Do you have young kids that are Paw Patrol obsessed like mine? Then this post is for you!
Last year my two sons {then ages 2 and 3.5} who requested to be Chase and Marshall for Halloween. As you may know, Chase is the police pup, and Marshall is the firefighter pup. Like a lot of little boys, my son’s already had a police costume and a fireman costume that they use for dress up, so I wanted to find a way to work with what we already had, and today I’m sharing the simple DIY details for all the mom’s out there whose kids have the same request this Halloween.
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My boys love to dress up! They love hats, caps, jackets, silly glasses, and masks. Thanks to their grandma, they have quite an collection of dress up clothes, include a rack of costumes {mostly Melissa and Doug brand} as well as drawers full of accessories.
When they requested to be Marshall, the fire pup, and Chase, the police pup, for Halloween, I wanted to work with what we already had, so I grabbed the fire and police jackets from their dress up closet and started contemplating how to add the canine elements.
In my boys’ dress up arsenal, they also have a few animal masks that they love because they make noise. These Furree Face masks are prefect for kids because they are worn like a headband and have cute noses, but they don’t cover the eyes or mouth – so you don’t have to worry about little ones running around bumping into things or not being able to breath well. I decided to check to see if these masks also came in a dog variety, and sure enough they do… a dog with a white face and brown ears.
The only problem is that neither Chase or Marshall from the Paw Patrol have a white face and brown ears, so here is where mom gets crafty {with the help of an even craftier grandma}…
Marshall the fire pup is a Dalmatian, so we decided that all we need to do was switch out the ears. We started by cutting the brown off as close the headband as possible.
Then we traced the ears onto a piece of notepaper to create a quick template for cutting new white ears out of white felt.
My mom stitched two layers of white felt together to create each new ear, but since felt doesn’t fray, you could simply cut only layer and skip the sewing machine.
I then used a sharp pair of fine point scissors to cut dalmatian spots out of black felt. I just free handed the spots since they don’t need to have any particular shape. Then I pinned the spots to the ears in the approximate locations that I wanted.
My mom used black thread to quickly hand stitch the spots to the ears.
Finally, we used white thread to hand stitch the new dalmatian ears onto the headband.
With the mask altered to look like a dalmatian, all that was left to create the Marshall costume was adding a few Paw Patrol badges to the fireman costume we already owned. I grabbed a couple of badge images from free downloads available online and printed them on sticker paper. I placed a paw print badge directly on the front of a red plastic fireman helmet. Then I stuck the Marshall badge to a thin piece of chipboard and attached a small pin to the back {both left over from a past craft projects}. I pinned this second badge to the fireman jacket.
He wasn’t quite feeling “all fired up” in this photo, but Cooper still makes a darn cute Marshall!
Turning a second Furree Face mask into Chase, the police pup was an even easier task. The color of the ears worked well for Chase, so all I needed to do was take the face from white to brown. I tested a number of fabric markers to find the one that would best work on the fur of the mask.
The two best options were a brown Sharpie marker and a brown Crayola Fabric Marker. I ultimately chose the Sharpie, but both worked well.
Once the mask was colored brown, the only thing left to do was flip the ears up to make them look more like Chase’s ears. I did this by using a safety pin to attach the ears, in a perked up position, to the fabric police hat.
Just like with the Marshall costume, I printed a couple of badges on sticker paper to complete this Chase costume. I added a paw print badge to the plastic badge on the hat, and added Chase’s badge and name to the plastic name tag in the jacket pocket.
“Chase is on the case!”
All these DIY touches only took about an hour, and I love that I was able to use what we already owned. The boys loved that they could comfortably wear these masks all day at school, and they loved pushing the button to show their friends that their masks even barked! Best of all, these masks, with our DIY tweeks, have allowed the boys to continue playing Paw Patrol all year long.
“No job is too big, no pup is too small. Paw Patrol is on a roll!”
If you have some adorable Paw Patrol pups in your home this Halloween, I’d love to see them! Tag Blue i Style in your photos on Facebook and Instagram!
