Cool Homemade Group Costume: South Pole Penguins

These are my 3 penguins;
first costume party for the youngest, some 8 yrs ago.

The real inpiration was my little son who couldn’t walk proper then, his walk actually reminded me of a penguin walk.

I am so sorry for the lack of photos, expecially for its (un)quality. In my defence, I’ll say that I used video camera more then regular photo camera back then. Who would have known that I will be needing some penguin photos in a near future?

Penguins

How To Make

This was my very fist time working with the foam. I bought a piece of foam 1m x 2m (where I live, I buy it in a store that sells paints) 2 cm thick.

I cut the shapes, then colored with a black pigment (that’s a small bottle of paint that you buy in a paint shop and normally use it when you want to add some color to the white foundation paint for the inside walls). I never used pigment before, so I didn’t know that I am supposed to add some water with it (to get more color), so I added some white foundation paint, so my penguins turned out grey instead of black. But, I liked it even better that way anyway.

Then I handstitched all parts together.

This white head/belly part turned out pretty messy, because I messed it up painting, so I decided to cover that area. I made that shape out of old bed sheet, and hand stitched it also.

I used 2 pieces of foam to make 3 pengins like that; the smallest was made from several pieces that were left out when I finished bigger penguins.

I cut also beak, bow, flippers and foot from the same foam. I colored it with yellow pigment, except for the bow – I had some red paint + yellow = orange bow.

From the bottom of the foot, I handstitched a elastic band to secure it on kids’ foot / shoe. The effect was really good, they looked just like small pengins :)

Kids didn’t need any jackets under this costume.

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