Halloween Costume Craft: Paper Bag Monster Hat

If you've seen our Woodland Fairy Tiara and our Mermaid Crown, you know that the hooligans and I have been having some fun making paper bag hats here in my daycare. Our most recent creation is this fun alien or monster hat, perfect for pretend play or for Halloween.

Turning a paper bag into a hat or head piece is a fairly easy process. Older children will be able to do it with little-to-no assistance, while younger kids will need some help from a grown-up.

You Will Need: 

• paper bag
• school glue or low heat glue gun
• paint (we used green)
• pipe cleaners
• pompoms
• googly eyes
• craft foam circles or stickers or sequins
• raffia (optional)

Instructions:

If you're using school glue or liquid glue, you may have to allow some drying time between steps. If you're using a low-heat glue gun with your child, close supervision is recommended.

Convert Your Paper Bag To A Hat:

1. Cut off the flat, bottom part of paper bag, so the bag is open at both the top and bottom. Essentially you now have a paper bag "tube".

2. Have your child paint the front, back and sides of the bag with the green paint. You only need to paint the outside of the bag. The inside won't be visible when you're finished.

For the paint, we used acrylic craft paints which dry quickly, but regardless of the type of paint you use, one of our favourite, little tricks to speed up the drying time is to give the project a warm blast from a hair dryer.

3. When your paint is dry, start rolling the top edge of the bag down, toward the unpainted, inside of the bag.

Gently work your way all around the top edge of the bag as you roll. Continue this way until the bag is entirely rolled up. Secure the loose edge in place with your glue or glue gun.

Decorate Your Monster Hat:

1. Make the antennae! With your glue gun, attach a couple of pipe cleaners to the inside of the hat, at or around the temple area. Poke the end of each pipe cleaner through a pom pom and twist it back around itself to secure it in place.

2. Decorate the rest of the hat with googly eyes and craft foam pieces, stickers, sequins or whatever you've got! In the end, we wound a couple of pieces of green raffia around our alien hat to transform it into a swamp monster!