Halloween Costume Idea: DIY Despicable Me Minion Goggles

UPDATE: Amazon now has these cute minion goggles for sale, and they’re only $9.99 with free shipping for Prime members.

We came up with our Halloween costume idea for the boys when we saw Despicable Me 2 in the theater this summer.

David and Wade both love those little minions, and the boys kind of remind me of them with all their mischief and the weird noises they make. So this Halloween they’re going trick-or-treating as Despicable Me minions.

The basic costume is pretty simple: Blue denim overalls, yellow sweatshirt hoodies. David has the overalls and Wade has a yellow sweatshirt. So I just need to get one more pair of overalls and one more sweatshirt. But those goggles? Where could I find something like that?

I looked online, and Despicable Me minion goggles are hard to come by and expensive. Last time I checked they were $28 bucks. So I started thinking about how I could make the goggles, and this is what I came up with.

First you’ll need two canning jar lid rings.

I spray painted them gray. Then I glued them together using Lock Tite Weld, because I needed something strong that would stick to aluminum.

I felt really industrial using that stuff. You have to mix the contents of the two tubes together. It’s easy. Just follow the directions on the package. If you use Weld you’ll want to protect your surface. (I used waxed paper.) And don’t use anything you can’t throw away. Once it hardens it’s on there for good. I used a plastic spoon to mix it and apply it, because I’m super professional like that.

You need to let the Weld harden over night.

If it’s too clumpy or you get some where you don’t want it, you can sand it off. I’m sure my husband has sandpaper in the garage somewhere, but I didn’t want to dig around for it. So I used an emery board, again super professional, but it actually worked pretty well. Although I probably should have taken more time getting it smooth. But I’m impatient which is why DIY isn’t really my thing.

I bought headbands in the sewing section of Walmart, then cut them and sewed them on the rings.

This is not a photo by photo tutorial, because I don’t think you’re so dense you can’t figure out how to do some of this on your own. If I could come up with this, believe me, it can’t be that hard.

Then I cut circles out of white felt for the eyes and hot glued it inside the rings.

They are not perfectly round, because I’m a lefty using righty scissors, and that makes me a terrible cutter-outer. You have no idea how hard it is to be a lefty in a righty world. I don’t know why we don’t have our own lobbyist group in D.C. I want hearing before Congress on equality for lefties!

And yes those are hair scissors, because I couldn’t find my regular ones. Super professional, see? You can tell I don’t craft much, because I don’t have proper tools like a Dremel and normal scissors.

I thought I was done at that point, but Wade put them on and said they were uncomfortable and cut into his skin. So I bought some washing machine hose. We probably had this in our garage too if I looked hard enough.

I sliced it open and put it over the nose bridge on the back for cushion. My husband also bent them a little in the middle so they would fit on the nose better. Then I covered the edges with black stripes I cut out of an old t-shirt and hot-glued. That gave it a nice black outline like the minion goggles in the movie.

It’s not that pretty on the back, but from the front I think they look pretty good. And if you’re just a little more talented than me, yours will look even better.

Here’s David with the completed goggles.

So there’s my cheap, easy, homemade, kid’s Halloween costume idea. I can’t wait to take my little Despicable Me minions trick-or-treating!

Updated: Here’s a link to the whole costume.

Linked up with I’m Lovin’ It at Tidy Mom and Inspire Me Fridays at A Five Simple Things.