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Craft Corner: Costume Collage

Want to create a costume for your favourite character? Amazing - let's go! 

 

Materials

  • PVA glue or a glue stick
  • A pencil 
  • Scissors (get permission from an adult first, and ask for help using them if you need it)
  • A piece of paper (any colour you like!) - or you can download & print our worksheet!
  • Then you want to find lots of interesting materials to stick on your collage.

 

HINT: You might have craft materials at home like feathers, sequins and stickers, but there are lots of things around the house that you could use too!

Think about COLOUR and TEXTURE. You get the most interesting results when you use a mixture of them. Lots of food packaging has brightly coloured labels and you can cut these up to stick on your collage, so ask an adult if there’s anything you can have from the recycle bin or the cupboard!
There’s also lots of other things you can use, like tin foil, wrapping paper and ribbon. I’m sure you can think of loads more materials in your home that would look great on your collage, so don’t hold back! Use your imagination and get creative! 

First of all, you should start by making a list of all the things you know about your character to help you decide on what costume you’re going to make. So mine, for example, would be:

  • Willy Wonka
  • Owner of a chocolate factory
  • Makes weird and wonderful sweets 
  • He is a crazy character with lots of crazy ideas!

This helped me come up with the idea of using chocolate wrappers for his suit and making him as colourful as possible, just like his sweets!

Where to start? Well, I started by drawing a stick person in pencil to give me a basic shape of a body - but you could use our worksheet, which you can download here.
I then drew on the type of clothes I thought Willy Wonka would wear. I went for a suit and top hat with some big platform boots, but you could choose anything – dresses, capes, jumpsuits, anything you like! You don’t have to be too careful when you’re drawing the pencil lines as you can rub out any that are still showing once the glue is dry.

HINT: Remember that PVA glue dries clear so it’s ok to layer it on top of your collage materials, once it’s dry you won’t see it!

 

You want to think about all the different parts of an outfit – it’s not always just t-shirts and shorts! There are belts, hats, tights, ties and jewellery too! Or does your character have a crazy hairstyle?

For the trousers, I overlapped the pieces of purple foil to create a ruffle effect. You can try this too by only putting glue on one half of your piece of material and leaving the other half to stick up off the paper. 

To make his tie, I simply tied a knot in a piece of ribbon and then glued it on. Easy!

Maybe you could add a face and hands to your collage too?

When my collage was dry, I used a black felt tip pen to draw an outline around my costume to give it definition, so maybe you could do that to? But it’s your collage, so you can choose!

Remember, show us your creations by tagging @LivEveryPlay on Twitter and using the hashtag #EveryPlayTime - we can wait to see what you come up with!