A few months ago, Elise requested to be "paint" for Halloween. This was her first ever Halloween costume request, so I wanted to honor it, but I made the subtle switch from "paint" to "painter." She was more than agreeable.
But even though I had months advance warning, I didn't start on the costume until two days ago. That's OK, though; it was super quick and easy.
To make the smock, I started with a white button down dress shirt I didn't need anymore and made a few alterations. I tucked the collar inside and sewed it down. Chopped off the sleeves and hemmed the raw edges. And I hemmed the shirt tail just to even it out a bit. (This was a women's shirt, so it didn't have much of a tail.) All the sewing took less than 30 minutes.
The smock was still pretty wide for a tiny girl, so I tied a length of white ribbon around her waist to give it some shape.
The beret came to us from a friend (thanks, Mary Sue!) and was originally off-white. After a mini-debacle trying to dye wool with watered-down acrylic paint (fyi: doesn't work), I ended up spray painting it red with some paint I had on hand. It's a bit sticky, so I wouldn't recommend spray paint for fashion purposes, but good enough for a costume.
For the palette, I cut a scrap of foam core and mixed up a rainbow of acrylic paint. And the brush, well those are in abundance around here.
It's funny to me because Elise has no idea what an artist or a painter costume should look like, but this seemed to satisfy her. And I'm really happy with the way it turned out, especially for such little effort on my part!
