School costumes - best shortcuts, please!

[babybouncer]

DS's school seems to like inviting the children to wear costumes and there seems to be a lot of creative parents with time on their hands, so all the children dress up. I went all out for a world book day, only to have to do another two costumes within a month. I work full time and I need help!

DH was responsible for the latest - for Minibeast day he made a ladybird outfit using an old red T-shirt and spots made from gaffer tape with sports relief deely boppers.

What other easy costumes are there?

Get a lot of very cheap white shirts. Let your son draw his own "costume" with felt tips. Wear with jeans.

You could also get a pile of blank face masks from hobbycraft or similar and he can draw those too.

Then go and make loud remarks in the playground about how it's all about the child's learning experience. Start a trend

How old is DS?

Orange T-shirt, decorate with Camp Halfblood logo. Percy Jackson

All in black: Alex Rider escaping fom Point Blanc

Buy something on Ebay. Look after it & will have 2nd hand sale value, cheaper than I can make them for.

Make friends with mums in the year above and then borrow their child's - easy.

Stripey/ tshirt & hat - where's wally or french onion seller.

The easiest Costume I've done was 'Andy' from Toy Story for World Book Day.
We had everything here. Ds1 wore jeans, a green T Shirt which we wrote 'Andy' on, a cowboy hat and a red neckerchief. Then he carried his Woody Toy. Really simple!

We also did 'France' for World peace day. He wore black skinny jeans and converse, a black and white striped top and I found a womans beret in Tesco for £3. I bought a bag of whole garlic and threaded them on a string around his neck and drew a huge curly moustache on him in eyeliner. He looked amazing!

Working full time there is only one sensible option, buy the outfits. I have done the gulity staying up late making whatever outfit it was and too be frank it cost me more in materials than buying on line even brand new.
The last outfit was a tudor one it cost me £7.99 I couldn't have bought the materials and made the skirt, top, waistcoat, apron, and mop cap for that.
World book day I encourge DD to be a character that wears ordinary clothes. To be frank she doesn't remember from one year to another what she wore and how it compared to other peoples.

Just get a few generic costumes and recycle them. cow boy, skeleton and darth vadar cover most eventualities: book day, geography day, french day, history day, dress as a scientist day (skeleton costume creatively interpreted by DS2 as being a dead scientist).

I now keep the skeleton costume in the boot of the car at all times for DS2.
Fortunately for me, DS1 insists on dressing up as an 'English school boy', for everything.

Some great ideas here. I think a combination of buying (no idea where I'd even start with a Tudor costume, lonecat!) and having some of these ideas up my sleeves will see me through!

You can always dress him as a 'poor person' for any historical/geographical themed day: Un-ironed, too small clothes and shoes with no socks. A brownish set of clothes will pass for any historical period. And then you can recycle the costume as Charlie (as in chocolate factory) for book day as well. If you want extra authenticity, don't bother with face washing or hair brushing.

It helps if you have local friends with children in a different school to your DC (so that dress-up days don't clash) - I've often borrowed parts of outfits and shared ideas with friends.

I've also found that plain pillowcases are quite handy - you cut holes for the head and arms and then you can paint/draw on them, sew things on them etc