of an American icon. It’s a little fancy for a dog, but it can be used on humans too!

*Tip: If you have trouble with removing any hot glue from the black felt you can color it in with a black sharpie to make it less noticeable.
DIY Halloween Dog Glasses

For the glasses, I made a simple pair from pipe cleaners. My dog did NOT like them, but was such a good sport wearing them for the pictures. You can use any glasses without lenses you may have as well.

DIY Dog Robe

To make the robe I used the same technique as my Harry Potter Dog Costume Robe, just without the white shirt collar. See it here: DIY No-Sew Harry Potter Dog Costume! It is basically a rectangle of black felt wrapped around my dog and glued together at her chest area. This way it can just slip over her head and I don’t have to worry about it falling off and it doesn’t restrict her movement.

RBG Dog Costume

Here is the completed look – don’t you love that smile? Happy Halloween!

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October 15, 2020