Charlie Brown Costume for World Book Day

My 9 year old’s school was holding a “World book day” costume day and my son, Thomas, wanted to be completely different! We chose to do “Charlie Brown”. He wanted to have the biggest head ever, so, we went to Rhyl, a small seaside town near us, as that was the only place to buy a beach ball out of season. I blew up the ball then placed a large plastic carrier bag over that, so the paper mache didn’t stick to the ball.

I made up a solution of PVA glue and water, mixed well, tore up strips of newspaper, dipped them (this was the messiest part) and applied them all over the ball. We waited for the first layer to dry, then repeated the process a further 3 times. When all the layers were dry, I used a cookie cutter to cut out the ears and nose from polystyrene and covered them with some more paper mache. When these were dry, I painted the whole thing in magnolia paint, it required 2 coats.

When the paint had fully dried I once again used the cookie cutter to draw circles for the eyes then used my craft knife to cut them out. I then used some more of the PVA glue to attach the black pipe cleaners used for the hair and the mouth. I took a pair of black ladies tights and cut 2 panels across the leg and attached them with PVA to the inside of the eye holes, that way, Thomas can see out but no-one can see in, more importantly, it helps him to breathe inside!!

The outfit was just a yellow T-shirt which I stuck black gaffa tape in a zigzag pattern, his brothers black P.E shorts, black school socks and shoes. It went down an absolute storm at school, everyone wanted to stop and look at him and I’ve never been asked so many questions about how I made it!! The total cost of the outfit was about £2.50 and took 3 days to make.

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