Mask-Making Workshop

In cooperation with Play Park Kujira Yama ( a weekly pop-up adventure playground in Tokyo) I'll be leading a Halloween mask-making workshop culminating with a cardboard pinata we'll decorate the day of the event. Oide!

Who: preschool and elementary aged children and their parents

What: recyclable Halloween hat and mask making

Where: Koganei Musashino Park next to Kujira Yama

When: Friday, October 24th, 2014 from 2pm - 4:30pm

Please bring some light weight cardboard, a stapler and scissors (with your name on them) and okashi/snacks to fill  our pinata!

Newspaper Witch's Hat

Newspaper wig HERE

Although it's already Mid November, I just wanted to say thanks again to all of you who took the Cardboard Costume Challenge this year.

Whether you sent in pictures or just got thinking about the idea for the future, thanks for following us on this year's Halloween adventure. I had so much fun working on our insect family costumes as well as the other costume tutorials.

I hope to see you again next year, and please visit the Pinterest Board now and then as you start scheming and dreaming for 2014. (I already have a request for a Humback Whale costume from the littlest one and a year might be just enough time to figure it out!)

How to Start a Body Piece For a Cardboard Costume

In case you are just starting your costume, (like me) I wanted to show you that you can still get started with a cool cardboard costume and finish before Halloween (you will have to hustle). Although I'm going as a grasshopper, most elements are the same, I'll just be dealing with extra legs and antennae...

Just start with long cardboard strips, (mine are a rulers width), and drape them over the shoulders attaching horizontal strips as needed.

You can build a structure pretty quickly on which to start gluing cardboard skirt pieces and armor layers.

The rounded layers on the shoulders above are made by tracing a variety of bowls and plates, cutting them in half, then folding them and gluing them into place.

Really, it's not about the cardboard though, is it? It's about trying something new that you have never done before....it can make you sheepish. Well, I'm here to say: You can do this!

My inspiration: these incredible costumes from last year's challenge:

Archery Knight by Rachel and Tom Morgan

Cardboard Knight Costume by wrnking via Flickr

More Inspiration:

A Great Cardboard Helmet Tutorial via Instructables

A Great Cardboard Armor Tutorial via Instructables

Butterfly & Moth: Sneak Peak

We've started to add elements to the cardboard hat pieces we made yesterday. Eyes are made from watercolor painted paper liners for shipping apples and citrus and the green fringe on the front of the moth mask is made from egg cartons...

Gathering Inspiration & Making a Plan

When my daughter decided that she was going to be a butterfly this year, we thought, hey why not be a whole family of insects?

Then the real thinking began and we each had to commit to our insect of choice... My husband chose early and is following an entirely logical, and proper plan for attacking his costume, bit by bit. Although it's not typically my style ( I wish it was), I'm going to try following his approach this year too.

Here's what we've done so far:

1. Create an inspiration board. I like to use Pinterest. Here's a link to the board I'm using for my Grasshopper costume. I usually try to gather examples from the following categories to get a well rounded amount of inspiration and produce a unique and creative costume.

• realistic images (many views)

• inspirational costumes

• images that address problems or difficult parts

• images that inspire shapes or moods

2. Create a detailed sketch of your costume. I like my husband's approach of folding a regular piece of white paper in half vertically and drawing the costume from the front and back. It keeps it simple. After drawing, he began to add measurements.

3. Collect materials and prototype. I like to try smaller versions of some costume parts first to see if my ideas will work, then I know if I have to keep trouble shooting any parts of the costume.

How about you? Are you well on your way, or just getting started?

More Cardboard Heads

We've already gotten our first photos for the Cardboard Costume Challenge!

Christine Scheer made this incredible Pavlov's Dog head entirely from cardboard for a cardboard costume charity event she attended in late September.

You can see how Christine started her head by making the upper and lower cardboard jawbone pieces and then used strips to connect the pieces.

This a truly original costume idea! Thanks for sending your awesome pictures Christine!

Cardboard Costume by Christine Scheer

Cardboard Mermaid Costume

There wasn't much time during the frenetic week leading up to Halloween to share the details of the cardboard mermaid costume with you, so those of you who have been wondering what happened to the pile of brown cardboard fish scales, well here they are in technicolor:

The mermaid costume was my favorite of the cardboard costumes I made for my family and myself because it involved a whole different approach to working with cardboard- threading together many cardboard pieces to create a kind of flexible cardboard skin. The costume is very securely held together, so one of the problems, in fact, was that is was a little hard for my daughter to move around in.

Remember the sage advice I passed on to you at the beginning of the challenge about creating a costume that you could sit down in? Well, we had a few problems in that department....

You can see the back of the costume here, which was covered with a cape for warmth, as well as to hide the paper cords. It's possible to create a costume that is seamless, but because we had to take my daughter in and out of the costume a lot, I didn't work too hard to make it all fit together perfectly. I'm thinking of adapting this costume into a downloadable PDF someday, so I'm going to keep expanding on some of the new ideas I tried while making the cardboard mermaid gown.

We painted the scales with regular watercolors, which worked beautifully and gave the costume soft, romantic coloring. I loved the fact that every scale was a little bit different because of the blending of the blues,  greens and yellows.

The great thing was that the costume was well loved, and my daughter just beamed on Halloween night, scooting carefully around from house to house with her sister Little Red Riding Hood.

Cardboard Costume Challenge Results

[slideshow_deploy id=2839] (Notes: Because all of the costumes were essentially made of cardboard elements mixed with other media, I eliminated the "hybrid" category. There were no bicycle costume entries.)

Adults:

Edward Westerhuis: I am the Ram! Cardboardia: Cardboard Jack-o-lantern (Special Mention) Leelada via Flickr: Cardboard Cowboys

Kids:

wrnking via Flickr: Cardboard Knight Rachel and Tom Morgan: Archery Knight

Kid Made:

Leo: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Sid: Star Wars Storm Trooper (Special Mention) Lego Block

You all have me pondering the many new ideas you put out there with your incredible costumes! I'm thinking about metallic cardboard, felt on cardboard, fringed cardboard, cardboard horns, and wearable cardboard houses and cars.

So much inspiration! I hope you feel the same way! The level of creativity that turned out for the challenge was so overwhelming, I hope everyone feels a great sense of accomplishment from the costumes they created. Tomorrow I'll be posting some reflections about the challenge and welcome your suggestions for next year.

Deep bows to all our judges and to MakeDo Japan for donating MakeDo kits to all the winners of the contest!

Cardboard Costumes of 2012

As you can see from the pictures, the only thing that can keep you from smiling when you're wearing a cardboard costume is the rain!

Cardboard Cowboys by Leelada via Flickr

Wow!!!!!!! & I Need your Help!

1. Cardboard Contest 2012, 2. IMG_7213, 3. Cardboard, 4. Accessory 1 ~ Photo 7 (made from cardboard cereal boxes), 5. Cardboard gargoyle mask, 6. Skull Mask, 7. African buffalo mask, painted, 8. Supernatural Habitat, 9. Made in Cardboardia. Workshop in Moscow., 10. Made in Cardboardia. Workshop in Moscow., 11. Minister of Culture, 12. Day of Giant Tyran's Creatures, 13. Sea creatures, 14. Costume, 15. Cardboard Ishkabibble costume by Anandamayi Arnold, 16. картонная маска Бкнганга3

Wow!!!! I am in awe of the fantastic costumes that have been entered so far............ but I know we can get more people involved!

We want as many people to enter the Cardboard Costume Challenge and show their creations as possible! This is our chance to inspire a movement of incredible cardboard costumes full of creativity and craftsmanship!

Maybe you weren't able to enter the contest but you have a friend that made an incredible costume out of cardboard, or another student at your child's school? Help them to enter! I'm extending the submission deadline to Nov. 2 to allow for entries from various time zones.

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You can copy and paste this message into your email or smart phone:

I saw your amazing cardboard Halloween costume today, and wanted to tell you that you should enter this cardboard costume challenge online http://thecardboardcollective.com/cardboard-costume-challenge/ There are prizes from Make-Do (a cardboard construction kit) and several different categories to enter. Check it out and hey, great job on your costume!

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MakeDo Japan kindly donated the best prizes ever! One of the most imagination-inducing, creativity-boosting, cardboard-affirming toys on the planet! Thanks so much MakeDo Japan!

Live in Japan and want to buy MakeDo so you can tinker with cardboard throughout the year? click here. If you are an English speaker and need language help to purchase MakeDo, email me at thecardboardcollectiveblog@gmail.com

If you live elsewhere, MakeDo is available via Amazon.

Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Cardboard Wolf

I finished the wolf mask!

Just in time for some shopping and a little adventure to the Kawasaki Halloween event!

[slideshow_deploy id=2761]

Sadly, we had to come home early and didn't get to see the parade, just the costume contest. We thought our costumes were pretty clever until we saw the Rocky Horror Christmas group costume. Amazing!

Halloween may be a relatively new holiday in Japan, but in the land of anime and cosplay, dressing up is taken pretty seriously.

5 minute Cardboard Petticoat

While I realize not every costume can be best created out of cardboard, I wanted to inspire you with a little idea for some covert cardboard.

At one point I tried to construct a full blown petticoat out of cardboard, but after more than one failure, I thought there must be a better way.....

Surely this is a trick that every mother should have up their sleeve? A kind of Julie Andrews move akin to pulling the drapes off the wall and stitching up a dress, except you'll pull a strip of cardboard out of your recycling and make an ever-puffy twirly skirt.....hopefully while singing?

Just staples and a long strip of cardboard is all you need. Make sure that the corrugations in the cardboard run parallel to the skirt's hem and you'll get a smoother contour.

Cardboard Karma Chameleon

A few more tweaks and this guy's ready to dance!

How are your costumes coming?

We have a little less than a week left!

Can't wait to see YOUR creation! Upload to Flickr or just shoot me an email with your costume photo attached to thecardboardcollectiveblog@gmail.com

Adapting a sewing pattern for cardboard

It's often handy to work from a pattern if you're feeling squeamish about designing a headpiece for your costume from scratch. Sewing patterns are a great option if you can get your hands on an appropriate pattern for the costume you're making. Here I've adapted a simple child's hood pattern into a headpiece that is big enough to fit an adult.

1. Trace your pattern pieces onto cardboard and cut them out.

2. Texturize your cardboard by crumpling it up and twisting it, this will give your cardboard a more leather-like texture and make it easier to work with.

3. Cut thin flexible strips of strips of cardboard about 1.5 to 2 in. wide by whatever length you will need (I like boxes that are similar in weight to pizza boxes) and glue these strips one side at a time to the two pieces that you are trying to join. Regular white glue and clamps or clothespins work great for this.

4. Continue adding your cardboard seams as you put all your pattern pieces together. trim as needed.

5. Now you can begin to modify your piece for your individual costume. Here I added more pieces with the same technique by gluing thin strips of cardboard for the seam and then attaching a forehead and jaw piece.

Links to a few handy patterns suitable for costume making:

Vest pattern by the Mother Huddle

Hood pattern by Fabric link

Children's fitted hood/hat pattern by Martha Stewart Living

Baby cowboy boots pattern by Nap Time Crafters (You could adapt this pattern for making any kind of boot-like shoe covers.)

Some cardboard texture ideas for you...

1. Cardboard spirals are great for cardboard wigs, antennas, or scary egg carton eyeballs that fall out of your glasses.

2. Egg cartons and crates make great bumps, horns, tentacles and nostrils for animal costumes.

3. Braided cardboard, Rapunzel or Boy George are just a few options to get you started.

4. Picket fences can create bones, gladiator bracelets, etc.

5. Corrugated strands separated reveal those cool crimpy parts if you're trying to add new textures.

6. Fan folded cardboard holds it's shape well for bows, fins and wings.

How to make a cardboard beard

A cardboard beard that's long and scraggly......

This project is similar to the cardboard mustache, except that you're gluing cardboard fringe onto a base. I used a rubber band threaded through two holes on the sides of the beard to secure the beard to the face.

A few costume options:

Gnome: add gnome hat

Uncle Sam: add patriotic top hat

Santa on Vacation (hey, it's Halloween!): add mustache and red or green track suit

Dr. Weil: add bald cap and mug of green tea