I got a lot of questions about my costume this year, so I thought I’d write a post explaining how I made it.
Every year, if I decide to dress up, the costume comes together the day of Halloween. From the moment I’ve thought about the idea to the moment I put the costume on, it happens in a 24 hour span and it is a wave of crazy.
My two most epic costumes to date: the house from the movie Up (sorry I have little documentation of that one) and this one with my friend Jason (we chose to be tin can telephones!).
Every year, if I decide to dress up, the costume comes together the day of Halloween. From the moment I’ve thought about the idea to the moment I put the costume on, it happens in a 24 hour span and it is a wave of crazy.
My two most epic costumes to date: the house from the movie Up (sorry I have little documentation of that one) and this one with my friend Jason (we chose to be tin can telephones!).
Jason came up with the idea for the structural framework. We found cylindrical collapsible laundry hampers; they were awesome for keeping the formwork, super light, & reasonably well ventilated.
I busted out my creative skills and mocked together a Campbell’s soup label and added my own twist of humour to ensure that this would be a memorable piece. I walked into the print shop with no file created, sat myself down for an hour and crunched out our labels. Two large format prints later and I was walking out ready to put this together.
I didn’t want tape, or glue to hold this entire thing together, in my experience with the Up house, glue doesn’t dry fast enough & if you tape the wrong thing, don’t even bother try to peel it off, things will get peeled off where they shouldn’t- it just gets ugly. So there we were at the art store figuring out how we were going to pull this off when it hit me, velcro. A sidecar trip later, I was 10 yards deep in sticky back Velcro and ready to assemble away.
I busted out my creative skills and mocked together a Campbell’s soup label and added my own twist of humour to ensure that this would be a memorable piece. I walked into the print shop with no file created, sat myself down for an hour and crunched out our labels. Two large format prints later and I was walking out ready to put this together.
I didn’t want tape, or glue to hold this entire thing together, in my experience with the Up house, glue doesn’t dry fast enough & if you tape the wrong thing, don’t even bother try to peel it off, things will get peeled off where they shouldn’t- it just gets ugly. So there we were at the art store figuring out how we were going to pull this off when it hit me, velcro. A sidecar trip later, I was 10 yards deep in sticky back Velcro and ready to assemble away.
We scrunched up silver gift wrap paper, the kind that doesn’t crease well when you’re wrapping Christmas gifts. And taped that down to the underside of label to achieve the “tin” look. We lined the Velcro along the spiral metal framework of the laundry hamper to get as much contact between the label and structure as possible, we had no problems in our costumes because of this- genius!
As for holes for our arms and head, we didn’t bother trying to cut circles, squares, or triangles. Instead, we just cut out x’s and let that dictate size. It worked really well while preserving most of the valuable humour on our labels, ftw!
As for holes for our arms and head, we didn’t bother trying to cut circles, squares, or triangles. Instead, we just cut out x’s and let that dictate size. It worked really well while preserving most of the valuable humour on our labels, ftw!
If I were to do it again, I’d mark the x’s first instead of after. I’d make the labels a bit longer to cover the entire circumference of the cylinder. But all in all, I’d say it was a success. In my mind, we won the best costume.
And that’s the story of my costume, send me a note if you have any other questions!
And that’s the story of my costume, send me a note if you have any other questions!
