Flounder Dog Costume

For this Halloween I wanted to have my two dogs dress up along with me since my husband usually hates dressing up--the more the merrier! My two top choices for a theme were Little Mermaid and Alice in Wonderland, since I already had an Ariel and Mad Hatter costume from my Disney Half Marathon outfits. PetSmart had cute dog Disney costumes, including the Chesire Cat and a Nemo costume. Unfortunately nothing that came in a pair for my theme. I did find a Lobster costume at PetCo, and decided to try to find something that I could make a Flounder costume out of. I found very few Flounder dog costume ideas online, but I knew that if I could just find a yellow base, I would be just fine. I found it at Petsmart! A Big Bird Sesame Street costume was exactly what I needed! And best of all, it was 75% off!

 I found some foam sheets in the appropriate colors at Joann's that I've used before for another costume. I knew they would stand better than felt. I removed all the Big Bird evidence, and created Flounder's eyes, fins and stripes from the foam. I glued the pieces together using craft glue. I sewed on the side fins and tail for extra support, and glued on the eyes and stripes to the yellow base. To get the main fin to stand I had to cut the yellow cloth along the middle, inserted the fin about a centimeter below the cut, and then sewed the fin to the yellow base. I don't have a sewing machine so I just did it by hand. It all took less than an hour to complete. 

The finished product

 The next day I entered us in our neighborhood's costume contest, and we won! My $25 gift certificate to Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf more than made up for the cost of the costumes. FYI, my own costume was created using a wig from Party City, purple top and green bottoms from American Apparel--a totally easy getup.