Halloween on a budget: Scarecrow

One year for Halloween, my cousin Victor called my mom asking for help to put together a costume. My mom suggested her patented scarecrow costume. It was easy to put together, you’d be sure not to look like the rest of the kids at your school, and you’d be a favorite of the costume contest judges. Victor won an award that year.

Since then my mom, Lori and I have all dressed up as scarecrows. I know there are plenty of ways to put together such a costume, but I’ll stick to the Mosqueda-style scarecrow and add a few pointers on ways to make it a little less PG-13, scarier or cuter.

What you need:

1. Straw hat; the more beat-up, the better. We had some straw hats from the father/daughter dance in Girl Scouts. I believe the theme for the dance was line dancing.
2. Jeans or overalls. We always used jeans since we didn’t have overalls.
3. Flannel or denim. As you can see, we chose flannel. It’ll keep you a little warmer on a cool night out trick-or-treating.
4. Scraps of fabric with different patterns. These will be the patches you’ll sew on to your jeans and shirt.
5. Strips of fabric about 3/4 of an inch thick.
6. Corn husks for tamales. Sew (or glue, tape, staple) strips of the dried corn husks on to the strips of fabric. Sew the strips to the cuffs of your jeans, collar and cuff of your shirt. You’ll want to make it look like the corn husk stuffing for the scarecrow is coming out of the hat and the patches (see photo). And yeah, straw would be more authentic, but using corn husks is more rascuache.
7. Orange fabric for a jack-o-lantern mask (optional). You can also try a burlap sack as a mask.
8. Old-looking shoes.

To make your scarecrow gory, just add some fake blood or carry a bloody prop knife. We all know scarecrows can be pretty creepy.

If you want to show some skin and try a more adult look, opt for a short denim skirt or shorts instead of pants. Wear colorful or striped stockings.

Finally, to make your scarecrow cute, you can add some cute face paint (draw on nose, rosy cheeks) or makeup. I skipped the makeup last time I did the scarecrow costume for Halloween ’98, but I still got a compliment from a UCLA cheerleader. That was pretty cool.

Next up in the low-budget costume series: philandering politician and mistress (hmmm, I wonder who that may be).