It’s our very irregular Wednesday series where we share simple tips to reduce your consumption and environmental impact. You can find our full WLW archive here.

Halloween’s just 5 days away! Don’t have a costume yet? We have a pretty simple suggestion that’s going to cost you less than $10, and you may not even have to leave your house to get it.

Make a Mask!

Make yourself an epic full-head mask and pair it with something from your closet! You’ll spend a few bucks on the mask pattern and supplies, but a lot less than if you purchased a full one-use costume.

Quick backstory: I really wanted to make a huge paper maché mask this season. Bread and Puppet huge. But as time was ticking down, I came to terms with not having enough time to make something that required many steps and drying time.

A late-night Google search last week revealed a plethora of awesome print-at-home mask patterns on Etsy. You print the mask, cut out the pieces, fold and glue them together. That’s it.

I paired the mask with clothes that I already had on hand. The whole process reminded me of one of my favorite silly card games, Snappy Dressers.

Materials

This is where you may or many not have to leave your house. If you’re the right sort of craft maven, you may have everything you already need.

• printer paper (possibly optional, more on this below)
• glue stick (possibly optional)
• heavy duty cardstock
• scissors
• clear-drying paper glue (I used this one)

Depending upon your mask and artistic preferences, you may need colored cardstock and/or paint.

Tips, Tricks, ETC.

This is the owl mask that I made. I thought that it was really high quality and will definitely order from that shop again. The instructions were clear and piecing it together wasn’t too complicated.

You can see that I did an all-white version instead of the white and brown. This is an area where you have full artistic freedom. Make your animal any color you want, it doesn’t have to be realistic. I did want a yellow beak, so I just used some yellow paint on that piece rather than finding yellow cardstock.

The one change I’ll make next time is to print the pattern directly on the cardstock. If you print on printer paper, you’ll have to use a glue stick to attach that paper to the cardstock. It’s an extra step and can be a hassle when folding and gluing the final pieces together, though, not a big enough hassle to stop the process. I have a printer that would allow me to feed the cardstock through the machine, this may not be an option if your printer doesn’t have a feed that keeps the paper flat.

Overall, I’m so happy with how well this costume turned out. And I’m not the only one, my kids loved it and want to be owls for Halloween next year! The good news is that I can reuse this pattern, the directions explain that you just have to scale it down before printing to make it kid-sized.

A whole family of fashionably dressed owls? I can hardly wait.