Awesome Homemade Oogie Boogie Costume

To make this Oogie Boogie costume you will need:

• lots of burlap

• Velcro

• Scissors

• A Stapler

• A Hot-Glue Gun

• A Sharpie

• Plaster gauze, (or paper maché)

• Aluminum foil

• Pins

• Garbage Bag

How to make the mask:

• We covered my face in plaster gauze. We then bent aluminum foil to make the eyes and mouth. We stuck pins into the aluminum foil so that we could see how things would piece together. We then put plaster gauze over the foil, after taking the pins out. Then we hot glued the burlap onto the plaster, making sure things were smooth. We also had extra fabric on the burlap covering the mask to serve as a hood. It was a bit of a struggle to get the hood to go over my head, so we had to use a stapler to get the shoulders to fit.

We cut out eye holes in the mask. Then we hot glued squares of burlap onto the empty eye holes. We then inked the mouth and and eyes black with a Sharpie. We also hot-glued some soft cloth inside the mask, so that it wouldn’t itch.

How we made the body:

We traced my body onto our burlap material twice, once for my front, once for my back. Make sure to oversize the outline, otherwise it may be too big. Then using a combination of hot glue and staples we put the two halves together. We then cut a line down the front, and put Velcro on it, to serve as an opening so that I could get in the costume. We then blew into a garbage bag to fill it out, and then put it near my stomach, so that I would have the classic Oogie belly (note: be careful to tie the garbage bag securely, or it will leak and deflate). After stapling up some loose ends, and folding the ends of my arms to turn them into points, the body was complete.

How it went:

On that particular Halloween, it was extremely hot. The mask itched despite the cloth, and it was pretty uncomfortable. Luckily, we didn’t have far to go, and I could take off the mask in between houses to cool off.