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Are you one of those crazy mom’s like me who loves for your child to wear a handmade costume, but in the middle of the process you ask yourself – why do I do this every year? That is me to a T. But the outcome is always so worth it. To see their sweet smile and the excited look on their face to wear it around and be that character? Priceless.. This year my son decided he wanted an evil purple minion costume for Halloween and I’m going to walk you through the steps to make your own, so you can enjoy the smiles and laugher of your little one being an evil purple minion can bring!
I’m excited to share with you a tutorial on how we made an evil purple minion costume for our 8 year old for his Halloween costume this year! This costume took me about 16+ hours to complete, BUT that’s because I did templates and trial runs before I made parts of the costume. This costume could be less involved or more involved depending on how many hours you want to dedicate to it. From the ideas I’ve gathered the average costume takes about a weekend or two of dedicating to it. I made this costume over the span of 2 months. Don’t freak out just yet – I didn’t work on the costume every weekend or every week even. I did lots of research and trial runs to make sure what I was using was how I wanted it to turn out. Hopefully, this tutorial will significantly shorten the time you have to dedicate to your child’s costume! 🙂
Back in July my little boy and I started having the discussion of what he wanted to be for Halloween. Usually he has some elaborate idea and mama tries not to disappoint – Lego Spiderman Costume, & Spinosaurus Costume. We looked on Pinterest together and started searching ideas until he came across a yellow minion costume and he said “Mama, that’s it. I wanna be an evil minion.”. I asked him if he wanted to be a regular yellow minion (we had just watched the new Despicable Me 3 movie in theaters). He said he’d already been a yellow minion and he wanted to be an evil purple minion this time. I said okay and started to plan away for an evil purple minion costume…
Planning
The planning phase took a lot of time for me to decide what to make the evil purple minion costume out of. I’m not even going to tell you the number of hours I spent on the internet searching and searching for ideas. I wrote a list of different costume designs and the pros and cons of it. It looked a little like this:
1) Use a Halloween witch cauldron and use a camping mat to form the body. Spray paint the body purple.
My Thoughts: Easiest, but not the best looking. No option for a fan to be mounted on the inside to keep cool… Visible seams.
2) Use fiberglass resin, concrete forms, and exercise ball to form the bottom layer.
My Thoughts: Definitely the hardest, but best looking costume I’ve researched. Most time consuming. Plenty of room for a mini fan for air. Never used resin before – exploring new waters???
3) Use a round trashcan or laundry basket for the form, covered in foam and felt.
My Thoughts: Heavier, but can use straps to offset the weight of the costume. Definitely can add a mini fan. Not mobile. Durable?
4) Use poly board for the body and paper mache for the head.
My Thoughts: Visible seams. Not the best looking. Room for a mini fan.
5) Make the entire body out of cardboard. Cover with fabric.
My Thoughts: Lightweight, but very flimsy… Possibly room for a mini fan… Not quite sure. Not mobile – restricted movement.
6) Foam body – made completely out of project foam bought at Joann’s. half dome sphere for the head.
My Thoughts: lightweight, very convenient in walking/moving. No room for a mini fan, but possibly more cooler since it’s lightweight and made from craft foam.
After going over the pros and cons of each method – we decided the project foam option would be the best suited one. It was light weight, mobile, and supplies were convenient and not expensive.
Materials Needed
BODY
*Project foam (I went to Joann’s, measured the size I needed WITH SOME EXTRA).
*12″ 1/2 ball Styrofoam – available at Joann’s
*2 yards of purple fabric
*1.5 yards of black fabric
*Hot glue gun and lots of hot glue sticks
HAIR
*Spray adhesive glue – like this **you may choose to use something else. I didn’t like how this sprayed on.
*Very loose yarn – pictures below in description.
GOGGLES & TEETH
*Black felt
*Construction paper (for templates of teeth)
*White craft foam
*Cardboard Circle (I found one from a generator box at the bottom).
*Grey/Purple/Black craft paint
*White stockings
*Fasteners to add detail to the goggles
The Body
First, of course is the body of the evil purple minion costume. This step is nice to have an extra set of hands. My husband helped and it was so much easier!
First you’ll want to measure the size of foam you’ll need the body. I wrapped the foam around my son to measure and gave extra room for comfort, BUT with the Styrofoam head. I wanted to make sure the purple minion costume was proportional as well. The size I needed for the head was perfect for my sons size. Once the foam is cut to the size you’ll need, hot glue the ends together. Once the glue is dried at the seam, you can start placing you’re fabric. I used Craftbond adhesive, BUT I wish I would have used something different. If I sprayed too heavy it would seep through the fabric and give a dark spot that won’t come out. It also didn’t stay adhered very well. I would suggest doing a trial run and figure out which product would work the best. I wish I would have done that for this step.
For the spray, my husband held the fabric up while I sprayed the glue on the foam. This was easier to turn and to press the fabric down to dry. Pay close attention to your seam. I put the seam in the back and folded the ends down so it was sort of “hemmed” without sewing. Something that also helped was leaving a little fabric to hang over the ends so I could hot glue the ends down under the costume. I thought this gave the fabric a little more stability.
Once the fabric is added to the core of the body, you’ll want to go ahead and cut out the place for the eye. The good part about this is the Styrofoam is easy to work with and you can chisel away until it’s the desired shape you want. You’ll also want to cut out for the arms. I used a typical pair of scissors for this. You can also go ahead and make templates for the mouth and figure out how to make everything proportional.
Once the head is on the evil purple minion costume, you can add fabric to it. This was tricky for us. We ended up just cutting strips of fabric and gluing them down. The head will be mostly covered anyways and won’t be seen. We didn’t pay much attention to detail for this step.
The Eye/Goggle
The next step I worked on was the eye or goggle for the purple minion costume. This is the piece of cardboard I happened to find in a generator box. I put fasteners on the outside of cardboard, just like the minion goggles and painted it grey on the outside and black on the inside. At first I painted the inside grey, but my husband said black would make you pay more attention to the eye. This was a great idea!
To make the eyeball you’ll want to hotglue the white stockings to the inside part of the goggles. Then use purple and black sharpie markers to make the eyeball.
Easy, peasy, right?!
Mouth
My husband is a detail-oriented person and had a great idea of adding dimension to the mouth by adding strips of craft foam and covering it with fabric. This was a time consuming step, but it made a lot of difference! I loved how it turned out!! This small detail added so much characteristic to the purple minion costume!
We also went ahead and added the teeth. Just a word of advice – use white craft foam here. We started with white felt, but I hated how the teeth wouldn’t stay up, so I ended up ripping out the felt when we were finished with the costume and added the white craft foam teeth.
Overalls
Next step was the overalls. It is very important to use templates here. I spent several hours cutting paper to find the exact template that would work here. When you cut out the overalls, cut it out as one piece. I cut the bib part out separately and honestly I think it would have looked better as a solid piece on the purple minion costume.
I didn’t like how the ends were frayed, so I hemmed the edges to look better. I put the picture below on my personal Facebook with the caption “It’s hot and humid outside but I didn’t wanna sew inside. My neighbors already know I’m crazy so it’s okay 
?
“.
I pinned exactly where I wanted the overalls to go and started hot gluing the overalls down.
The straps were a little tricky because the mouth of the purple minion was so wide. The straps had to be notched in the sides to not cover the mouth.
Purple Minion Costume Hair
This was the most time consuming part… I bought a purple wig at first and hated how it looked, so I started scouring the internet finding ideas to make the hair of the purple minion costume more realistic.
We ended up buying some bulky yarn to use as the hair. The color wasn’t exactly the purple I was hoping for, but we couldn’t find another purple that would work better.
First you’ll want to cut strips of the purple yarn to the length you’re looking for. Remember, you’ll be “brushing” (actually teasing) the yarn so it’ll add a little length to the hair in the end. Once you have your strips cut out (I ended up using around 200 or more), you’ll start hot gluing them to the head. I started out with my first row right above the minion goggle strap. I added a row all the way around the head. Once the first row was complete, I started pulling the string that was holding the yard together out, strand by strand. Then I started “teasing” the hair to make it have a wild look. I wouldn’t recommend brushing the yarn out because it’ll all start coming out and you’ll be left with an evil minion who looks like he’s loosing his hair, lol. Once I teased the first row, I started working on the second row and repeating the same steps.
I did 3 different trial runs with different products to use to style the hair and the one I liked the most was using the strong hold hairspray. The other products I used made the hair pull together too much and looked more “stringy”.
It was easiest to hang the costume upside down in our garage – tease, tease, and tease the hair more to the desired body and appearance the hair needed. Once I had the yarn teased and fluffed I used strong hold hairspray and hairsprayed the strands really good – don’t forget the inside too! Once the hairspray dried, I turned the costume over and started “styling”. I used glue adhesive spray and glued the inside of the hair to the dome shaped head so it would cover the very top of the head (looking down into the costume). I then used some of the fuzz that I pulled from the hair by teasing it and hid the glued part of the strand at the bottom and used in gaps where I needed to make it appear more “fuller”. Once I had it styled like I wanted it, I added even more hairspray and let it dry.
After all this teasing, it made the yarn appear more white… Kinda like a Dr. Nefario evil purple minion costume – so I went back through with purple hair color spray (you can find in the costume aisle usually) and added color everywhere. It took about 4 cans of spray until I was happy with the outcome.
Adding Details
You can purchase a purple shirt, cut out the sleeves and glue to the arm holes of the costume. I was going to sew the gloves on the sleeves, but my husband suggested not to so the costume would be more mobile.
I cut out an M for El Macho with my cutter and ironed it on the costume, then we used buttons and glued them to the straps of the overalls to make it appear more realistic.
After these few details were done, I went over the costume with an iron and a paper towel and got the excess glue off that I accidently got on the evil purple minion costume, whoops!
We finished it off with my son wearing a black shirt (because you can see through the mouth), black pants, and black boots. I also made him a Halloween bucket to match his costume!!
Every single minute that we put into this costume was worth it. To see the smile on our childs face when we finished was amazing. I even got a cool video of him running around acting like an evil minion!
We’re hoping to find some Halloween costume contests around our area to enter! Wish us luck!
