My daughter LOVES horses and wanted a horse based costume. She came up with a Carousel. Great idea but I was not sure how we were going to bring it to life. I walked all over Home Depot and WalMart trying to find something circular for the base. I could not find anything the size or light enough for her to be able to carry. I bought some chicken wire and made a circle out of it with a hula hoop attached with wire to the top to give it some stability to it\’s shape. I covered it with poster board and then covered that with blue fabric to make it a little more vivid. I bought 2 hula hoops and 2 styrofoam wreaths. I cut the styrofoam wreaths into 4 peices as they were not big enough on its own. I took the second hula hoop and hot glued the styrofoam pieces onto it. I took 4 dowels and spray painted them gold. I shoved the dowels into the styrofoam and then hot glued them in place.
I printed out pictures of a carousel horse 4 times and glued them to foam board. I cut them out with an Exacto knife and hot glued them onto the dowels. I put two strips of foam board across the top of the base so the hula hoop with the horses on it would sit on top of it. Finally base complete.
Then I took poster board and made a big cone and then cut the top off of it. I put it on top of another poster board circle I had cut out and then took more poster board to make the edge for the top. I blew up a picture of the top of a Carousel and made several copies of it. I cut out the border of the carousel and glued it around the top. I then took strips of fabric that matched the bottom and glued them on the top of the top to make it more colorful. I glued the other styrofoam wreath onto the inside of the top and put the other end of the dowels into the top styrofoam. I made her suspenders for the bottom out of elastic hot glued to the chicken wire of the base. She would put on the base sort of like a pair of pants with suspenders and then the top of the hula hoop with horses attached to the roof went over her head and sat on the base. I was figuring this all out as I went so I made multiple trips to the store and still have blisters from the glue gun.
Everyone loved it. She got so many compliments. She won both costume contests we attended. She wants to hang it in her room as a decoration. I have a happy 9 year old so it was a huge success!
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