Young Maleficent Horns and DIY Horn Ideas

In Disney’s Maleficent, we learn the backstory of one of it’s iconic villians, Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, including getting to meet young Maleficent as a impish fairy—yes, a fairy, not a witch (or an evil queen) as many of us had been brought up believing.

This impish fairy developed for is quite a bit different than the cute other winged fairies we are used to seeing (think Tinkerbell and friends) because this fairy has animal-like horns and bird-like wings.

Any Maleficent’s costume (young or old) would not be complete without her magnificent horns as seen in the image to the right. The horns look like they would be ones from a wild animal like a kudu, an antelope or a ram.

For a young Maleficent fairy costume her horns look the most like real permanent animal horns (with growth ring ridges) that protrude from the top of her head.

Horns may be one of the few accessories you may need to purchase to make for a Young Maleficent Costume along with feather wings and pixie ears.

If you have the time to make your own I do have a several suggestions for DIY Maleficent horn ideas from clay, felt, paper and yarn.

Best Pre-Made Maleficent Horns for Children, Tweens and Teens

The Maleficent Deluxe Horns (to right) may be the best replicas of Maleficent’s new style horns. Made from durable foam horn these horns definitely look a lot like her horns in the movie.

This was the set that I purchased for my own adult Maleficent costume. Advantages of the deluxe horns is that look the most like the ones in the movie and also are very light weight (not like some of Angelina’s versions).

However with the deluxe horns measuring 8 inches, they are not an ideal size for young children, tweens and smaller teens.

Better choices for younger heads are the swirl horns or the glow horns.

Handmade Swirl Horns — Handmade 3 in. Swirl Horns

The 3 inch Swirl Horns are handmade from polymer clay and are a perfect size for young children and tweens. If you are interested in tutorials for making your own polymer clay horns, check the next section.

The other pre-made horn option is the Maleficent Glow Horns or the Maleficent Movie Jakks Pacific Glow Horns. Reviews have reported that these horns are a bit top heavy and need additional support. Attatching (glue gun) an additional stretchy headband for added support to help keep the horns up.

Note: You may be able to find the glow horns for less at Toys R Us than what they are selling them for on Amazon or eBay.

Make Your Own DIY Maleficent Horns

young_maleficent_horns_square — Magnificent Horns

I was fascinated by the Maleficent Horns for the movie, so pulled together many of the patterns in the Make Maleficent Horns or Headpiece page on HubPages. I’ve pulled together several of my favorite DIY Maleficent horn ideas into an updated page for the Costume Detective for those interested in making your own.

Putting together a young Maleficent costume, making your own horns is a way to ensure you have the right size for your little woodland fairy.

The different ideas and video tutorials below include how to make Maleficent horns from clay, felt (fabric), paper and yarn.

For even more information and additional ideas see the Make Maleficent Horns or Headpiece on HubPages.

Clay Maleficent Horns

Polymer Clay Horns — Polymer Clay 3 in Horns

If you are inspired by the Polymer Clay Pan Horns making your own is pretty easy using either polymer clay (like the ones in the example to the right or even better using a lighter weight crafting clay like the Model Magic Sculpting Materials in Naturals from Crayola.

Buying the clay (or sculpting materials) in the colors you want eliminates the painting steps. Making Model Magic clay horns can be a fun project for the young cosume wearers to DIY Maleficent horns.

If regular clay is use without creating a hollow core and the horns are very large the final horns will be very heavy. To make the final horns lighter use Crayola’s Model Magic or a thin layer of polymer clay molded over a hollow core.

In this video tutorial below Helen Bernal demonstrates how to make Maleficent horns using two materials—model magic clay and felt.

Lightweight Horn Tutorial – Crayola Magic Model Sculpting Material
This amazing DIY Crayola Magic Model online tutorial for making lightweight horns comes from Kanti Krafts. Change up the shape and the colors and you have Maleficent horns.
Mini Maleficent Horns – Polymer Clay
NerdJoy shows how she made mini Maleficent horns using polymer clay. She has one version on a headband and the other glued to hair clips (so they are small).
DIY Horns – Clay
Ebot show how they used clay to make animal-like horns, which they call dragon horns.

Felt Maleficent Horns

Felt can be used in several ways to make Maleficent horns either flat as with the paper templates next or 3 dimentional.

These felt troll horns are easily converted to Maleficent versions, by changing the colors. Attach the horns to a headband and you have the horns for a costume.

One of my favorite Maleficent horn tutorials is the one from ThreadBanger. They use felt, a Buckram base and light weight clay to craft these stylish looking horns and headpiece.

Paper or Foamie Maleficent Horns

Cutting Maleficent horns from paper, from cardstock or even foamsheets and attaching them to headbands is a quick and easy way to make Maleficent horns. One option is to use the adjustable paper horn headpiece from the Movie. Another is to use some free horn images and turning them into your own templates.

Disney Parks Maleficent Movie Exclusive Sneak Peek Paper Horns Headpiece
Download and printout this color die-cut cardstock adjustable paper horns headpiece that was one of the premiere promotions for the Disney’s Maleficent film.

Here are some of the freely available horn images that can be printed out and turned into paper versions or used as templates for fabric, felt or foam sheet versions.

Kudu Clipart
Kudu image is from the book by Worthington Hooker, The Child’s Book of Nature (New York:Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, 1886) 131.
Common Antelope Clipart
This antelope image comes from the book by S. G. Goodrich, The Animal Kingdom Illustrated (New York: A. J. Johnson & Co., 1885) 542.
Antelope Clipart
Another free antelope clip art for printing.

Be watching for the Free Maleficent Horn Templates to Download and Use that I designed for the Squidoo Happy Halloween lens which are still avialble for download on the Make Maleficent Horns or Headpiece page.

Yarn Maleficent Horns – Knit and Crochet Patterns

Some of my favorite Maleficent horn patterns are those that I found done for knitting and crochetting. While some of the patterns that I found were not specifically designed for Maleficent horns, these can be easily adjusted with the right colors into Maleficent horns. I’ve pulled a few of my favorite patterns here. More can be found at the Make Maleficent Horns or Headpiece page on HubPages.

Crochet Patterns

Crochet horns gives you the nice ridging pattern seen on the young fairies animal horns.

Raven and Evil Lady Horn Hat
This crochet pattern for an evil queen horn hat comes from Dragonbird. This pattern may be one of the closest ones to the new Maleficent horns.
Gamzee Horns
This crochet pattern for cute pair of Gamzee Horns comes from crochet cuties. Done in black or brown the horns can become ones for the impish fairy.
Devil Horns
Another cute crochet pattern this one from Vegan Craftastic for a pair of Devil horns. Crochet them in black and you have a pair of fairy horns.

Knit Patterns

While the knit patterns are not done specifically for Maleficent, these Viking horn hat patterns can be repurposed into Maleficent horns with different sizes, colors and repositioning the location of the horns in the hats.

Viking Hat – Free Pattern!
This knit pattern is from Knit for Your Life. By adjust the color scheme and the size of the horns on this Viking hat knit pattern you can create a black hat with fairy horns.
Kat’s Devilish Ear Flap Ski Hat “Two Sticks”
This knit pattern from Kat’s Scratch Pad with a few color tweaks will let you knit up a black ski hat with flaps, a la Maleficent style.

Wearing Maleficent Horns + Hair – Tips to Get the Horns to Stay in Place

Once you have purchased or made the horns, keeping the horns in place seems to be one of the common issues from the pre-made horn reviewers.

Helpful tips to help keep the horns to stay in place:

Reinforce the headbands or thin elastic stretch bands with an additional headband.
Put the horns on a headband or elastic stretch band and cover the headband/stretch band with a hair, a wig or hair extensions.

Covering the horns with a wig and/or hair extensions was the trick used by the costumers for the Maleficent movie.

An additional benefit to covering the headband horns with hair (real or fake) it that this technique helps to reinforce the illusion that horns are growing out of the top the head.

For those without naturally brown hair, or who do not want to use their own hair as fairy hair, getting a brown wig or several hair pieces or extensions will help to hold the horns in place.

Styling Maleficent hair, either normally or as a wig, is pretty simple—it is long, straight (with maybe just a tiny curl at the ends) and the small braid on the left side of her face.

I have split the information on the Young Maleficent costume into several pages. Look for more information on her costume, makeup, hair and nails and her forest accessories (necklace, bracelet and treasure pouch) on these pages:

Young Maleficent on Pinterest

To share our ideas and inspiration for making your own Young Maleficent costume and to collect ideas from other Maleficent Movie fans we have a Pinterest board especially for the DIY Young Maleficent Costume Ideas from the Disney Maleficent Movie. Be sure to visit Pinterest and follow us for updates.

This board is a collection of Young Maleficent images that inspired her costume, hair and makeup. For Maleficent herself, you can see our DIY Maleficent Movie Costume Ideas.

Follow The Costume Detective’s board DIY Young Maleficent Costume Ideas on Pinterest.

Costume Breakdown History

This costume breakdown tutorial was originally featured as the Young Maleficent Movie Costume lens on Squidoo, now on HubPages.

Young Maleficent Images from Disney’s Maleficent on Facebook.