Mr Men and Little Misses Homemade Costumes

We wanted to show that Covid-19 doesn’t have to take away our joy and that we can still celebrate as a family and have the best of times creating and enjoying our homemade costumes! We wanted to make everyone smile – especially now – and we succeeded! And we wanted to outdo ourselves with our family costume again – which has to include all seven of us from Grandma to little Halleli and fit everyone’s personalities.

I think we did a great job!

Thanks to the inflatable Pilates ball, cling film and cornflour, we had Mr Tall, Mr Clever, Little Miss Inventor, Mr Bump, Little Miss Princess, Little Miss Sunshine and Grandma as Little Miss Chatterbox.

Thanks also to our 14 year old daughter who loved cooking up paper mache glue, to the kids who ripped, tore, stuck and believed! Also thanks to the hubby and oldest teen who had patience and were good sports even when the home we are locked down in starting filling up with our new “friends”!

A big thanks also to the owner of the corner shop who let us take all the old newspapers to create our costumes with.

Creating our Homemade Costumes

Inflate a pilates ball and cover in cling film so the paper mache won’t stick when it deflates. Then, cook up paper mache glue using sugar, water, vinegar and cornflour (look up a recipe on the internet). Let it cool until warm.

Next, rip up newspapers into large pieces and glue on with a large paintbrush and the warm glue. Cover in a few layers, leaving an uncovered circle around the ball’s sealed air hole – about the size of your head. Also leave an uncovered circle at the base.

Leave to dry overnight. When dry – repeat. When dry again – cover in colored duck tape
or masking tape and then spray paint.

Next, deflate the ball. Cut out arm holes and make head and hole at base bigger according to the size of the person wearing the costume.

Repeat for each costume!

We used thin colored sheets of foam for eyes, mouth, nose ears etc., and stuck them on with hot glue. We also added a few extra accessories like the spanner/top hat/pencils etc.

For the headpieces, we printed out and laminated the front cover of the book of each character and hot glued it to hairbands/hats.