How to Make Your Own Cheap Halloween Costume

Like Christmas, Halloween can be one of the most expensive times of the year. Every year come late September, early October, Halloween shops open their doors to throngs of fun-seekers wanting to escape into a magical world of monsters, aliens and other ghoulish beings.

And it can get expensive. Fancy props and lights to decorate your house can easily start rolling into the hundreds, even thousands of dollars, depending on how extreme you wish to get.

Elaborate costumes of your favorite movie character or monster can cost hundreds of dollars as well.

For those who want to be more frugal, there is an alternative: crafting your own inexpensive Halloween costume, which can be done with items you can usually find lying around the house such as old bed sheets and pillowcases.

The simplest, of course, is the traditional ghost. Just use scissors to cut out a couple of holes for the eyes, toss the sheet over your head and viola!

You're a ghost! Note: Wearing white clothes underneath the bed sheet, along with a pair of white gloves and white tennis shoes, is a good idea to ensure 100-percent white camouflage. You don't want to give off any hints that a mortal can be found underneath the sheet!

You also want to make sure the sheet hangs close to the ground after it is draped over you, but not all the way to the ground, as this increases the danger of tripping on it, and you don't want anyone to think you're a clumsy ghost.

Before you drape the sheet over you, you must mark with a felt marker or fabric marker the areas on the sheet for the eyes and holes for the arms.

Some just prefer to stick their arms out from under the sheet and not cut out arm holes. This decision is an individual one, but one tends to get better freedom of movement with arm holes, and with arm holes, you don't usually need to readjust the sheet every time you reach out for candy or to dance with someone at a Halloween party.