Ok, Halloween is right around the corner and I, of course, decided to tackle a DIY Halloween costume. So it all started when my son found an awesome minions mask and decided he wanted to be a minion for Halloween. Then my daughters jumped on board and wanted to be minions too. So we decided to make it a family thing with the kids being minions, dad being Gru, and mom being Lucy. However, my girls wanted to be girl minions which are pretty non-existent. So I decided to make them their own girl minions Halloween costumes. Check out how I did it below!
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Supplies Needed to Make a Minions Costume
- Poly foam sheet – You’ll need a long roll of polyurethane foam sheet like this one that’s 1 inch thick and 36 inches by 72 inches long
- Foam craft sheets – You’ll need black for the goggle strap, pupils, buttons, and Gru logo; 2 white sheets for the eyeballs and teeth; and one sheet for the eye iris color (I used blue for one minion and green for another minion). The foam craft sheet pack that I linked has all the colors that you need and the sheets are the larger size ones so you’ll have enough for everything on the costume.
- Yellow felt sheet – This is to cover any imperfections on the top of the minion’s head
- Silver spray paint
- Yellow spray paint
- White primer spray paint
- Hot glue sticks – I hot glued everything on this costume so you’ll need a lot of hot glue sticks. I got a 100 count bag to complete the two costumes and had to go back to get another pack (but 100 should be good for 1 costume)
- Hot glue gun – Here’s a great cordless option
- Fabric scissors – it really does matter if you use scissors that have only been used on fabric. If you use scissor for cutting paper, then they won’t work as well to cut the fabric and foam sheet. I’ve linked a relatively inexpensive pair of scissors that I use from Joann’s all the time!
- Denim fabric – This is for the overalls. I linked my favorite denim from Joann’s.
- Black pipe cleaners – this is for the minions hair
- Yarn – If you want your minion to resemble a female and have hair then you’ll need yarn too. I got hot pink yarn for one daughter’s minion and purple yarn for another daughter’s minion.
- Empty plastic jug or cardboard canister like an oatmeal can (something round that you can use to make the goggles with)
- Piece of cardstock or recycled cardboard from a cereal box
- Yellow pajamas – these will go under the costume to look like the minions arms and legs. This pair of pajamas has the best yellow color that matches the minions so good!
- Black gloves – the gloves will complete the minions look.
How to Make a Minions Costume
1 First, use the foam sheet to wrap around your child and measure how much of the foam sheet you’ll need. You’re going to wrap it around them like a tube with a few inches above the top of their head to about their waist. They are going to be wearing this costume with arm holes and a face hole in the minions mouth, so you want to be measuring their whole upper body.
2. Then cut the foam sheet to the size you’ll need to wrap around your child. You’ll have a giant rectangular sheet of poly foam. The short edges of the rectangle will be attached to create a tube costume and the long edge of the rectangle will be cut and glued to create the rounded dome-shaped head of the minion.
3. Next, use a sheet of paper to create a petal shaped template that is about 3 inches wide and 6 inches tall. The sides of the petal template should be slightly curved (not straight) so that they will all fold inward to create the dome shaped head. Check out my template that I’m using in the picture in step 4 to see what I mean about the petal shape.
4. Then use the petal template and a yellow marker to trace the petal shape along one of the long edges of the poly foam. See the picture below for reference.
5. Once you have all the petals traced out, cut out the petals. You want good sharp fabric shears for this so the cutting is easier.
6. Next begin to make the tube shape of the costume by hot glueing the two shorter ends of poly foam sheet together. This is probably a two person job (or at least it was for me). I applied the hot glue, while my husband held it in place until it dried. See the picture below for reference.
7. Once your body tube is made, you’ll start hot glueing each of the petals together to start forming the dome shaped head of the minion. This is also a two person job!
Here’s what it looks like once all of the petals are glued together to form the minions head. It’s ok there’s a hole, we have a solution for that!
Here’s another view of the costume now that all of the pieces are glued together.
8. Next, sketch out on a sheet of paper the eyes shape and mouth shape that you want for your minion, cut it out, and tape it onto your costume to get it in the perfect spot. Check out the picture below of my sketch. One of our minion girls was going to have two eyes and the other minion girl was going to have one eye.
9. Next, use the yellow marker to trace the shape of the mouth and then carefully cut out the mouth hole.
10. Now have your child try on the costume with their face centered in the mouth hole and mark off where their arm holes should be. Then cut those arm holes out too.
11. Then, use any poly foam scraps you have to cut and create a bottom lip and hot glue it into place. You can use scissors to kind of bevel the poly foam to round the lip. You can see our minions bottom lip in the picture in step 12.
12. Once you have all the holes cut how you like it, bring the costume outside to spray paint it. First apply a white spray paint primer, wait until it dries, and then apply the yellow spray paint.
Warning: I will warn you that we did not do the primer at first and the yellow spray paint was so splotchy. I couldn’t handle it! I went and got white primer and spray painted over it and then reapplied the yellow spray paint. It was so much better with the primer and was not splotchy at all. You can see in the picture below that the minion on the right had no primer and was super splotchy, while the minion on the left was redone with primer first and isn’t splotchy.
13. While everything is drying, you can start making the goggles. For the eye pieces look for an empty plastic jug or cardboard canister that you cut for goggle rings. We used a giant plastic vinegar jug for the minion with just one eye and an empty cardboard oatmeal canister for the minion with two eyes.
14. Then use a sheet of cardstock or recycle the cardboard from a cereal box to make a circular ring for the face of the goggle and hot glue it to the goggle rings. Check out the pictures below for reference.
Below is the goggle piece for the two- eyed minion. You’ll see that the goggle ring is slightly angled. I did this so that the goggle would lay flat to the rounded face.
15. Next, bring the goggles outside and spray paint them silver.
16. Once the goggles are dried, you can start making the eye balls. Cut out a circle from the white foam sheet and hot glue it into the inside of the goggle to make the eyeball.
17. Then cut a smaller circle from the foam sheet to create the iris of the eyeball. I matched the eye color of the minion to the eye color of each daughter that would be wearing it. So one minion’s iris was blue and one minion’s iris was green.
18. Then on each iris, use markers to draw lines to make the iris look more realistic.
19. Cut out another smaller circle from the black foam sheet to create a pupil and glue that into the center of the iris. Check out the picture below to see my final eyeballs.
Optional: you can also cut out a yellow eyelid and hot glue that over part of the eyeball to make it look like the minion is squinting.
Below is the blue minion eyeball. I ended up removing the top eyelid that you see in this picture because I didn’t like it. But anyways, here’s at least a close up of the blue eyeball.
20. Now use the black foam sheet to cut out black straps for the goggles and hot glue them onto the minions
21. Then hot glue the silver goggle rings onto the strap. Check out the picture below for reference.
22. Next, use the white foam sheet to cut out teeth for the minion. I cut out each tooth but left them all attached to the sheet at the top (like a line of dentures) so I could attach them easier. Look at the picture below for reference.
23. Then hot glue the top and bottom line of teeth to the inside of the mouth. Once the teeth are added, the minion starts coming to life!
24. Now it’s time to start adding hair which means we need to cover up that hole in the top of the head. That’s what the sheet of yellow felt is for. Just cut it into a circle and hot glue it over the hole. you can see in the picture all the lines from the petals, but it’s ok we’re going to cover that with hair!
25. I’ve never seen a girl minion, so I kind of just had to make up my own hair style that kind of mimics the boys hairstyles. I knew I wanted the hair sticking up some like rods and I wanted them in pig tails. So, I poked pipe cleaners through the top of the minions head and hot glued them into place were I wanted the pig tails.
26. Then wrap each of the pipe cleaners with yarn that is the color that you want the minions hair to be. We chose purple hair for one minion and pink hair for another minion. As you wrap, add little dots of hot glue to make sure the yarn stays in place. See the picture below for reference.
27. Continue wrapping the yarn around each pipe cleaner until you have all of them covered.
28. Now, we get to the tedious part! Now you have to start hot glueing the yarn from the hair part toward each pig tail and from the hair line toward each pig tail. This takes awhile so just keep going until yours looks like the minion below!
Alternative: So our second minion was a little bit different. On her pipe cleaners, we covered them with several loose strands of yarn and braided hers down to make pigtail braids. Then we attached all the hair the same way in step 28. See her different hair style below.
29. Now we need to add the overalls dress! Start by making a template for the dress straps and cutting them out.
30. Then hot glue the strap onto the minion as seen in the picture below.
31. Then measure, cut, and hot glue on a bib for the overalls.
32. Next, measure the waist of the minion and cut out however much fabric you need to create the skirt. It just cut a large rectangular piece of fabric and started hot glueing it on. I kind of made bends in the fabric wherever I could to mimic pleats in the skirt.
33. Then cut out a long strap of fabric to hot glue around the waist to kind of cover up any imperfections in the pleating.
34. Lastly, cut out a pocket and a Gru logo and buttons from the black foam sheet and hot glue on the pocket, logo, and button. You’re done!! Look at how adorable our girl minion costumes turned out!
I’m pretty proud about how these costumes turned out! What do you think? Would you give this DIY girls minions costume a try? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
