Harold and the Purple Crayon Costumes: The Pages

 Patrick hasn't wanted to dress up for Halloween for the last 3 years, which has left us without costumes for our entire marriage. David was Frankenstein's monster last Halloween as he had just learned to walk and tended to do so with his arms up in the air for perceived balance, but the costume involved painting his face slightly and putting him in a turtle-neck with aluminum foil bolts attached to the neck.

This year I was determined we would dress up, but I needed to do something that was generally understated for Patrick so that it wouldn't be pushing his comfort level too much. These requirements were one of the things that drew me to  the plan we came up with.

We are being Harold and the Purple Crayon this year. More specifically, David will be Harold, Peter will be the Purple Crayon, and Patrick and I are being the pages. We got the idea from this site, which gives instructions on how to make pages shirts her way, but I found the idea of sewing strips of purple fabric all over a shirt a bit unnecessarily tedious. Thus, I did it my own way: with puff fabric paint.

To make a shirt like I did you need the following:

T-shirt (I got mine at the Dollar Store)
Purple Puff Paint
Drawing Pencil or Disappearing Ink Fabric Marker
A Harold and the Purple Crayon image of your choice


I didn't happen to have a disappearing ink fabric marker, so I ended up just using a drawing pencil. It made very faint lines and my mess-ups have faded away despite my not having washed them since applying the paint.

I deleted Harold from the images (as did the original post). This wasn't terribly difficult for the moose as Harold was off to the side, but was a tiny bit more complicated for the bed. I drew lines with my pencil until it looked like a plausible completion of the pillow and went with it.

I would recommend having a scrap piece of something to start squeezing the paint out onto in the beginning so as to avoid getting an air bubble at the start that bursts paint all over the shirt. The biggest drawback to the paint method over the sewing on fabric is that you can't mess up. If you mess up with the fabric, you just unpick that part and try again, but the paint is a little harder to get off.

You may also wish to put something between the layers of the shirt too ensure the paint doesn't bleed to the other side as I did. Mine didn't seep through the shirt at all, however, so you might not need it.

The lines are not perfect (notably on the window), but as Patrick pointed out, this is a book about a little kid drawing; it is okay if it is not perfect. All in all, I think the puff paint was a success and I am happy with the costume.

This costume was a success on another level as well: Patrick actually wore it to school today.

See the other Harold and the Purple Crayon costumes:

Harold

Purple Crayon