Halloween Costumes

Stormfly's face is based on the bird masks from last year, but with a new nose horn (a little shorter than the real thing) and a different paint job.

Shoulder pads:
I bought some foam sheets from a craft store. This is great stuff, easy to use, flexible, strong, and takes a coat of paint. Perfect for making the armoured shoulders of the costume.

First I cut strips of the same length and width, (xcm x 5cm wide), then trimmed them to the shapes above. Each set of four makes one shoulder.

These were then glued in place, and all four held in place with corn forks till the glue dried. By placing them the right way, they were curved into shape. Small circles were cut and glued in place to make the rivets

The shoulders were then sprayed with dark silver paint, and dry-brushed with a lighter silver for the highlights.
The biggest issue was how to hold the shoulder pads onto the fur material of the clothes we had in place for the fur collars. I tried staples, discarded stitches, as they would cut through the foam, and decided glue would not hold on the fur. In the end, the ideal solution were those little brass round headed fasteners used to hold paper together. The kind of thing that is never used as stationary, but only in craft projects. These things.

One of the features that distinguishes Astrid's costume is the little bird skulls all over it. These were moulded in a cool lightweight clay, and baked for 15 minutes, before having the lines an eye-socket marked out with black paint. Super-easy. They're also very easy to hold in place with hot-glue, due to their lightness.

The whole ensemble for the top half in place.

The skirt was the part I was to have the most trouble with.

Halloween 2015

This year, the kids decided they wanted to do their own pumpkins, which was fine by me, as the suggestions that were put forward when I asked what they wanted got particularly outlandish So, by doing them themselves, we get back to a more traditional face carving on our pumpkins.

Here below is the original design for the cat pumpkin, as you can see, the final work is quite faithful to the original draft!

This years costumes were started way in advance. The original plan was to have an Astrid, and a Stormfly. For various reasons, not least the sturdiness of the Stormfly costume, and our doubts as to it lasting a day at daycare, we ended up with two Astrid costumes on the workbench.

As a bonus, Abi  didn't want the rabbit to be left out of the costume event, so thought we should make him little wings, so he could be Toothless. Of course, with a plan as complete, and as cute as that, how could we possibly not! Of course, he could also be a bat!

Halloween 2014

This year's pumpkins were a little more taxing than previous years for some reason. Maybe I was just getting over confident after the successes of previous years.. Next year, remind me, if one of them asks for Hello Kitty again, just to say yes!

LP wanted Toothless, the dragon from how to train your dragon, but she wanted the whole dragon, like this one we found online, but I couldn't find a template for it, and although I could maybe freehand a dragon, there was no guarantee it would look like Toothless. In the end I managed to convince her to go with the one pictured here, and she likes it too.

Abi wanted an owl, much easier to find, however, I made a bit of a mess of it, and I left too few points of contact with the owl and the rest of the pumpkin, so it broke off at the legs, and needed cocktail stick surgery to keep it in place. It should last to Halloween, but not likely much longer.

As to the costumes, this year they are a cowgirl, and a baby cow (as Abi insists on calling the costume, even though her sister corrects her to calf every time she says it).

 

 Happy Halloween!

Halloween Masks

K and I do love Halloween, though we don't always have an excuse to dress up,. This year, we are heading out for a Halloween supper with the kids and a local kid-friendly cafe. Well, it's more than kid friendly, it's designed to be a place where the kids can run about and play while the parents have a seat and a coffee.

We didn't want to go the whole hog for a costume, but we did need to do something. Luckily, this site came across my Facebook feed last week, and I figured it gave the perfect answer. Cheap, but looks good.

We chose the bird mask, and then set to using the pdf Template required to make the masks out of old cereal packets.

I think they work rather well, especially after the coat of silver paint.