Unicorns

More adventures in papier mache! Allison had been reading the series The Unicorns of Balinor (actually, I'd been reading it to her), the star of which was a purple unicorn with a silver horn and mane, so of course that's what she had to be. And as always Karen had to follow suit and be a unicorn too. The papier mache heads were again a pain to make, but everything else was easy. The horns and ears are made of paper and attached to the heads, and everything was painted. I bought silver and gold fabric for the manes and Karen's tail, and cut it into ribbons. The tails were made with painted toilet paper rolls and yarn (in Allison's case) or strips of gold fabric (in Karen's case), and tied around the waist with yarn. It all came out very well, I thought!

Dinosaurs

This was the first year that we had a digital camera, so all earlier costumes will be unavailable unless I go and dig up the prints and scan them in. Other than a beautiful pair of fairy wings one year, I don't think there were any costumes from back then worth writing home about, so I probably won't bother.

Allison was really into dinosaurs when she was in Kindergarten, so I came up with this triceratops costume. Of course, Karen, wanting to be just like her big sister, also wanted to be a triceratops. I made the base of the headpieces out of papier mache. I thought this would be a fun project for the girls to help out with, but unfortunately they didn't want to get their hands messy (come to think of it, I remember hating papier mache when I was a kid, too), so I ended up doing it myself, using a balloon and cutting the headpiece after it was dry so that it would fit on her head. A paper plate attached to the back formed the crest, and the horns were paper cones. Allison wanted to paint her own head -- she insisted that since we don't actually know what color dinosaurs really were, she could use any colors/patterns she wanted. I painted Karen's head myself for the most part, so it's a little more uniform, and the eyes were glued on afterwards.
The girls are wearing oversized sweatsuits
(I had to purchase Allison's, but since both she and Karen have had much wear out of it in the years since then, I didn't mind. Karen wore one of Allison's sweatsuits) stuffed with something or other.
I glued painted pieces from egg cartons (later removable) down the back to form spines. I bought fabric with a scale pattern for the tails (the girls chose their own colors), and the batting to stuff them with, and used iron-on tape to avoid having to actually sew them together. They're safety-pinned to the back of the sweatshirts. I was very proud of how these costumes turned out! And with our home-decorated candy bags, we were set!