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Recycling a costume

No time for anything this year!

Shredder Costume- How To Make Armor

I made 4 pieces: 2 shoulder pieces, 2 wrist pieces, and a small Shredder claw using craft foam and duct tape. I bought the craft foam at Dollar Tree. It came in a big pack like construction paper.

1. Measure your arms so you can determine how big to make the pieces. You're going to make 4 rectangles.  Here is a picture of an arm. I marked the areas where you need to make measurements using blue lines. Please ignore the red, because I don't know how to get that off the stock photo.



2. Draw your pieces on a piece of paper and use the pattern on your craft foam.



3. Cut out the craft foam pieces. Then you're going to need to curl the foam pieces using heat. Easiest way to do this is to turn on your gas stove and hold the pieces about 6-8 inches away from the flame for a couple of seconds. Wait for the foam to start to wilt and mold the pieces to your shoulder and arm. I just shaped my pieces over my shoulder and arm.



The piece should look like this when you're done.



4. Cover your pieces in duct tape.



5. Draw a fin pattern and cut the pieces out of foam. I used 2 fins on the shoulder pieces and 4 fins on the wrist pieces. I made them all the same shape and size.



6. Cover the fin pieces in duct tape.



7. Tape the fin pieces onto your arm and wrist pieces. The pieces should look like this when you're done.





I taped ribbon on the underside of the armor to attach it to my costume. This was good for the wrist pieces, but not good for the shoulder pieces. I think sewing or taping the shoulder pieces directly to the costume is more effective, but I made my Shredder costume a tube top, so that wasn't an option for me. I also didn't make a helmet.

unicorn costume how-to

This is way overdue since it's no longer Halloween. Nancy is right. Posting things after Halloween means that no one cares since it's 11 months until the next Halloween and no one is scrambling to find a costume. I'm just going to do it anyway, so I can link to it next Halloween.

These are the pieces you'll need. Two ears, a horn and a headband with two prongs. Yves used wire we bought at Michael's to attach her horn to her forehead.

For the ears:

I used a piece of glitter foam, because it's sturdy enough to stand up on its own. I thought about using pipe cleaners and felt, but this was more convenient.

I freehanded ear shapes and cut out four ear pieces.

I glued the pieces back to back and wedged them into my headband.

For the horn:

I drew a triangle on a piece of cardstock. 6 inches tall and 4.5 inches at the base.

I rolled the triangle into a cone and stuffed it with newspaper to reinforce it.

Then I cut a strip of gold fabric to wrap around the the cone. The fabric is a little messy, because it used to be the belt to my Wonder Woman costume.

I used a combo of these two adhesives to get the fabric to stick.

This is the completed cone.

Remember to leave a strip of fabric at the end to attach it to your headband. I wrapped the fabric around the headband and tucked it back into the bottom of the cone and stapled the fabric to get it to stay.

completed headband:

For the hooves:

I just folded a piece of fabric into a small rectangle, about 5 inches long and secured it with liquid stitch. Then I wore it kind of like an arm warmer.