Gus loves to read the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. So when we were kicking around ideas for Halloween costumes last month, I suggested he go dressed as Greg - the Wimpy Kid.
I got my inspiration from this bobblehead doll. Eric built the head out of various Smoothfoam™ pieces that I ordered from their website, and he used black window screen for the eyes and mouth. It was surprisingly easy to make this mask - compared to the WuShock Eric created a few years go.
The rest of the costume includes: a long-sleeved white shirt, a short-sleeved white t-shirt, black shorts, white tights, white cartoon hand gloves, a black backpack, and shoes covered in black Funky Foam sheets.
The newest Diary of a Wimpy Kid book comes out in November, so I printed out large color copies of the cover and made a giant book out of foamcore. This also serves as Gus' trick-or-treat bucket.
*As an update to this post, I've had a lot of people contact me and ask me if I'd be willing to sell my son's costume. Unfortunately no, he's pretty attached to it. But I can tell you the shapes and sizes of the Smoothfoam that we used so that you can make your own costume. My husband cut, carved and sanded the body parts into the shapes we wanted. Then he cut holes in the head and inserted the hair, nose & ears with tabs that he had carved into the foam shapes. Everything was glued in place with hot glue. And we painted the hair with gloss black spray
paint.
Here are links to all the shapes and sizes of Smoothfoam:
We used some black, see-thru mesh fabric for the eyes and mouth. And we hot-glued some cubes of soft upholstery foam inside the head (to keep it from wobbling around.)
I found the cartoon gloves here.
And for the shoes, I just bought some black slippers and hot glued a sheet of foampaper around them. I'm sure you could just use black boot-like slippers or black tennis shoes.
Good luck!
*** UPDATE 10/2/12
OK. Wow. I've been getting a crazy amount of questions lately about how we made the head. Unfortunately, we didn't really plan on making a tutorial out of this post, therefore we didn't take any "how-to" photos during the process. (Plus, we don't usually have a plan when we make our costumes, we just dive in and see what works. Or doesn't.)
But in an effort to answer some questions, I took a few more closeups of the Wimpy Kid head so that you could see how the hair is carved to look curved, and how we pieced it together. I'm also including some some pics of how the nose and ears are shaped, how the black mesh screen is glued over the eye and mouth holes, and images that show the pieces of foam that we glued on the inside to keep the head from bobbing around. We're not professional costume builders, by any means. We mostly just use the tools and supplies we can find at home or online. My husband is a woodworker, so he naturally has a shop full of tools. I realize most people won't have a handheld jigsaw to cut the foam or orbital sander to smooth it. That's what we used. But I'm sure a utility knife and some sandpaper would work too. Just might take a little longer and look a little rougher. I hope this is helpful for those of you trying to attempt making this. I applaud your efforts... go for it!
*** UPDATE 10/2/12
OK. Wow. I've been getting a crazy amount of questions lately about how we made the head. Unfortunately, we didn't really plan on making a tutorial out of this post, therefore we didn't take any "how-to" photos during the process. (Plus, we don't usually have a plan when we make our costumes, we just dive in and see what works. Or doesn't.)
But in an effort to answer some questions, I took a few more closeups of the Wimpy Kid head so that you could see how the hair is carved to look curved, and how we pieced it together. I'm also including some some pics of how the nose and ears are shaped, how the black mesh screen is glued over the eye and mouth holes, and images that show the pieces of foam that we glued on the inside to keep the head from bobbing around. We're not professional costume builders, by any means. We mostly just use the tools and supplies we can find at home or online. My husband is a woodworker, so he naturally has a shop full of tools. I realize most people won't have a handheld jigsaw to cut the foam or orbital sander to smooth it. That's what we used. But I'm sure a utility knife and some sandpaper would work too. Just might take a little longer and look a little rougher. I hope this is helpful for those of you trying to attempt making this. I applaud your efforts... go for it!