My 4-year-old wanted to be Iron Man for Halloween, and I didn't like any of the store-bought costumes, so I decided to make it myself. It really wasn't too hard and I got most of the pieces from the dollar store.

Step 1: Go to the Dollar Store

I went to the dollar store and bought some a little space man shield and arm and leg pieces. I also bought a mini garbage can and some knee pads. My original idea was to make it out of just a bunch of plastic pieces that i'd found at the dollar store, but adhering it was a problem and it didn't want it to be too heavy for him so I scrapped the idea and went with the space shield stuff instead.

Step 2: Cut

Although this isn't the piece i used, I still had to trip the chest plate to fit my son.I cut off the top piece and hot glued it lower onto the abdomen

Step 3: Spray Paint

Like I said, this was my original idea with the plastic, but I used the same method with the white space piece I had found. I just bought red and gold paint at Walmart and painted all the piece after they were cut the way I wanted and then for the small ridges, I sprayed the spray paint into a cup and used a paintbrush to get into the creases.

Step 4: Adhere

I used red elastic, self adhering velcro and hot glue to put everything together. I cut slits into the garbage can piece and slipped elastic through the back and the front and sewed it into the sweat pants he was going to be wearing. The arm and leg pieces came with straps, but I decided elastic would stay on better, so I just replaced them with elastic and tied knots so they would stay rather than sew. The pieces came with slits already in them

Step 5: Wear

I bought the red sweats at Walmart and the iron man gloves as well. The mask was from Toys-R-US. The chest light is an LED light from the dollar store that I stuck on with Velcro. I hot glued the gold leg pieces to the sweats. It wasn't a perfect costume, but I thought it looked a lot better than the pajama-suits you can buy pre-made. I painted his mustache on just in case he got sick of the mask and he just wore his black vans. It probably took me about 2 days (48 hours) to make the whole thing but I worked on it every day here and there from the beginning of October. That includes cutting time, dry time, fitting, gluing etc.. But I probably could've finished sooner if not for my busy schedule.

Total cost: probably about $45. The gloves and the mask were the most expensive at $19.99 and $9.99 but everything else was from the dollar store or Walmart.