Last Tuesday night, I saw an announcement print-out in Darren's kindee file, for a Halloween Costume Competition on Saturday.
How. Could. I. Not. See. It! And gosh Murphy's Law is so annoying, everything must happen that weekend! So, after work, and after dinner, my activity for 3 nights were making the costume, and preparing potato salad for a BBQ party on Friday night, some potluck thingy organised by the husband's buddy pal pals.
I googled for tutorials and DIYs for Lego costumes. Some looked too professional, involving high-density foam, and resin something something. No thank you. So I turned away, and just used whatever I had at home.
I found this 10 years-old corrugated poster-sized art card stock. I figure it would be suitable to make the head because it can form a tube easily. Wow, it was as if this paper was waiting for this project for 10 years.
I bought 3 sheets of these wrapping papers from a local stationery shop, Kiang. These were perfect because the surface looks exactly like Lego.
I cut it roughly to the size I want, to fit Darren's head.
I cut out two holes for the eyes, measured with Darren's eyes positions.
Rolled and glued at the ends.
Sliced at intervals to create a curvy or rounded edge. Of course, it won't be perfectly curvy, but this will do.
Repeat at the bottom edge.
At this point, I realized the top is too high. So I sliced some more, to create a 'second level' curve. Which was great because I could actually create a round top!
Well... almost round.
Wrapped the head with yellow paper first. It fits, yay!
Punched two black card stock paper out, punched holes in the middle for view. Then pasted onto the eye holes.
Cut out and pasted the eyebrows...
...and the smile. This is the Lego signature face.
Instead of making hair, which is quite difficult in a short time frame and limited materials, I went with a cap. I cut out a rough shape for the bill and wrap the top surface with the black wrapping paper.
Sliced at intervals to fold in roundly, except for the shorter curve.
Flipped it over to wrap the other surface.
Place it in position.
Cut out a big circle, and placed it on the top of the head. Same thing, sliced at intervals and pasted down to form the round cap. I covered the bottom exposed border with strips of the same black wrapping paper.
For the body, I used a large carton box.
Cut the corners of the box down.
Drew out the front Lego body shape. I used his left-to-right shoulder measurement.
In total, I cut out 4 shapes like this. For the two narrow rectangle panels, I cut out a hole for the arm to go through.
Wrapped the back panel with red wrapping paper.
Wrapped the front panel.
Joined the two side panels by gluing strips of card stock papers, like hinges.
What it looks like inside. I didn't know what attire it would be yet.
For the classic Lego hands, I used two toilet roll cores. The regular ones won't work as it is too small. Luckily I found these at my office toilet. Clean la!
I sliced off one portion.
Wrapped with the yellow wrapping paper.
Then I created finger sleeves....
... so that he can hold it like this. I didn't bother about the thumbs, no time already!
Finally, I dressed him up as a BJ Kindeeland Lego man! Thank goodness I used red as the attire at first, everything seems to fall into place now!
OK, first, a little drama that Saturday. The costume was completed with ample time. But I had to run one last errand that day which was crucial. I had to collect my car from FA Wagen at 1.30 pm after having my radiator replaced. What would have taken 10-15 minutes, took almost an hour that day, because Jom Heboh was at Angsana!!! The roads were jammed up, and blocked. I was in the car trying to get home, where my handwork is waiting to be worn.
I reached home, got the boys to ready, the costumes in the booth etc. and headed off to AEON Bukit Indah.
So here's the deal. On the announcement print-out, it was stated that the competition was 3-4pm.
We reached the mall at 3.15pm. I thought, okay, maybe the organizers are still registering kids and all.
But when I arrived at the registration table, the teacher told us that the competition was already over!!! My heart sank like Titanic. I swear I was almost in tears. The teachers saw his costumes and quickly arranged for him to go on stage as the last contestant. So, I didn't have time to change him. He was supposed to wear a long sleeved tee and long pants.
His name was called, and up he went. Gosh everything happened so fast. Daniel was scurrying along with me all those times. He was like my assistant! Ah I love him...
At least the audience saw him...
At backstage, I saw this super adorable boy. He had black stick-on fingernails!! HOW COOL IS HIS MOM! He won first runner-up by the way. Good job!
So anyway, the winners were already decided. I think Darren wouldn't have won anyway because well, he wasn't a scary ghoulish monster... hahaha.
After that, I sort of calmed down and we just hung out at the mall for doughnuts and went to the arcade playground. The boys missed it, hehe.
Then at 6.30pm, there was a Halloween Parade organized by AEON. Some of the kids who joined competition earlier was there too. There were balloons and goodie bags, and these were enough to spur Darren to manja his father to get his costumes back from the car.
So there we were. This time, he attracted a small crowd. The kids loved him!! So all the kids who joined this parade sort of walked around in the mall, collected goodie snacks handed out by AEON staff.
Goofing around with his classmate.
Captain America was there too!
Phew... a bad start ended quite well I must say. The boys had fun, we all had fun.
