Subscribe
Best Of
Links
Categories
Archives
Search
I already blogged about my plan to make Amelia an awesome homemade Halloween costume designed from scratch. Although I started well in advance of Halloween, I found myself gluing on scales at 2 a.m. the night before the school costume parade. The costume didn’t quite fulfill my vision of awesomeness, but it was good enough and Amelia was pleased.
Advice for future dragon costume makers:
1. Styrofoam floral forms make nice spikes. However, if your child doesn’t like being bumped into, you might ask her to reconsider being a dragon. Wearing big spikes down your back may make your costume more awesome, but it also makes it less comfortable and far less convenient. You can’t sit in a car or in a classroom with spikes sticking out of your back. A zippable hoodie helps with this problem, but putting the hoodie on and off is more tricky than you would think with the big spikes threatening to rub against each other, get chipped, lose their paint, or fall off (But we made it through the holiday without losing a single spike. Hooray!).
2. Some styrofoam spikes take spray paint pretty well (plan on at least 2 coats). Others literally dissolve! This took us by surprise. Experiment early to determine which type you have.
3. Learned the hard way: Adhering the scales to the costume is very difficult if you have already attached the spikes. Next time: scales first, then spikes!
4. Miracle: Despite my fear, it turns out that Aleene’s tacky glue is strong enough to permanently adhere the styrofoam forms to a hoodie. Saturate the bottom of the form with glue and spread glue on the fabric as well. Hold them together as long as you can stand to. Leave parchment paper under the fabric of the hoodie so that it doesn’t get glued to itself or to the table. Expect it to take at least 24 hours to dry. Dritz Liquid Stitch worked great for gluing the triangles of lizard fabric (the scales) to the hoodie. Naturally, sewing would have been better, but sewing was not an option for me, so hooray liquid stitch!)
5. Wings: Use the child’s arms as your structure. Adhere the wings to the arms of the hoodie. That way you don’t need to spend your time bending hangers or building supports or anything like that. Wings that fold in when the child puts her arms down are a whole lot easier and much more convenient!
6. Face Makeup: Google image search is your friend. I entered “dragon makeup” and found this purple dragon makeup and this green dragon makeup. I copied the best of their ideas and added some of mine. I was surprised how well it turned out given that I can’t draw and didn’t know what I was doing.
- To be continued. . .
Comments
2 Responses to “Halloween 2010– The Dragon Conquered”
Leave a Reply
[...] must. If the shower-haters demur, no colored hair for them. (As you can see in the photograph of the dragon with princess and red gladiator in the blog post below, both Duncan and Kate skipped haircoloring the night of the actual trick or [...]
Love it!! You did an amazing job. They look great, all three of them. Please don’t tell my girls, or I will end up doing something similar next year!
Pattyann´s last [type] ..Sunday Devotional – Faith