I came up with the idea for this tornado costume after watching the movie “Twister” for the first time with my 6 year old son and he started spinning around pretending he was a tornado.
I didn’t have a plan when I started, but the fun part was coming up with different ideas as I went along. I used wire coat hangers, cut them and shaped them into 3 different sized circles, and then welded them together.
I draped dark gray fleece material around the wire circles. I used two elastic straps and attached them to the wires to allow the costume to rest on his shoulders. I then covered the top circle with the gray fleece. but made a 4×6 patch in the front and attached Velcro to allow the costume to easily be put on and taken off. I hot glued pillow batting around the whole thing and used a wide silver ribbon and strips that I cut of black tulle to wrap around it.
To give the tornado the effect of lightning, I used a strand of white battery operated lights and switched out each bulb for blinkers to get the random blinking effect. I made a pocket on the inside front of the costume and placed the battery pack in the pocket. I started with the bulb closest to the pack and cut random holes throughout and pushed the bulbs through and secured then with hot glue.
I used old toys and some branches from the yard and glued them randomly around the costume, including cars, trains, animals, and tracks.
I made the hat out of a foam cowboy hat from the craft store and covered that with the gray fleece, the pillow batting, and the silver ribbon and black tulle. I made the house from foam board and painted on the details. I cut a corner section off the house with a box cutter and hot glued it to the hat. I used an elastic strap to hold the hat securely.
I had an awesome time making this tornado costume and my son adores it! This past weekend, we went camping at the K.O.A. campground in Harpers Ferry which had a Halloween celebration. He won first place which was a big bag of toys and candy! My reward was the big proud smile on his face and the big hug he gave me while telling me I was the best mom ever!
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