Awesome Jellyfish Costume DIY

It’s Halloween night and my teenage daughter still does not have a costume. She’d been thinking about making a homemade jellyfish costume but had made no progress toward that end.

Awesome Jellyfish Costume DIY for Halloween - under the sea halloween costume ideas - jellyfish hat - led light up costume -Press Print Party!This post may contain affiliate links.

A quick search on Pinterest produced many tutorials on how to make jellyfish costumes with umbrellas.

That’s a problem.

Living in Southern California means that I haven’t seen an umbrella in years. I wasn’t about to scour every store in town to find one, especially a clear umbrella. Maybe if you live on the East Coast you can just go to Walmart, but here, an umbrella is a specialty item.

She also wanted to have her hands free to grab all that sweet trick-or-treating candy, so holding an umbrella all night wasn’t going to cut it.

Fortunately, I saw some Halloween jellyfish costumes made with a sombrero. We don’t have a sombrero but we had an old gardener’s hat.

Actually, we have several old gardeners’ hats In various conditions.

It happens that my husband is a hopeless scrounge and that no hat flying off any gardener’s truck is safe from his grasp. Highway, hillside, ditch, he’ll retrieve ’em all. I guess I’m grateful. His hoarding came in handy this time.

After a quick trip to the dollar store to pick up some plastic tablecloths that we didn’t have on hand, we were ready to start.

Other than the tablecloths, we used only items we had already at home so the total cost for us was $3.

We also put this adorable costume together last minute in under an hour. Winner!

I will show you how easy it was to make and how you can do it too.  This sea creature costume ended up being very popular on the streets, we got lots of oohs and aahs while trick-or-treating.

Girl with jellyfish costume for Halloween. Blue and white tentacles. led costume - Jellyfish hat - diy under the sea costume - Press Print Party!This light-up jellyfish costume would work great for an under the sea or finding Nemo theme party with other sea animals.

Easy Jellyfish Costume Tutorial

  • An old big hat
  • A transparent punch bowl
  • 3 plastic tablecloths, one white one light blue and one teal.
  • Clear packaging tape
  • Two strands of battery powered LED lights
  • A bandana (optional)

materials for jellyfish costume - jellyfish hat - led lights - packaging tape -Press Print Party!

First, place the bowl upside down on top of the hat and tape it securely with the clear packing tape. Keep in mind that the LED lights will have to go in between the hat and the bowl.

Our sorry excuse of a hat was so old that it already had some very convenient holes on the top so we could tuck in the lights in at the end.

materials for jellyfish costume - Press Print Party!

Then you will want to wrap the bowl-hat in a double thickness of the light blue plastic tablecloth. We just secured the tablecloth to the insides of the hat with more clear tape.

hat for jellyfish costume - Press Print Party!

hat for jellyfish costume - Press Print Party!

Now it’s time to cut strips from all three colors of tablecloths.

Leave the tablecloths mostly folded and cut several 2-inch strips.

Jellyfish costume plactic strips for tentacles- halloween costume

Unravel the strips.

You’ll want to hold the strip in your hand and pull with your thumbs on each side of the plastic.

Proceed in this manner about every 1 to 2 inches all the way down the long edge of the strip. You could make them different widths if you want.

It will make the plastic look wavy, like thin tentacles. It’s a trick I learned from our amazing Under the Sea decorations for Vacation Bible School.

Look at the pictures below for a visual.

Pulling plastic strips for jellyfish costume - Press Print Party!

Jellyfish costume plactic strips for tentacles

Do this for every strip of plastic. You will need about 30 to 40 strips in all. Making strips of various lenghs adds to the wavy effect.

You’ll also need to keep in mind the height of the costume wearer for the length of your strips. You don’t want them to trip over the tentacles.

You can see the strips of plastic looking like a beautiful wall of seaweed as well as many other Under the Sea decorations in my VBS post.

Now just tape your tentacles to the underside of the brim of the blue jellyfish hat with more packaging tape.

You could use a low temp hot glue gun for that too.

You could also add some long strips of ribbon if you have some in the right colors.

Girl with jellyfish costume for Halloween. Blue and white tentacles. how to make a jellyfish costume - light up costume - led - Jellyfish hat - Press Print Party!

You’re now ready to install the LED lights between the hat and the bowl.  If your hat has not been scrounged by the side of the road and does not already have holes in it, you may need to create some to be able to tuck in the lights and battery pack.

I’m sure you could figure out some other way if you don’t want to sacrifice your hat. But the “pre-installed” holes allowed me to turn the lights off and on at will.

My daughter crammed a bandana on the inside of the hat so it would fit her head better and stay put. And she put together a green outfit to match the jellyfish costume.

Girl with jellyfish costume for Halloween. Blue and white tentacles. light up halloween costume. easy jellyfish costume diy. easy. Press Print Party!

Now turn on your LED lights and get out trick or treating.

Girl with light up jellyfish costume at night. Press Print Party!

I promise a lot of stares and thumbs ups along the way.

Girl with jellyfish costume for Halloween. Blue and white tentacles. light up jellyfish costume. led. under the sea costume. homemade. led costume. jelly fish costume. Press Print Party!

The costume was a huge hit and fared well all night. And the best part is that it was still intact the next year and my youngest daughter chose to wear it again.

I’m sure it will make another comeback on future Halloweens.

Let me know if you make this fun jellyfish costume. I would love to see your pictures especially if it was your first time making a costume.

I’ve got lots more tutorials and ideas for you to create some awesome costumes to ease the frenzied Halloween season.

Like my easy ghost, bat, butterfly, and black widow spider homemade costumes as well as a long list of last-minute Halloween DIY costume ideas.

Halloween is fast approaching and it’s a boo-tiful thing.

And don’t forget to pin this jellyfish costume tutorial for later.

Easy DIY Jellyfish Costume DIY. jelly fish costume. under the sea halloween costume. light up costime. Jellyfish hat - Press Print Party! 
Awesome Jellyfish Costume DIY - Press Print Party!

easy Light up Jellyfish Costume DIY - jelly fish costume halloween. under the sea costume. outfit. Press Print Party!



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25 thoughts on “Awesome Jellyfish Costume DIY

  1. Julianne Cammack says:

    Thank you for posting this! I made the costume for myself to go along with my sons octopus and Dory costumes. I had so much fun making it, and I won a costume contest at my local library. I also got lots of compliments while trick-or-treating with my family last night!

  2. Sherri says:

    Love the costume! We are doing an under the sea theme for trunk or treat and this goes along perfectly! Could you wrap the lights around the hat then place the bowl over that?

    • Press Print Party says:

      Thank you Sherri. Yes, you could wrap the lights around the hat first. You just need to figure out a way to turn them on and off if you need to. That was why having an old hat with holes was so helpful.

  3. Grace Amstutz says:

    Our troop (Frontier Girls) is going to be the characters of the “Finding Nemo” movie. My youngest daughter is going to be a pink jellyfish! This is IDEAL for her costume & much easier than a clear umbrella! We didn’t know how to do the tentacles, especially if it drizzled here in PA; the plastic tablecloths are SO much better than the crepe paper we were thinking of using! I can’t wait to make it & have her show it off for our local parade & others around the area! Thank you so much!

  4. Cornejo says:

    This is awesome and looks really cute! One question though, how exactly do you put the led lights in? The instructions didn’t go in much detail and I want to make sure I do it right! Thanks for the idea!

  5. Beth says:

    With the days getting shorter around here (NH), I’m starting to get the itch to work on some Halloween costumes! Love how you put this jellyfish costume together!

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