My 3 year old son requested his costume to be “an astronaut in a rocketship” for Halloween this year. Here is how I made this astronaut homemade Halloween costume and rocketship:
1 – I cut a diaper box to fit his torso. I cut a U shaped hole in the top for his head and cut off that flap. I cut a square hole in the bottom that he could step into and left that flap on. I cut two arm holes at the top of each side. I left three flaps on the back, the two long flaps and the short flap at the bottom.
2 – I flattened a second diaper box out with the flaps on. I cut off the top flaps and cut along a diagonal on the top corners to make a wing shape.
3 – I found 2 toilet paper rolls for the rocket blasters.
4 – I covered the entire outside of the torso diaper box and the entire flattened wing diaper box with strip after strip of aluminum tape. I found this in a drawer in my house; it is basically aluminum foil coated with a very strong adhesive on one side. I just lined up each strip so it barely overlapped the prior strip. I started at the bottom and worked my way up. I also wrapped the toilet paper rolls with the aluminum tape.
5 – To make the helmet, I used an idea from this website! It worked perfectly. I found an old plastic trick-or-treat pumpkin and cut a squarish hole where the face was. I also had to cut a slit up the back of the helmet to get it to fit over my child’s head. I widened the slit and softened the edges of it just enough that I could squeeze it over his head.
6 – I spray painted the pumpkin-helmet with white spray paint that my neighbor gave me. I put the helmet on an old soccer cone while spray painting it so that I could get around the bottom. I also sprayed most of the inside (before putting it on the cone), at least what you would be able to see from looking straight into it. I didn’t spray the inside top. I would recommend spray painting this a few days ahead of time if possible, to let it air out. I did it on Halloween day and it still smelled fumey by the time we went trick-or treating.
7 – After the spray paint dried, I put black Gorilla tape (you could use electrical tape) all around the edges of the face hole so that it wouldn’t be sharp. Later, I also added a chin rest with a piece of foam from an old bike helmet which I stuck to the helmet under my son’s chin with tape, because he was complaining that the bottom of the helmet was hurting his chin.
8 – For the boots, I bought some Fireman black-gold-and-silver rain boots at Roses.
9 – For his clothes, I used a plain white long sleeved t-shirt (borrowed from a friend) and some gray sweatpants. I would have used white sweatpants but I couldn’t find any.
10 – For the gloves, I found a set of gloves and hat at Roses for $5. They were white with silver dots on them. I mostly wanted the gloves, but it turned out the toboggan was really helpful for making the helmet stay in place! It made the helmet not slide around on his head so much, especially if I wedged a piece of the hat into the slit at the back of the helmet. The hat/gloves set and the boots were the only things I had to buy for the whole costume, and my son needed rain boots anyway.
11 – For the patches, I printed out 1 large and 1 small blue and red NASA logos, 2 small blue and yellow NASA logos, 1 large American flag, 3 small American flags. I got them off Wikipedia and changed the size for printing. Here are the sizes I used, and where I put them:
– Blue and red NASA: 150%, front of rocketship
– Blue and red NASA: 100%, left shoulder
– Blue and yellow NASA: 50%, boots
– American flag: 90%, back of rocketship
– American flag, 50%: one on each side of helmet
– American flag: 30%: right shoulder
12 – For fire coming out of the rocket blasters, I cut some lengths of orange yarn. I laid them out on a piece of aluminum tape, bent it, and stuck it inside the toilet paper rolls.
13 – I put sunglasses on my son’s eyes but they were too big so they were only on long enough for pictures.
14 – To put the whole thing together, I had my son step into the hole in the bottom of the torso diaper box, put his arms through, then I closed the flaps and placed the wings up against the back of the torso box. Then, I attached the wings by placing another piece of silver tape from the wings onto the shoulders of the box. However, the aluminum tape broke with repeated bending so I ended up using some black gorilla tape to keep it together (after the photos). You should figure out a better way to hold it all together.
I also ended up having to reinforce the toilet paper rolls onto the box with gorilla tape. Aside from the aluminum tape breaking at those stress points, the costume stayed together remarkably well and still looked great at the end of the night! Everyone loved it!
15 – Once it was all together, it would have been hard to get him out to go potty. I made him go right before putting it on, then put him in a pull-up even though he’s potty trained (I told him about how astronauts wear “space diapers”!!
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