Cool Kool-Aid Man Costume for Toddlers

It was very difficult to come up with this idea! I would have never came up with the idea myself, but I saw the idea for it online and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the perfect costume for my son and we weren’t going to see another one while we were out.

I started the costume by purchasing a very large rubber ball. Then came the worst part! 7 layers of pape rmache. I have never really used paper mache before and thought how hard can it be? It wasn’t hard, but it was the messiest thing I have ever done and wanted to be done after I got the first layer on, so needless to say it took me well over a week to get around to getting all 7 layers done. A tip I learned was to do layers in alternating paper. I used a layer of news paper and then a layer of construction paper, so I could tell my layers apart and was sure to cover every spot with every layer.

Once the paper mache had completely dried about 5 days, I began figuring out how I was going to make it red. At first I was going to paint it, but I didn’t want the lines of the paper to show through the paint. I decided fabric would work better. I was originally going to cut up some old red t-shirts to cover it, but once I managed to get a red shirt over it, I decided it would work perfectly and I didn’t need to cut anything. I took the shirt back off, popped the ball, and cut some off of the top and the bottom big enough for my 3 year old son to fit through and then cut arm wholes. Luckily when I put the shirt back over it the sleeves of the the t-shirt matched up perfectly with the arm wholes I cut. The dilemma was that as it was one of my husband’s t-shirts it was too long, so I cut some of the fabric off of the bottom, but left some over hanging. I then pulled the extra material I left up in the bottom and hot glued it to secure it in place.

I cut the spout out of cardboard and covered it with some of the extra material I had cut off using hot glue. I then attached the spout using hot glue. It was very difficult to come up with the handle. I first tried cardboard, but I couldn’t get it the right shape. I must have brainstormed for a few days trying to figure it out. I was in the garage on day talking to my husband when I saw a metal towel hanger laying on his work bench. I picked it up and began to bend it in the shape of a handle and it was perfect! I then covered it in more of the leftover material using hot glue. Attaching it was a little tricky, but my husband drilled 2 holes in the body and we put each end of the handle through and bent them so that the ends would not pull back through.

The face: I drew out the shape of the eyes, nose, mouth, and eyebrows on black fleece, cut them out, and used hot glue to secure them on.

With the t-shirt around it, it pretty much held itself in place, but it was a little bulky for my son, so we used a pair of suspenders hooked to the bottom on the inside of the front and back to secure it on him.

I absolutely love this costume, but it was a lot of work to make! This costume won in a local costume contest.

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