Kids Galaxy Costume for Halloween by Brenda Ponnay for Alphamom.com (make-up too!)

Holidays

Out of this World: DIY Galaxy Costume for Kids

When my daughter informed me that she wanted “to be a galaxy” for Halloween this year I didn’t even blink. Of course she does. Galaxy designs are found all over fashion pages and social media these days. From t-shirts to phone covers, nail polish to tennis shoes, not to mention the screen background for any number of electronics and now you can find it on cakes too! Galaxy designs are the latest trend according to my tween and I’m not surprised a bit.

Thankfully, capturing the Galaxy as a Halloween costume was super easy and didn’t require any space travel outside of a quick trip to the fabric store. If you’re hunting for a an easy space-related costume this might be just the one for you!

Supplies to make a Galaxy Costume

a dark blue or black leotard and leggings (we bought ours online here and here)
fabric paint in white, purple and blue (you could even add some glow-in-the-dark paint for extra nighttime effects)
fabric spray paint in pink, purple and blue (they usually come in a pack, we picked the neon ones)
two yards of dark see-through fabric like tulle or organza
a toothbrush
a sponge (we used a make-up sponge but a round sponge would have worked better)

Then we got to work!

How to Make a Galaxy Costume

First things first, you’ll want to wash your leotard and leggings. Sometimes the sizing can mess with fabric paint so it’s best to start with nice clean laundered outfit. Then we laid it out on a table that we covered with butcher paper to protect our table. Fabric paint can also be stubborn so you’ll want to make sure you protect anything it might land on that you don’t want it to stay there permanently.

Then we lightly smudged white paint diagonally across the leotard and a little on the sleeves. It looks a little messy and doesn’t make sense at first but don’t worry, the effect will look great by the time we are done with these steps. Next we smudged in some blue and purple along the sides of the white and a little on the sleeves here and there.

Then we sprayed on the neon paint pink, blue and purple but making sure not to overdo it. Galaxies have subtle color that comes and goes in wispy clouds so you don’t want to go crazy with the spray paint. (Spray paint outside. If that’s not possible, then in an extremely well-ventilated room and always follow the manufacturer’s instructions.) It’s best to lightly mist and not hold the little spray bottle too close. If you hold it too close you’ll create giant orbs of color which could look cool but probably for a different costume, like maybe an angry surface of Mars.

Then for the piece de resistance we loaded up our toothbrush with white paint (add water if it’s too thick) and splattered it onto the leotard and leggings. This created the bits of space dust that gave our galaxy the illusion of outer space. It’s a really cool trick and really fun but don’t get carried away. Just a little bit goes a long way!

Repeat theses steps for all sides of your costume and on the veil made of tulle (though it won’t show up as much on tulle like we used but it was still a really cool subtle effect). Let it dry overnight and you will have an out-of-this-world Halloween costume! Add a string of battery-operated lights, glow sticks and some fun make-up and you’ll blow everyone away.

To complete this look, we used face make-up. I smudged black and blue eye shadow on my daughter’s face and then watered down some white face paint and did the same splatter trick on her face to make stars, making sure she closed her eyes, of course. Then I hand-painted a little star under her eye with the same white face paint and a fine paint brush. We also added some cat-eye eyeliner too because she’s a tween and it’s fun and Halloween is really the only time she gets to wear make-up.