This year I decided to give myself a much needed break from costume production.  The kids perused the Chasing Fireflies costume catalog and selected some overpriced flimsy costumes that we dutifully purchased.  I have saved money from years of making them costumes, so this year we let them splurge…within reason.

Anya has chosen to be Batgirl.  This is, obviously, quite the sensible outfit for the expected 40 degrees nighttime temperature for trick or treating (if she is lucky!).  There will be warm undergarments that will be needed.   I am sure I will be sewing them.

Kailan chose to be a spirit warrior.  Chanelling his ancestors?  His great-great-great-grandfather must have influenced this decision.  Perhaps.

In the catalog, the becoming warrior has in his hand a spear dressed in feathers and rabbit fur.  I didn’t even need to read the description to know that no spear would accompany the purchase.  I told Kailan that I would make him one to go along with his fearsome costume.

A new craft project.  Yay!

The dialogue went something along these lines:

Me: Hmmm…we have feathers, but no rabbit fur.  Guess I’ll just have to make the spear and you will have to use it to get one of the bunnies in the backyard.

Kailan: OKAY!

Not to worry, no bunnies were harmed in the making of this spear. 😉

Generally when I make things like this, I like to put some sort of spin on them.  Once I made Brian a Viking costume that had a belt to go along with it.  On the belt I stitched authentic Viking runes that meant things like strength and power.

There was hardly any room on the staff part, so I decided to put a Native American symbol on the arrow.  I printed out some symbols and what they meant.  Kailan chose the Thunderbird, in which one interpretation is that it is the sacred bearer of happiness.  Fitting for the Spirit Warrior, don’t you think?  Ah, irony. 😉

For this project I used a wooden dowel, a thin board, feathers, and leather.  I found it all at Michaels.  I also used hacksaw, sandpaper, a wood burner and a glue gun.

I cut a notch in the dowel, stained the dowel, cut the arrow, smoothed the edges with sandpaper, drew the design to fit inside the arrow, burned it in with the wood burner, stained it, burned the design again, attached it with leather and glue, and then added feathers and leather in two lower places.

So…yeah.  I saved loads of time by buying their Halloween costumes. 🙂