Gnome costume how to

I must admit, I really loved how Judah's costume turned out this year. I also loved how cheap it was. I think the total I spent on Judah's costume was around $6. Here's the breakdown:

For the hat, I measured around Judah's head and cut a fairly tall triangle out of an old Christmas tree skirt I had laying around with that measurement across the bottom. I then folded it in half right sides together, sewed up the side, and turned out. The eyebrows are just bushy white rectangles I sewed on the front. For the beard I just cut a pointy, bearded shape and sewed it to the sides of the hat. It took a few times trying it on him to get the length right.

So that it would look like he was wearing tall boots, I just created a tube out of black felt and cut it to the right length to come up to about his knees. He wore these on top of his pants and pulled down over his boots.

The beard kind of covered up the buttons, but I did love how they looked. I just hot glued two big black button onto his shirt (which was turned inside out to hide the graphic on the front). These I can remove now and then he can actually wear the shirt later. The best shot I got of them is the one where he was yanking off his hat.

If your kid is like mine, he or she won't tolerate the hat and beard unless the hands are occupied with something like a sucker, so expect the need for bribery to get a good photo.