Do your kids LOVE Despicable Me? Zach & Lily are obsessed!
For Halloween Zach asked to be Gru from Despicable Me, which I thought was uber adorable, especially when I had the 'evil genius idea' to create a Lucy Wilde costume for Lovely Lily!
After I had a plan in place, as any normal warm blooded 4 year old would do, Zach changed his mind. Now he was bound and determined to be a Minion for Halloween...
After a quick re-planning of my initial plan; I re-assigned characters to the kids, incorporated Andy as Gru, the former villain turned good guy and myself as Lucy Wilde, the Anti Villain League Agent and Gru's Love Interest. I placed a call to a Dear Crafty Friend for a few D.I.Y Minion costumes, started sewing up a storm and supply shopping for a husband-size Gru! As a Side Note: Many, Many of the costumes we have created are also available in a DIY Kit in our online shop at www.lilyandfrog.com. Happy Halloween Shopping!
DIY instructions for the Ultimate Minion Costume...
This set DIY Instructions is courtesy of my Crafty Friend... The Halloween before she created a family of Minion costumes for her children and friend's children, creating an adorable Despicable Me Crew.
Materials:
- 1 or so sheets of Black and White Felt
- Overalls
- Yellow Winter Hat
- Black fabric headband
- Yellow Sweatshirt
- MANY Black Pipe Cleaners
- 1-2 Metal Spice Containers with a clear lid
- White Paper
- Black Markers
- Double-sided Tape
- Hot Glue and glue gun
Instructions:
1. Overalls: Working from an online image of the Gru Logo, create your own Gru Logo for the chest of the overalls using the black and white felt and hot glue. I created this one to be the size of the chest pocket. If you would like to use the overalls after Halloween, do NOT hot glue the Gru Logo onto the overalls, I used double sided tape (or a safety pin, but I'm a little uneasy about a safety pin because of kids wearing the overalls, you never know what they'll do).
2. Yellow Sweatshirt: Grab your sweatshirt and black felt. Notice the Minion's hands... They only have 3 fingers, from the felt cut out 2 hands with 3 fingers, hot gluing to the interior edge of the sleeve of the sweatshirt. If you would like to use the sweatshirt again, I would suggest using the double sided tape (or a safety pin, but I'm a little uneasy about a safety pin because of kids wearing the overalls, you never know what they'll do).
3. Yellow Winter Hat: Grab your supplies: Yellow winter hat, metal spice containers (1-2), white paper, black marker, black fabric headband, hot glue, and black pipe cleaners.
Minion's Hair: Starting with the pipe cleaners for hair; stick the pipe cleaner through the top of the hat, fold in half and stick the other end through, crinkle the pipe cleaners once they are through to get them to stick up.. Do this with about 4-5 pipe cleaners. For a Girl Minion, you can create pig tails, positioning the pipe cleaners on opposite sides of the hat and wrapping the pipe cleaners in a colorful bow. For a Boy Minion, center the pipe cleaners on the top of the hat,
Minion's eyes: Grab metal spice containers (1 or 2 depending on how many eyes your Minion has), white paper, black marker, black fabric headband and hot glue gun. Wrap the black fabric head band around the fold of the yellow winter hat, hot glue into place (or a safety pin if you would like to re-use the hat, but I'm a little uneasy about a safety pin because of kids wearing the hat, you never know what they'll do). Create the outline of the eye using the metal spice container as a stencil on white paper, and drawing a giant black dot in the center, cut it out. Place the paper eye into the lid of the metal spice container. Hot glue the base of the metal spice container to the black fabric head band and yellow hat.
To ensure the metal spice container will not sag or flip over, apply hot glue to the entire base of the container. You can also stick a piece of cardboard in the interior of the hat for a little stability, hot gluing it into place.
If you have a 2 eye Minion... Follow all the above steps, altering the positioning of the eyes on the black fabric headband. Also, you can either hot glue the metal spice containers side-by-side (I tried this one, but after a a few hours at a Halloween party the eyes popped apart and were 'google eyes') or tie the lids together before placed on the metal spice container base. This metal spice container had a few little holes on the sides of the lids, I fished yarn through the holes, pulling it super tight. They did not budge ALL night on Halloween - and it was a LONG night!
Dress your toddler in their sweatshirt, overalls, hat, and black shoes... For Lily, she wanted to be a 'Girly' Minion, I used the black tutu from her cat costume the year before.
I can't take any credit for this Minion costume - My Dear Crafty Friend saved me some serious time and money here. This is a super easy DIY costume, hopefully you have all the supplies already!
