Halloween 2013……. what to go as. I had planned to dress up as a zombie but Amy was after something different this year after doing a witch and vampire bride on previous years. As she was sitting down to watch despicable me 2 one day I got the idea for her to go as a minion, it was a bit more US Halloween than British Halloween but it could still work, after all how hard could it be………
Started off with a plastic swing bin. The bin tapered towards the bottom so the first step was to put some bands of foam around it to get a more level side. The bands were stuck on with spray carpet adhesive. A hole was also cut in the bottom of the bin and sanded down.
A piece of foam was wrapped around and stuck down. The foam wasn’t big enough to go all the way round so had to fill it with a another strip at the back
The dome top was made using the bin lid. The swing lid part was removed and cardboard put in its place to cover up part of the gap leaving a space for the eye. Foam was cut out into petal shapes and stuck down to create the dome shape. Tape was put on to try and create a smoother edge between the pieces of foam.
We brought some fleece like material to cover it in. It was a great colour match and quite stretchy so was easy to fit. It was glued at the edges using a glue gun. You can just seen on the edge where one of the arms has been cut out of the bin but not out of the fabric yet. Ideally the eye should have been set lower between the two pieces of the bin and the eye strap could have covered up the seam but due to the size of the bin not being that large we had to put it high on the dome. To ensure it was a a bit more straight rather than staring up at the sky some foam was put around the eye hole to create more of a vertical face for it.
The top was covered as well. Due to it being quite stretchy we didn’t need to cut any slits other than just below the eye piece on the front. Holes were cut in the fabric for the arms. The arm holes were enforced with extra bits of foam to make a softer, more comfortable hole. Extra bits of fabric were put around the hole to tidy it up a bit.
This pic shows a bit more of how the top dome had been covered. The mouth was made by cutting into the foam underneath (before putting the fleece on) into a mouth shaped groove then black felt was cut to the right shape and pressed into the groove to give it a bit of depth.
The eye was made from a blank CD tube. The tube was sprayed silver and black elastic glued to it. The eye was a printable CD with an eye printed onto it and a bit of the yellow felt placed on the top and bottom. Other things that were done was straps inside made from pieces of elastic and screwed to the bin to go over the shoulders and take some of the weight and some elastic clips to keep the top connected to the bin.
To finish it off some of the yellow fleece was sewn into two tubes to go over the arms and some black gloves for the hands. The dungarees were made out of some denim material we had. The front patch was glued onto the yellow fabric and a logo from felt made. A back patch was also glued on the back. Two denim shoulder strips were made and sewn to the front and back patches with some glue to hold the straps in place above the arm holes. The trousers were made from the same material and sewn into trousers with an elastic waist. Once you had put the minion costume one and stepped into the trousers and pulled them up so they they went over the front and back patches it looked like dungarees but making it in two pieces made it easier to make and put on.
I dressed up a Gru and we had a great Halloween night