Coolest Homemade Animal from the Muppets Costume

Had a Halloween party to go to this year. I love Halloween and love making my own costumes. This year however I was really running behind. So the night before the party I still had no idea what I was going to be. I thought about being a Fraggle, which then led to the Muppets. I am a drummer, and decided why not make a Homemade Animal from the Muppets Costume.

I stopped by Michael’s on the way home and got the essentials. Some foam balls, some yarn that I thought looked close enough like animal’s hair, a glue gun, a cheap black baseball cap and a black visor, some Velcro, some red and orange pipe cleaners and some red and orange felt. I then stopped by Goodwill and found an orange long sleeved shirt and a black shirt with some guitars on it. I was hoping for an old Van Halen shirt but no luck. I also got some black face paint.

To make the mask, it was created in 2 pieces. The top part with the eyes, nose and hair I made out of the baseball hat. I covered the brim and under part with orange felt using a hot glue gun. I then made the eyes out of the foam balls, some black paint and some fur ribbon I got at Michael’s. I had to spray paint the nose red. Glued them all to the hat.

I then took strands of the yarn and tied them to a shoe string. I kept putting them next to each other until I had enough hair in a row to cover the hat. I glued the shoestring with all the hair in a row to the hat, right under the eyes along the brim of the hat to create a wig like effect. I also glues strips of Velcro on the sides of the hat. This was used later when I made the bottom part of the jaw.

The jaw / mouth was made using the visor. I just turned it upside down and again used similar techniques to create the mouth. I used some of the Styrofoam from the eyes to make teeth and glued them in place. I also put the other part of the Velcro on the sides of the visor so I could Velcro it to the hat. A little bit of hair on the bottom, and I was in business.

I used pipe cleaners on the sides of the hat, wrapping them in the same yarn and gluing them in place to allow me to have some of the hair stick out on the sides. I ended up painting my face black from the nose up because this part of my face was visible in the mouth of Animal. This seemed to work pretty well blacking out my face.

The good part is the visor sits right below your nose, so your mouth is not obstructed which means you can enjoy your favorite beverage without having it obstructed. The hair hangs down so it covers everything. I just needed to use a straw to drink out of because it was a little bit hard to tilt my head back.

I got a lot of really positive reviews of this costume and I had a blast making it.

Happy Halloween!