Having a Great Dane as a fur baby is one of the coolest things ever, except when she gets out of the house without a harness on and wants to play tag. And except when you have to clean your yard of toxic Dane cow pies. And probably except when you go to dress your Dane up for Halloween and realize that you’re going to have to get a little crafty.

XXL in dog shirt size is kind of like going to buy a size L at Hollister and realizing that L at Hollister stands for extra small.

This year, I’m going trick or treating as a Wookie and I wanted Pearl to have a costume that was almost as awesome as mine, and equally nerdy, so I decided to make her an R2D2 costume. I’m just awesome like that. It was quite easy, even for this non-crafty gal, and all it requires is some tulle, a ribbon, a styrofoam half-sphere, some paint, and about 90 minutes of your time.

Since Pearl isn’t used to wearing clothing, getting this dog to put her Halloween costume is a little bit of a fight.

Dressing her is similar to getting Grady to bed on nights he just doesn’t want to go to bed. We found that using treats to focus her attention helps.

To add insult to injury, photographing Pearl is an even more difficult task that requires incredible shutter speeds. You’d really have an easier time photographing lightning, but we harnessed her up to capture the incredible power of the force of my dog costume making abilities.

The force was strong with me the day I made that helmet.

To make your own R2D2 Halloween costume for your large breed dog, make sure you have 1 roll of royal blue tulle, 2 rolls of white tulle, 1 roll of silver or grey tulle, one styrofoam half sphere, a stretchy headband, hot glue, and some blue, silver, black, and red acrylic craft paint.

To make the tutu part of the costume for your dog, measure a length of ribbon around the dog’s abdomen, leaving about 18” on each side where you will tie a bow. You may want to carefully burn the edges of the ribbon with a lighter to make sure they don’t unravel.

Figure out how long you’d like your tutu and measure your tulle out.

You want each piece of tulle to be twice the length you’d want your actual skirt. Pearl’s pieces were about 24” long. The best way to cut and measure the tulle from the spools is to measure and cut one piece, lay it down on a length of tulle the same length, then begin folding the tulle until the spool is used up. Then cut the tulle in two places – one at the top, and one at the bottom, that will give you perfectly sized tulle for your tutu.

To start the tutu, fold the ribbon in half, then fold one piece of tulle in half and – right in the middle of the ribbon – place the folded tulle under the ribbon, close to the top where you’ve folded the tulle. You will then place the ends of the tulle piece through the loop and pull tight. Repeat this step for the entire tutu.

The pattern for the R2D2 tutu was 6 pieces of white tulle, one blue, three silver, one blue, repeat.

I repeated the pattern until I had used the entirety of one whole spool of silver tulle. This skirt comes together in about an hour and can be done while watching TV or listening to your new favorite album.

The helmet was also super easy, and requires very little artistic ability. You really only need to know how to draw squares, rectangles, and circles to do a great job on the helmet.

Paint the whole helmet with silver paint and allow to dry. Then pull up a 360* photo of R2D2 and follow the pattern of his helmet. Once the helmet is dry, use a hot glue gun on the low setting to affix a stretchy headband to the inside of the helmet. This will help keep the helmet on your big dog, even during their insane and unplanned energy bursts during a photoshoot.

Once you’re done putting the R2D2 Costume for dogs together, make sure you let them wear it a few times before the big night, and take some treats out with you so that the dog doesn’t feel left out when nobody gives them a candy bar.

Taking a big dog trick or treating in a themed costume is the biggest way to land your mug in a local publication, and I don’t know about you? I totally dig the attention.

Do you dress your dog up for Halloween?