Dressing up doesn’t have to be expensive and it can be so much fun! Not only that but it can give new confidence – pretending to be someone or something else; develop creativity, imagination and thinking skills. Of course I am belatedly sharing with you my boys’ costumes from World Book Day – but they could equally be used for other occasions like festivals, other school dressing up days or just because!
Alice in Wonderland
We didn’t have a choice of book for World Book Day – the boys had to go as someone/thing from Alice in Wonderland. I would let to say how really easy this could be – as demonstrated by my friend Alice by simply putting on a blue dress! 
The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland
As confident as our son is with his beautiful blonde hair (despite lots of inappropriate comments by at least one adult who should know better!) he was not up for wearing a dress! He did not give me any indication as to what he would like to go as and so thinking back to our festival donkey costumes I decided to turn him into The White Rabbit. Note it was after I had made this costume that he piped up that he wanted to go as The Jabberwocky but I am mean and told him it was too late.
As I say I don’t like to spend much on dressing up and just adapt what we already have. I spent less than £2 each on my children – and for this outfit the spend was on a red dickie-bow (of which the young boys in my house thought was a hilarious name!). I did consider him wearing his brother’s karate trousers as white legs – but it just didn’t look right. If you do not have suitable clothing available you could always try a charity shop or ebay. Luckily he had a suit complete with waist coat. Ideally this would have been red – but I don’t think that matters when it is a bit of fun at school for one day. The first thing I made was the pocket watch. Really simply I googled an image and printed it out! Then I stuck it onto a piece of cardboard, cut that out and painted the back black. I threaded some string through and used a safety pin to attach it to his clothes. For the rabbit ears I used a cereal box to make a headband which I covered in cotton wool. I then cut out two ear shapes from another part of the cereal box and again glued cotton wool onto them. For the inner ear I used pink tissue paper, screwed into little balls and again glued on. I used a hot glue gun to attach them together but did end up resorting to sellotape the next morning. Maybe a paperclip to hold them in place may have been the answer. For the finishing touches I got out the face paints – which are always handy to have!
The Queen of Heart’s Playing Card
As soon as the World Book Day theme was announced our youngest was certain he wanted to go as a card (only I never knew that it was what was suggested to them and that most the kids were going as cards!). This was easy enough – especially as we had just bought his bicycle and so had a massive box. Although saying that it was really hard to cut. I therefore decided to make it a one-sided card – and I thought it would be easier for him to sit down in! It also took quite a few layers of white paint too. I then found a spade shape online and adapted it for my needs – I printed out three sizes – 2 large for the spear and an extra one for his head; 4 middle size for the card, and 4 little ones as my Cornwall cards had a small spade by each number (my teenager says that it is only on two of the normal cards!). I painted all the spades and the tube from inside of wrapping paper in black and waited for it all to dry. I again used a cereal box to make a headband to attach the head spade and painted it black also. I then used the hot glue gun to attach everything together. The spear needed more strengthening as it unfortunately snapped in the wind on the way to school. I would in future put newspaper and papier-mâché the two sides together and then paint it. Our son wore black long-sleeved t-shirt and black trousers (which is why I went with the spades rather than hearts/diamonds) and I ordered him a black ski/helmet hooded thing (again less than £2) to complete his look.
The boys both loved their outfits and I think they looked great if I do say so myself. Why not visit my Pinterest board for more kids dressing up ideas.