{seasonal style} Football Brothers Halloween Costume + 88 More Handmade Costume Ideas!

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We are football fans in this house. Broncos fans to be exact!

And not only are we Broncos fans, we are also "that family." The ones who like to dress up in family costumes for Halloween.

Last year, it was a football Halloween for us, but since our costumes weren't ready until the night prior, there was no time for me to post any details on the blog before the holiday. So with Halloween right around the corner again, it's now the perfect time for me to share the DIY details of my boy's costumes for all those other families with football on the brain.

Beckett already owned a Peyton Manning jersey, but I wanted to make his football player costume a bit more authentic with the addition of some football pads.  I did just a bit of Google searching and came across a mom that had created football pads for her three sons - the concept was pretty simple, but I couldn't find some of the materials that she used, so I adapted her idea to come up with my own, somewhat simpler, version. This is a DIY costume easy enough for anyone to tackle (bad pun totally intended).

I bought a yard of 1/2" foam from a fabric store, then laid Beckett's jersey on top to get a basic idea of the dimensions.  If you happen want to make football pads for an 18 month sized jersey - the dimension listed here will be just right.  For any other size, you'll just have to approximate your own measurements - but I'll give you some tips on how to do so.

I first spread the jersey out on the foam and marked the width of the shoulders (the width across the shoulders of this 18 month sized jersey was 11 inches), then the length from the shoulders to the bottom of the jersey (12 inches, although I ended up trimming off about a half inch in the front and back when I was done to prevent it from sticking out below the jersey).  

I knew the pads would need to narrow in at the torso, so I decided to make the bottom measurement just under half of the shoulder width (I went with 5 inches). I used a ruler to connect the shoulders to the waist with angled lines.

I again laid the jersey on the foam and sketched in the approximate shape of the neckline.  Then I added a cut line from the point of the v-neck to the bottom center of the pads so that the completed pads would fit on like a vest.

I printed out the shoulder pad template from this website, but since the template was for older little boys, after cutting it out at full size, I proceeded to trim off about a quarter of an inch off all the way around.  I traced the reduced template onto the foam twice {as illustrated above}. {UPDATE: it appears the post with the template has been removed from the Instructables website; but the shape is pretty easy to draw}

The final step was finding a way to hold the pads in place. I've seen other tutorials that involve gluing or sewing on velcro, but I wanted to keep this as easy as possible, so I used ribbon I already had around the house to create laces to simply tie the pads in place. 

I grabbed some ribbon out of gift wrapping closet and used an Exacto knife to cut slits in the foam down the front and at the corners.

I laced two long pieces of ribbon down the front, leaving them loose enough to easily slip the pads over Beckett's head, but allowing me to tighten the laces and tie them at the bottom once he was wearing them. Then I attached ribbons at each of the bottom corners so that the pads could be tied in place at Beckett's waist.

In each instance, I cut the slits just large enough to thread the ribbon through, but kept the slits small enough that I could double knot the ribbon on the back side of the pads and the knot would not pull through.

Beckett was not a big fan of the football pads when we first put them on him.  It was a two person job - Scott held his arms above his head to stop him from pulling them off while I tied them in place. You can see from this blurry photo that he wasn't thrilled to be wearing them.  But as soon as we put his jersey on over the pads, he completely forgot about them and didn't bug them once.

I did trim off some of the excess ribbon length once the pads were tied on so that the ribbons wouldn't dangle below the jersey.

I was pretty proud of the pads when I first made them, but I was even more excited to see how great they looked under Beckett's jersey.  They really looked like football pads!

We added a long-sleeved white onesie under Beckett's pads and jersey to keep him warm. To complete his football player costume, I paired his jersey and pads with an inexpensive pair of white cotton pants, which I rolled up to his knees, and Broncos colored, striped socks that we already owned.

The simple DIY foam football pads gave Beckett's costume a much more authentic football player feel.  He looked SO stinking cute running around outside in his jersey, pads and eye-black!

I especially loved the look of those shoulder pads from behind!

Once big brother's football player costume was complete, it was time to get the little brother in on the action. Since Cooper was only 5 months old last Halloween, we decided he was the perfect size to be the football!

I found a lot of football onesies online, but most were pretty pricey, so I decided to simply make my own.

I bought a solid brown, long-sleeved onesie and cut the football shape out of white iron on transfer paper. The key here is to make sure your transfer paper is made for use on dark colored fabric - like this Avery Dark T-Shirt Transfer Paper!

I sketched out the shape of the laces and the top and bottom white markings of a football on the back of the transfer paper. If you'd like to make your own football onesie, download my football template, which you can cut out and trace directly on to your iron on transfer paper. This template is sized for a 0-3 month sized onesie, but if you need a larger size, you can simply adjust the scale on your computer before printing, or you can print it and then enlarge it on a copy machine.

Then I cut the football shapes out of the transfer paper, and ironed them on to the brown shirt. Each brand of transfer paper has slightly different instructions for how long to iron, so be sure to carefully follow the packaging instructions.

Since Halloween in Denver can be quite cold, we paired Cooper's DIY football onesie with some cute football socks and an adorable knitted football hat. I also added some brown fleece pants for Trick-or-Treating after dark.

Now tell me he's not the cutest football you've ever seen!?

If your little football is a girl, you could instead add a cute brown tutu and a brown bow in her hair.

As I mentioned above, we are that family... so Scott and I dressed up with the boys. I purchased inexpensive referee shirts, which we paired with black pants that we already owned. If you are a parent to young kids, you know we are basically referees in real life, so these costumes weren't much of a stretch!