On Sunday, my three younger kids wore their Halloween costumes to our neighborhood fall festival and they came home with prizes for best costumes in their age group. Tate dressed up as an adorable little gumball machine. I absolutely love her gumball machine costume and she wore it so proudly. The best part? It was really easy and really inexpensive to make.
I bought two cheap red shirts at Walmart, cut just below the sleeves on one, and sewed the lower part of the cut shirt onto the bottom of the other shirt. It formed a simple little sheath. If I had been able to find a small red dress, that would have been preferable but this shirt sheath worked just fine.
A large plastic bowl from the dollar store was hot glued onto the shirt with colorful dollar store balls inside. To make this easy, glue around half of the bowl and attach it to the center of the shirt then place the balls inside and hot glue the rest of the bowl’s edge.
To finish the globe part of the gumball machine, I used my cutting machine to add a white vinyl price tag to the front of the bowl.
The coin slot was made from silver spray painted cardboard and an old drawer knob, also spray painted silver, glued onto the cardboard.

So simple, so cheap, and so cute. And Tate won first place in her age category at the neighborhood fall festival!

Very cute! What did she win?
That is so darn creative! No wonder she won a prize. I bet it’s a fun costume to wear too. Here are some kudos to your thriftiness. I am going to share this on the Mess For Less Facebook page. I am a new Twitter follower of yoursfrom Too Cute Tuesday. Vicky from http://www.messforless.net
love it!!
ha ha ha what a cute costume!
I love this costume! It totally made me laugh! :0D
You are so creative! I love this!!
That is just too awesome! Very imaginative!
Oh my goodness this is so incredibly cute! All of your kids’ costumes are adorable! You are very creative! Thanks for sharing and have a great weekend!
That’s such a great costume!
Cute idea!
Haha…just adorable! So clever too, I’ve never seen a gumball machine costume before. Would you share it here?
http://oneartmama.blogspot.com/2011/10/csh-thursday-link-party.html
That is so funny and creative! Love it!
Such a great idea!
Becky
http://bucketofbuttons.blogspot.com
What a cute costume! I love that it was so reasonable to make to.
I love it! What a cutie!! So glad you linked up to the Tuesday To Do Party!
Smiles!
Jami
http://www.blackberryvine.blogspot.com
How adorable. I would love for you to stop by and link up your costume to More the Merrier Monday. It lasts through Wednesday so you have plenty of time to link up. I also have a link party for Halloween projects only.
OMG, can this be any cuter! This looks so good, and so creative. Love it.
Hope you win. I wonder if I can dig up some pics of when my kiddies were young, and post them?
Both this and the Lego Man Costume are both brilliant uses of dollar store stuff! Way to go Randi!