Sunday 21 October 2012

Sam's Loki Costume - in process.

So Halloween is approaching, less than two weeks to go. Eek! need to get a wriggle on with the costumes!

Luckily, they are proving to (so far) follow the simple ideas in my head. As they're just for the kids I've simplified a bit. In fact with Ethan I've completely cheated, the base of his Thor costume is shop bought, as I was having issues with finding tops in the right pattern and it was only £12.50. I'm planning on modifying it as it's not as detailed as I'd like. Anyway, onto progress pics!
 
I found this picture via Pinterest for a good front on view of Loki's armour and helmet. I decided to simplify it not only for ease, but also because when you're making it for a 2 year old, the pieces get slightly weeny, and sort of pointless.

So here is Sam's jacket so far -
 I intend to add the shoulder and forearm guard bits. The yellow is just craft foam, lightweight and bendy, practically indestructible even for my Sam. Each side piece is 2 pieces of foam, the curved main bits and the thinner top piece. to make the sort of wing-ish design I just cut into the foam but not right to the other side, so it's still all joined on the curved edge, and slightly overlapped them. I tried glueing them in place with PVA as I was told that'd work on craft foam. Not so if there is any sort of pull or resistance. Superglue however was brilliant, even if I did lose a couple of fingerprints in the process. The circles I just stuck on, again, superglue. The jacket was a simple black zip through sweater from Asda, £3 I think. Though they don't tend to sell black clothes for 2 year olds, so I bought it in age 3-4 and took it in, super easy, especially if you're not too fussy about the finished sleeves.There were literally no small boys clothes in a dark enough green, so black had to do. The foam isn't glued on yet, I'm going to spray it gold first. I'm not sure about how to attach the necklace type bit, probably glue on one side and velcro on the other so I can still get to the zip to put him in it.

And now, the helmet -
Paper mache. I've done 3 basic helmet shapes and it took the best part of 2 days, with layers and drying glue and what not. Why have I done 3 you ask? well. One for Sam, one for Ethan. The third was the first attempt of Sam's, but I made it too small, and it scratched his face putting it on. Whoops :S For the right size I measured their heads at the largest point, then added a couple of inches (I forgot to add the inches in the first attempt) then inflate a balloon, with the balloons widest point measuring the same. With Sam's second attempt it was actually a little bit too big, and he looked like a bobble head! Sigh. So this time I just cut a slit all the way up the back and overlapped the sides until it looked ok.

A tip to cut down on the time you spend paper mache-ing - draw the shape of the helmet on the balloon, and just make sure you overlap the lines a small amount. You can't see in the picture, but the back stops about halfway down the balloon. It leaves a bigger gap to get the thing on his head, and also stops it being too tall for his head too. This means that if you cover the whole balloon you're then cutting off an awful lot of waste, which you've just spent yonks glueing onto the balloon and waiting for it to dry. Can you tell I also did this on the first one?

The horns are plant wire I found in B&Q for a couple of pounds. I'll be adding craft foam to them to make them much fatter and more 3d. Then I'm going to try adding a few craft foam details to the helmet before spraying it gold. I've already sewn a rectangle of green satiny material for his cape, and he'll just wear dark trousers and wellies.

For a costume process post, this is a bit wordy! Will update with more progress when it happens!

P.S. Spellcheck says 'gluing' is the correct spelling. It just looks wrong though, so I've left the e in. Sorry if it makes you twitch ;)

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

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