This Ty Beanie Baby costume is easy to make and adorable on pets but and their humans, too. Get the free SVG for this cheap and adorable DIY costume.
Back in 2017, when this post was originally written, I was at the vet every single week. My kitty Marla had gotten ill, a kidney infection that resulted in the surgical removal of the sick organ. This resulted in at least one vet appointment a week over almost 4 months. It was so much stress, a lot of driving to 3 different veterinarians, 2 of which were over an hour away, and just a ton of money.
But the thing is, if I had to do it all over again, I totally would. In fact, just the other night I was laying in bed getting a little frustrated with my kitty Mar because she just wouldn’t. leave. me. alone. All I wanted to do was sleep and all she wanted to do was jam her face onto my face making it difficult for me to breathe. I caught myself, though, and instantly felt so much gratitude that she’s still around to love on me at 3 o’clock in the morning :)
In it to win it.
One of my visits to the vet, way back when, I was in the waiting room and bored out of my gourd. And that’s when I saw the invitation to my vet clinic’s Halloween party. A party complete with a costume competition with a $100 grand prize in clinic credit. Now I don’t know if you know, but having a cat’s kidney removed is EXPENSIVE and Miss Mar has been to the vet 11 times in just 2 months so when I saw that prize I was all “THAT PRIZE IS MINE!!!” with my inner hands rubbing together.
Yeah, like that.
I came home knowing that I needed to GET ON THIS BUSINESS. But then things got nuts and I realized I lost my dog’s super adorable pet costumes. Crud. How could we win this thing with no costumes?
Working off of the common statement that my Ollie is cuter than a stuffed animal, I decided it would be adorable to turn my dogs into, TY Beanie Babies. I dug through my card stock stash and made a DIY Beanie Baby costume with very little work and even less cash. In fact, the only cost was a new collar for each of the pups, because Beanie Babies aren’t scruffy and their old collars had seen better days!
Customizing your swing tags for pet personalities.
Each Beanie Baby has a sweet poem inside of the swing tag. I think the most fun part of this project was making the poems that go inside of the tags. Now Ollie is serious business and everybody says so. Every week he would hear our cleaning lady Laura croon “Why are you so serious?” Because he is. He’s all business all the time. And so his poem goes something like this…
Adorable, right? My other pup, Carly, came to me from a bilingual household with the name Gordita. Gordita is a Spanish term of endearment that means cute little chubby girl. Wanting to give her my own name, she was dubbed Carlita, which rhymes with Gordita. And Carlita is a special name because it is after my Boston Terrier loving grandfather Carl. And so Carly’s poem reads like this: Our little mamasita, we named her Carlita. Used to be the gordita, she’s so glad to meet you.
Don’t you just love it? Ready to make your own?
Supplies needed for DIY Beanie Baby Costumes:
- Cardstock in red, white, gold
- Printer (I LOVE my HP Envy)
- Cricut Maker (Amazon | Cricut) or Explore Air 2 (Amazon | Cricut)
- Adhesive (I used rubber cement)
- Ribbon
For this project, you can use any gold cardstock you have in your stash. Mine was a crosshatched affair but glitter would be super adorable, too! And since this was a temporary addition to the pup’s collars, I used gift wrapping curling ribbon to attach them.
Download Your Free Ty Beanie Baby Swing Tag Cut Files
Cutting your shapes.
Originally this project was offered as a Silhouette cut file, only. Since I don’t even have a Silhouette anymore, and lots of you have a variety of cutting machines, I decided to update this post with an SVG file we can all use. Because I’ve lived and learned a bit, the file is a little different than what you’ll see in the photos, because those are original to this post. Let’s go over what you’ll find in your ZIP file.
Firstly you’ll cut your SVG file. From that file, here is your cut list:
- Ty worded shape out of red
- Large heart shape out of gold
- Small heart shape out of white
For Ollie, who is a big boy, around 80 pou nds at the time of these photos, and his tag was sized at 9.5 inches wide. Carly, who is significantly smaller, around 22 pounds soaking wet, her tag was 7 inches wide. Size your files prior to cutting accordingly for your size costume.
The font you’ll need is Comic Sans, the font everybody loves to hate! I think it is on absolutely every single computer in the world so, yay, you should already have it. Included in the ZIP file for the cut files is a Word Document with Ollie’s poem inside for you to customize for your own pet. Note you might need to modify the font size to fit on your swing tag.
If you don’t have Microsoft Word, ’cause I don’t either, you can upload the file to Google Docs and rock that sucker out for free.
Putting together your cut cardstock shapes.
Each piece has a hole in the corner to hang your swing tag by the collar with ribbon. This hole also helps to make matching up the shapes a breeze. Place your red heart shape over the white and glue into place.
Glue the Ty logo shape onto your gold shape, matching up the hole in the corner as best as you can. Allow everything time to dry.
Print your poem out and make sure it will fit neatly onto your white heart cut out (with the swing tag’s hole on the upper right side). Once you’re happy with the fit, glue your poem onto the backside of your cardstock piece. If you find that this seems to be a bit flimsy, cut another of the larger heart shape out of white cardstock and glue in between the gold piece and your poem for a sturdier swing tag.
Trim the excess paper away from the cardstock heart with a craft knifeor scissors.
Add a length of ribbon to secure the swing tag to your dog’s collar and this DIY Beanie Baby costume is done!
How cute does this swing tag look on?
See?!? He’s just so SERIOUS!
Now normally a swing tag would be folded and open up but that just seemed like a lot of trouble and asking for even more trouble with more edges to get caught up on and this is infinitely easier, lighter and I don’t think the pups know the difference, anyway :)
While I made this Beanie Baby Costume for my pets, it can easily be a costume for our dog’s humans, too. With one of those onesie pajama cosplay type animal outfits like these, this Beanie Baby Swing Tag is totally a people worthy Halloween costume, too!
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