The Fox and her Hound
Fall 2017 has been hectic - so much that I didn’t spend nearly as much time as usual on my costume. I don’t really know where the idea originated, but it occurred to me that having a foxhound as a prop was perfect, and I’d just be a fox!
Most of my costume is just normal clothing within a fox’s color scheme. I already had these reddish pants, black boots and a white tank top. I went to Target and found this orange plaid button up. It’s a size too big, but it’s what they had, and it’s super comfy.
Foxes, of course, have some very distinct features that humans don’t have, though, like pointy ears and a tail, so I got crafting. I googled around a bit on how to make these things, but then just kind of winged it.
I went to Joann’s and they didn’t have quite the shade of fur I was looking for, but because I didn’t have much time, this brown was going to be close enough, especially with all my other colors.
When I was googling around, I also saw the idea to make fur gloves. I splurged a tiny bit on softer dark, dark red fur. I only got like 8 inches, so it wasn’t much of a splurge, but per yard, this fabric was about 4 times as expensive as the brown and white I got.
Gloves:
- Make a cylinder big enough for your hand to fit in.
- Put your hand in and mark where you’d like to make seams to fit. You can mark with pins (be careful of your hand), tailor’s chalk, or just wing it. If you err on the side of too big, it’s easy to take in a little.
- Repeat step two for your entire hand. After you’re happy with the fit, trim the extra fabric off and trim the opening for your fingers so it’s not too long. I rounded mine a bit, too.
- Turn right-side-out and put them on!
Tail:
- Make the outline of your tail with the main fabric. Make triangles of white for the tip of your tail.
- Attach ribbon to main fabric on the side you’d like to be facing your butt.
- Attach the white triangles to the main fabric.
- Stitch around the edges, leaving just enough of an opening to turn the tail right-side-out and to be able to stuff it.
- Turn it right-side-out and stuff it.
- Close up the opening. You could probably make it look nicer if you hand stitch it, but I decided to use my sewing machine because it’s faster, and it was only a couple inches. I wasn’t going for perfection.
Ears:
- Cut pieces of white for the inside and brown/red for the outside. I also decided to use scraps from my gloves as a dark accent on the tips of the ears, like foxes seem to have naturally.
- Hot glue these pieces together.
- Hot glue them to a headband.
Note: They were a bit floppier than your average fox’s ears, especially after the first wear, so if I were to do these again, I might put a layer of cardstock or even cardboard between the layers, or use wire around the edges. They were still pretty cute floppy, just not as fox-like as they could be.
I also did my makeup, loosely based on this YouTube video. I used white and black face paint crayons from Joann's and liquid eyeliner, eyeshadow and bronzer I already had - luckily I have a few palettes of fun colors including reds, browns and oranges. In the video she is able to blend her white a bit after she applies it to her face, but I found with the face paint crayon you need to blend right away. Also, the black face paint I used on my top lip ended up rubbing off a little onto my bottom lip, but it wasn't terrible looking.
First makeup attempt
Second makeup attempt
And there you have it! A totally simple fox costume! And it becomes Disney-fied when I have my pooch with me 😉
Hubby got in on the action by dressing as as fox hunter - he found a super cheap red blazer at a thrift store and used clothes he had already. Turned out to be a super cute family costume!
Trying to get the hound to hunt the fox
The hound barely tolerating a family portrait
The hound not caring about the scared fox
Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!
