Dog Halloween Outfit DIY: Mermaid

Hey! As you may know, Halloween is one of my favourite holidays, and therefore October is one of my favourite months. I like to make sure Halloween drags out for more than just the 31st so decided to bring you a whole month of Halloween festivities. First up is a DIY for a mermaid costume for your wonderful pooch. I should start this by saying that I am in no way a DIY guru, and my craftsmanship leaves quite a lot to be desired. However, because of how terrible I am it makes this tutorial super easy and I look forward to seeing your recreations!

My best friend's daughter was turning three, and because whenever I am over, Diego is with me, she made sure to invite Diego to her birthday party. Unfortunately for him, the theme was 'Mermaids and Pirate Ships' and she personally requested he be the only male to dress up as a mermaid. I couldn't really let her down as it has been quite a hard road to get her to like his presence in her house. That is when this costume was originally made, but it makes for a perfect dress up for Halloween as well. I also have a matching mermaid tail in case we wanted to do a couples outfit.

I purchased some cheap material from Pete's Emporium, and although the material from here is questionable in quality, it is perfect for little tasks like this which won't be worn very much. I found the material to be of the perfect pattern that no matter how terribly I whipped up the costume, it would still look somewhat mermaid'y. From there, you just need some cardboard (I used an old beer box. Recycling!) and something to attach it to your dog. I used Diego's Linden No-Pull Harness from Wolves of Wellington, but you could also just attach it to their collar.

The first step is to cut out the fin shape in your cardboard. This is going to give you the main shape of the outfit so depending how you want it, this is the important part. I drew one half of the fin onto a folded piece of cardboard and cut this out. This made it so that both sides of the fin would be even. If you trust your drawing and cutting skills, you can just draw the fin straight onto cardboard and cut.

From there I stuck the material to the cardboard. I didn't cut the material first because I didn't trust myself to cut it correctly, do you sense a theme here? I stuck the cardboard close to the material's edge but left a few centimetres so that I could fold this over to hide the cardboard. I used ModgePodge to secure it together, but you could also use a hot glue gun or general crafts glue.

Once this was dry I placed the cardboard fin onto where I would like it to sit on Diego and measured roughly to where his harness sits. You will want to go a few centimetres over this point and then cut. If your tail is connecting to a collar (which I am not sure how it will turn out, but I can't see it going too wrong) you obviously will need to have more material than if you have a harness. I personally wish I put Diego's fin slightly further down so that it sat a bit better with his tail so make sure you really test where the fin sits before cutting. This is also the point when you will cut the sides judging by how big your dog is, how big the fin is and if you are attaching to a harness or collar this will change. I cut mine so that it was just the correct size of Diego's body, but if you had a larger fin you may want to make it so it drapes down the dogs sides.

Where you cut the material you will now want to make a loop in the material that the harness or collar can slip into. If you have ever purchased a dog bandana it is similar to the concept of those bandana's that just slip over your dogs collar. I sewed my loop down, very poorly might I add, but once again depending how permanent you want this to be, you can use a hot glue gun. If you want you can also sew the edges to make a nicer edge, but I left mine jagged.

That's it! Easy as that! A super, simple way of turning your dog into a beautiful mermaid. Looking back I would have made the whole tail longer so that I could then put an elastic loop at the end of the fin to put Diego's tail into. This would have made it more durable while Diego walks because at it's current length it slowly falls to one side. Diego was a hit at the party, and when completing this photoshoot at the river some children absolutely adored him in his outfit. I made this the night before the party so it's a fairly easy DIY to whip up last minute and I promise your pooch will look amazing. If you do recreate this DIY please share the photos with us on Facebook or Instagram!