Halloween Costumes 2012

This year's Halloween costumes were from the movie Up! I love bringing animations to life. I brought out my old house costume and took on the challenge of making Kevin, the bird. An added challenge was that it had to be wearable by a 3 year old. Which meant that attempt #1 was a no go (see below):

The neck and head were too tall and tipsy for my girl. They were attached to a bike helmet but the support still wasn't sufficient. And actually, I think the transition to the body isn't that great either. So it's probably good I had to make another attempt.

Now for a picture of my boy. I've mentioned before how active he is. Impossible to get a good still photo.

My hubs was out of town but fortunately my sweet mother-in-law came to trick or treat with us and get some group shots. I love my mother-in-law, I know not a lot of people can say that, and I feel very fortunate.

A few notes: For the scout sash, I went to the boyscouts website and downloaded a picture of each merit badge (so glad they had those available!). I put them all on one page and resized them all to 1.25 inches. I have a circle craft punch that size, so then I printed them on iron-on transfer paper (for dark shirts) and punched each one out. Peel off the backing and ironed them each onto the sash. The peeling off the backing was tricky and took forever. The shirt was from a thrift store, the rest I already had.

The bird: I wasn't planning on doing all those feathers. I was planning on just spray painting the felt body, but it looked terrible, so I had to do feathers. the orange feathers are actually just yellow felt with spray paint. Those looked fine. The body I ad-libbed and it could have been better, honestly. I'm not a great seamstress and times like these I wish I knew more, but it worked. It is padded with fiber fill (stuffing). The head started with a posterboard mold, padded with fiberfill, aluminum foil, and masking tape. I paper machéed it, let it dry, pulled out the posterboard and almost discarded the whole thing (that's when I started on head #1). It got a little deformed, so I had to remold a little with aluminum foil and then paper mache again. I used paper towels as my final layer of paper mache for a slightly better finished texture. The eyes are also paper mache (over small water balloons filled with air, not water). Turns out styrofoam balls are kind of pricey. Once dry, I spray painted it yellow and red. I used acrylic paint to do the green circles around the eye, then glued the eyes on. The pupils are drawn on with a sharpie marker. The blue part on the head is felt, and I just kind of pinned, glued, and trimmed. The head feathers are pipe cleaners and felt feathers.
Hope you had a happy Halloween too!