T and S

Here is the making of our costumes. When we decided we wanted to be Mr. and Mrs. Fox we had no clue where to begin! We are DEFINITELY not costume makers, but with a little imagination it all worked out. We can't believe they turned out as well as they did, and while they are FAR from perfect, we are so pleased with them.

I have never done a step by step tutorial. So if you have any questions that I left out, feel free to ask.

Step 1: We purchased these carvable fake pumpkins at Hobby Lobby (you can get them at any craft store). We sawed off the top stem and made the hole in the bottom larger, we then tried them on, and using a laser pointer, pinpointed where the eye-holes needed to be and cut them out.

Step 2: We cut slits in the side and made these ears out of foam core. We attached a lot of duct tape and heavy-duty glue on the inside and a little on the outside for stability (you can see where the amateurism is coming in).

Step 3: Using high density foam, we molded and cut snouts and attached them to the front of the pumpkin with Shoe-goo. This glue seemed to work the best and only took overnight to harden completely. I added duct tape to my snout for a little more enforcement.

Step 4: Next we added pillow stuffing and duct tape around the eyes to make eyebrow and cheek bones. This really helped with the face shape.

Step 5: Then came the hard part! The fur. We purchased the faux fox fur on amazon and the white fur at JoAnn's. We first put white fabric up to the base and traced a pattern of the head. Then we added 1" to each side of the pattern because the thickness of the fur. Next you just lay the pattern on the fur and cut away. We attached the fur with hot-glue and fabric glue. We found it worked well to attach the bulk of the fur with fabric glue and then glue the edges with hot glue. We didn't figure this out until about halfway into the second mask.

Step 6: This isn't really a step, but some things we found helpful were doing each part of the fur in sections, first we did the lower snout in white, then upper snout and the upper head to the ears, next the front and back of the ears and finally the back of the head.

We put pins in the fur to hold it in place while we were gluing the edges and cutting off any excess.

These are the masks with no eye holes- slightly creepy!

Step 7: Next we cut out the eyes. We did this by coming from the inside with a razor blade a cutting a slit where the eyes were. Then we just pulled the fabric to the inside and hot glued it around the edges of the eye (on the inside).

Step 8: I don't have any pictures of the next steps, but we used paint samples for the eyes and cut them to our preferred shape and then hot glued them to the inside on top of the fur we had pulled in to make the eye holes. Then we found some poor stuffed animals at the D.I. and cut off their noses and hot glued them to the front of the snout. The eyebrows and mouths were drawn on with Mascara and then hair sprayed to avoid movement. The whiskers are made out of black wire.

Step 9: We trimmed and trimmed until we were happy with how the fur looked. If you want to undertake this task, make sure you have a really good vacuum. Between carving the fake pumpkins and trimming and cutting the fur, our house was a complete disaster for well over a week.

It was such a LONG process! This is probably because we are amateurs. If we were to do it again we could cut the time in half. We had so much fun making them together though! It was fun to start a project together and finish together. I was worried I would be the one doing most of the work, but Taylor was with me through it all and had awesome ideas. Looking back we can't believe we undertook such a risk and such a time sucker, but we are glad we did! We won't ever forget the fun experience this was.

Check out our Oh how fantastic! costumes.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Making our Fantastic Mr. Fox 'Stumes!

Oh How Fantastic!