DIY Halloween Costumes

Unlike your more artistically-minded friends who've been working on their homemade, hand-stitched, conceptually-brilliant Halloween costumes since May, you need to put together a last-minute costume in a matter of hours. What can you possibly do if you're cheap, kind of lazy, and don't know how to sew to save your life?

Halloween is one of those things that always seems to sneak up on you before you're prepared, so if you don't have tons of free time to make your own kickass costume, you might have to throw together something a little more last minute.

If you need a Halloween costume posthaste, you really can't go wrong with a LEGO man costume. And one made from cardboard that is fully functional, well, you'll probably win the "Best Costume" contest hands down. Not only will this mecha-esque costume wow everyone you meet, but it eliminates the need to apply Halloween makeup, style your hair, and get your outfit just so. With a LEGO man costume, you're ready to roll.

Google Trends says that "unicorn" costumes are among the Top 5 searches for 2017, holding steady onto the no. 4 spot, trailing only Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, and clowns. Seeing as how this year, unicorns made the full leap back into our lives, its popularity when it comes to Halloween costumes is not surprising.

This Halloween, Belle costumes will be out in full force as devoted Beauty and the Beast fans represent the tale as old as time. Not only was the live-action version of the animated classic the top-grossing film of 2017 (so far), it's also likely to be a contender during awards season. If you're too swept up in all things Beauty, then a Belle costume may just be the look for you this Oct. 31.

Wonder Woman hasalwaysbeen a Halloween and cosplay staple. It's a costume that's both dependable and stylish — just like the Amazon who wears it. This year's reprise with Gal Gadot offers a fresh take on the old standby, with more muted colors, a tougher demeanor, and a decided lack of stars or stripes.

You can bet Thor costumes will be prominent among the superheroes seen this Oct. 31. Since the summer, there has been no shortage of coverage for Thor: Ragnarok, and the timing of its November release couldn't be better as a tie-in with the cosplaying holiday known as Halloween. This year, the success of pulling off the Thor costume will rely on how well your new Thor helmet looks, which as it happens, you can DIY at home, using a few simple supplies and perhaps a trip or two to the craft and...

"I'm Rey." That's what a lot of people will be saying again this Halloween, as Rey costumes are sure to be another favorite of trick-or-treaters and cosplayers. Yes, on Oct. 31 we all have a chance to be the scavenger of Jakku who just so happens to be the "new hope" for a Jedi renaissance.

You know Moana's a rock-solid pick for Halloween this year. The question is, how far will you go to become Moana? Are you going to just slap on a cream skirt and a red bandeau? Or do you want to go all out and end up with the finished product like YouTuber Gladzy Kei did?

Since its debut, retro thriller Stranger Things and its characters have become ingrained in our popular culture — especially the telekinetic Eleven. For cosplayers, it didn't take long before they grabbed their boxes of frozen Eggo waffles, blonde wigs (or bald caps), and pink smocked dresses to transform into El herself.

The Mad Hatter from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland not only makes a great costume but a great project. The hour-glass shaped hat, the striped pants, the fingerless gloves, and the Hatter's signature scarf are the most important components in this costume. If you're fairly skilled with costuming already, this shouldn't take more than four or so hours.

No one ever said you had to be a culturally-relevant pun for Halloween, you know—or a scantily-dressed version of the inmates from Orange is the New Black.

Whether or not The Purge franchise will be as successful as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, or even the Saw movies remains to be seen, but it's definitely winning in the Halloween costumes department.

If you haven't come up with a funny, innovative costume yet for Halloween, you're running out of time. While all your friends are busy perfecting their month-long DIY costume project, you're still being lazy about it and have just now started to search online for ideas.

Voodoo you want the best costume this year? You're probably laughing so hard right now that you need to hold yourself together with pins and needles, right?

Some women see Halloween as a once-a-year opportunity to dress in something skimpy without dealing with as much scrutiny as usual. That can be fun, but not everyone is comfortable enough wearing so little, and the costumes are so boring and repetitive. Some of us just don't feel like freezing.

If you're a fan of the Metal Gear video game series, an obvious Halloween costume choice would be Solid Snake, the protagonist of nearly all of the games. However, an even better option would be Big Boss, aka John, Ishmael, Vic Boss, The Man Who Sold the World, and Naked Snake, among many other aliases. He's was once a good man, but better known as the nemesis to Solid Snake.

Every year, some overly ambitious neighbor down the street amazes the crowds with his DIY illusion costume. While these costumes certainly require more work than pulling a mask over your head, they do have that wow factor that others lack.

With the explosive popularity of both Thor himself and The Avengers, Thor is an obvious good choice for a Halloween costume. But you don't have to opt for one of the pricey, pre-made costume choices found in every Halloween store in every city. Instead, craft your own in just a few steps, saving yourself money in the process.

Sadness won over the worried world with her downtrodden, mopey attitude in Inside Out, the widely popular animated film from Pixar and Disney. She's relatable, helping us to connect with all of our bouts of tears, sour attitudes, and blue feelings—and this Halloween, you can embody Sadness with this easy DIY makeup tutorial via Rotoscopers.

There's no doubt going to be a lot of Steves running around this Halloween, as Minecraft still has a huge community, but those posers are probably just buying their Minecraft costumes. Isn't the best part about Minecraft creating? So why let someone else create your costume?

Ant-Man isn't one of the most famous Marvel superheroes. In fact, with the news of his individual movie came great doubt that the comic book legends could succeed in telling the tiny story of an oddball hero on the big screen. Yet with its humor and unique story, Ant-Man has become a hit movie in its own right—and the hero will most certainly make a hit Halloween costume.

If you're a huge fan of Minecraft, then you probably know what a Creeper is and, therefore, want to be one for Halloween. After all, not everyone can be Steves and Snow Golems. This version uses printouts (templates below the video), and is very easy to make. Besides ink and paper, it pretty much only requires boxes (three different sized ones based on your size).

With only a day left until Halloween, a full and detailed costume is too much to throw together for most people. But you still have to dress up as something, right? No one will give you candy or let you into a Halloween party if you don't even put in some effort.

This year's biggest film certainly didn't come as a surprise: with another incredible comic book creation, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy wowed audiences more than any other movie. With its unique team of heroes, Guardians provided a set of ready-made Halloween costumes.

With only a few days left until Halloween, your options might be rather limited if you still don't have a costume. You may have laughed while some people spent the entire month of October painstakingly crafting their ridiculously detailed costumes, but now that the big day is so close, the joke's on you because you still have nothing to wear.

I'm one of those types of people who waits until the very last minute to find a Halloween costume, and thanks to last year's attempt at buying one at a local costume shop the day before Halloween, I will just settle for the things I have lying around in my house from now until eternity. It's like Black Friday chaos, only with more gropers.

You told yourself you wouldn't be one of those lame people who throws on a mask and shows up at costume parties, but here we are a day before Halloween and you still have nothing. Unless you want to endure endless ridicule, you can't skip dressing up altogether, but if you don't want to buy a pre-made costume your options are pretty limited.

If you love Minecraft, and you're trying to find out what to dress up as for Halloween, try building a Creeper head. If you wear a green shirt, you'll have the perfect Minecraft costume. You can even reuse the Creeper costume for cosplaying at your next convention.

To steal a quote from Mean Girls, Halloween is the one night when a girl can dress like a total slut and no one can say anything about it—but why do girls get to have all the fun?

When I was young, I wanted nothing more but to be able to freeze things just like one of my favorite X-Men characters, Iceman. Now, Disney's most successful animated film to date, Frozen, brought another icy childhood favorite to the scene—The Snow Queen. And with Halloween right around the corner, all of the princesses out there can get their chance at being ice royalty.

Selfies have been around for quite a while, but with the popularity of social media (in particular Instagram) they've become ubiquitous in our culture. There's even mobile apps dedicated solely to selfies. If that and your news feed isn't proof enough, just check with the Oxford Dictionary.

As if Captain America: The First Avenger wasn't awesome enough, Marvel hit us with Captain America: The Winter Soldier this year, and it was even more spectacular than its predecessor. Grossing nearly $260 million in domestic sales, it's safe to say America loves Captain America and we'll probably get a heavy dose of Captain costumes this year for Halloween.

With over 2 million uploaded videos and over 28 million people who had talked about it online by the end of August, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was the most viral social media event of 2014. Its popularity provided the ALS Association with $115 million in donations to date, with everyone from students to veterans to celebrities contributing.

Star-Lord may not have been a household name prior to the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, but you can sure count on a flood of kids and adults alike wanting to dress up as Chris Pratt's character this year for Halloween.

Thomas Ridgewell, more widely known as TomSka, is a popular Youtuber who creates over-the-top, ridiculous, and overall pretty funny videos—but sometimes they don't make sense.