Prize-Winning Sexy DIY Betty Boop Costume

One of my very favorite cartoon characters happens to be Betty Boop! I have made many homemade Halloween costumes through out the years, But none of them compare to Betty. I’ve learned at a very young age in Spanish class to do paper-mache, which gave me the idea to create my Halloween costumes. I don’t have any patterns to go by, but I’m pretty artistic as it is.

I went to my local balloon shop one day and found out that they sold larger than average size balloons. As excited that I was at this time, I bought 2-3 foot balloons. I went home and started blowing them up to about 2 feet wide each. After blowing them up I had to make sure that the weren’t to big to fit through the doorways together. In my luck they were able to make it through sideways. I then started to duct tape them carefully together to form the desired shape of Betty Boop’s head.

I then started to make a solution to start my paper mache process, I mixed 2/3rds part of Elmer’s glue to 1/3rd warm water. After the solution was ready, I ripped up 2 inch sections of the daily newspaper. I dredged each piece of newspaper in the glue solution and squeeged the excess solution between my finger to remove any excess solution and placed the strips over my duct taped form. You will want to slightly overlap each piece until you have a single layer. Allow at least 24 hours per layer to dry, and repeat up to at least 4 layers (the more the layers you apply to your structure, the stronger and longer your structure will last).

Once you have decided how many layers to apply to your structure, you can pop the balloons from the bottom of the structure with a pair of scissors.You can then cut the head hole out from the bottom of the structure to fit over your head.

To make the top curls for the top of the head I used lossing lottery tickets and duct taped them into the shape of curls and duct taped them into place. I then paper-mached them to blend into the head structure. I used a small coffee lid to draw out where I wanted the eyes to be, then cut them out with scissors. Leaving the pupil area uncut.

I used red colored sculpting clay to form a pair of lips because I wanted them to look succulent and stand out. Once I formed the shape of the lips, I placed them up to the structure where I wanted them and pressed them to form around the structure. I also used a straw and poked a hole in the middle of the lips so that Betty Poop could drink. I baked the lip structure according to the instructions on the package and left them to cool. Once they cooled, I painted them with red finger nail polish to give them that glossy look. I super glued them into place and poked a hole through the straw hole.

Using a extra wide black sharpie marker, I colored in the hairline. Then the outline of the eyes with a regular sized black sharpie marker. I used a green colored oil sharpie marker to color in the rest of the eye. I poked holes into the structure around the eyes and fed some pipe cleaners through black coffee stirrers to make the upper eye lashes stand out, tying them on the inside structure to hold in place. The lower lashes are drawn in with a black sharpie marker. I used white artist canvas for the eye whites that have very small holes in them to look out through, yet people can’t see in. The face is then colored in using acrylic paint.

As I was saying in the beginning that I don’t have any patterns, I hand sewn my dress to fit me. Perhaps you would be able to find a pattern at a fabric store, or buy a dress at a clothing store. Good luck!

Every time I go out in this outfit I get such the looks that I feel like a celerity! The very first time I went out in this costume I entered it in a Halloween costume contest and took the place by storm winning $500 bucks. Everybody always insists that they get there picture taken with me. And the one thing that I think is the most amazing is that most people cant tell that I’m a man in this costume until I take my costume head off.