DIY Skeleton Costume: Paint a Skeleton Shirt with a Stencil

This DIY skeleton costume for kids started as a plain black top and leggings. I painted the skeleton on with acrylic paint and a homemade stencil made from paper and sticky tape, and with a tulle skirt it became my daughter's skeleton bride costume for Halloween.

Why paint a skeleton costume with a stencil

A hand-painted skeleton shirt with skeleton tulle ruffles and a matching skirt makes a costume nobody else will have, and you don't need a printer or any special equipment: just paper, tape and acrylic paint. Stencilling on fabric is also much faster than painting freehand (I tried freehand first), and one stencil does both sides: paint one side, flip the stencil over and paint the other.

Tips for painting a skeleton on fabric

• Set the scale from one measurement. The widest part of the ribs is 21 cm on my daughter's top, and every other bone follows from it.
• Laminate the paper stencil with about four layers of clear tape on each side, so it can be wiped clean and used on both sides.
• Leave a margin around the drawing as wide as your paint roller (3–4 cm for me).
• Put cardboard inside the shirt, pin the stencil to it, and pin down the loose ends of the ribs so they don't flip up.
• Roll the first layer of paint through the stencil, then paint the second layer with a brush. The first layer looks far from perfect; the second one fixes it.
• Paint the ribs first and let them dry before the centre. Acrylic paint only washes off while it's wet, so clean the stencil straight away. The same with the fabric: if you touch it by accident, clean it right away.

Materials for the skeleton stencil

• Wide clear sticky tape to laminate the paper stencil Find it ↗
• Regular printer paper for the stencil
• Small paint roller 4 cm wide
• Brushes a soft wide one and a harder thin one for the outlines Find it ↗
• White acrylic paint about 90 ml Find it ↗
• Silver acrylic paint about 45 ml Find it ↗
• Paint tray
• Sewing pins cheap ones: they got dirty with paint, so I threw them away when I finished
• Top and leggings sewn from free PDF patterns (see my video on downloading them)