My kids loved The Lego Movie. I mean, who didn’t – am I right? So it was no surprise when they asked me to make them mini figure costumes for Halloween. Kid #1 wanted to be Bad Cop, and Kid #2 wanted to be Vitruvius. Easy-peasy. I make my kids’ costumes every year, and every year I go in to it saying, “Oh – this shouldn’t take very long at all!” and every year it takes me about 5 times as long as I expected. This year was no exception.
I started at Home Depot and bought a huge sheet of insulation foam to make the bodies. I also got a quick crete tube form for the heads. I traced out all the pieces for the bodies on the foam board. Vitruvius’ body is full-length so that one was a bit trickier. I just used hot glue to assemble the bodies together.
To make Bad Cop’s head, I purchased a Styrofoam half-sphere from Hobby Lobby (with my 40% coupon! Score!). I used that for the top of the helmet. For the side pieces of the helmet (the parts the cover the “ears”), I just used remnants of the foam board. The eye holes are at the bottom part of the sunglasses.
Vitruvius’ head was a lot trickier. I ended up gluing together several pieces of remnants from the foam sheet and then just carved out the shape for the hair on top of his head with a serrated knife (and be warned: those little bits of Styrofoam that you saw off will cling to every square inch of you!). For the hair on the sides, I just cut strips of foam and glued them close together so they would give the appearance of wrapping around his head. For his headband, I made a form out of strips of cardboard and wrapped it in duct tape. His beard is just another piece of the foam board, carved with the serrated knife.
Vitruvius’ cape is just an old blanket attached with straight pins to the Styrofoam. I had to get creative with the eye holes for Vitruvius because they were supposed to go right where the beard is (I didn’t figure this one out until the head was already made)! So I used lollipop sticks to make the head lift a few inches above the body so my son could peek out of the opening.
Before painting, I cut arm holes and head holes in both bodies. Then I just used good ol’ acrylic paint to paint everything. It probably would have been faster to just use spray paint, but I already had the acrylic on hand. I had planned to make lego hands for them as well but ran out of time (story of my life!).
These costumes were the biggest hit everywhere we went! They were the favorite costumes at the school Halloween parade. They both tied for first place at a local Trunk or Treat costume party. Several people asked to take pictures of them while we Trick-or-Treated. Everyone we walked by stopped and commented on how awesome they looked!
All-in-all, the costumes cost about $15-$20 each to make. Not too bad! Another successful Halloween in the books.
