$20 Kool-Aid Man Halloween Costume

With $20 for a few supplies, a few cardboard boxes taken from a cardboard dumpster, acrylic paint and some basic craft tools you too can be Kool-Aid Man for Halloween!

Draw a Grid Over a Picture of Kool-Aid

Find the best straight forward view of Kool-Aid Man and draw a grid over it.

Your grid should allow you to be able to plot and resize by sight for the next step

Collect Your Supplies!

Glue gun
Glue gun sticks
Measuring tape
Scissors
Acrylic Paint (Black,White,Dark Red, Red, Blue,)
Foam Roller or Large square paint brush
Medium size square paint brush
X-ACTO Knife
One yard of Tulle
Brown Packing Paper
Straight Edge
marking marker
pencil
a paint well or a piece of plastic you can mix paint on
Masking tape
three or four large rectangular boxes measuring at least 40" Long (Opened Flat)
Clear packaging tape
Free wall space

Cut the brown packing paper into two pieces, each piece needs to be at least 42" long (each of my brown paper was 18" wide)
Take your two pieces of brown packing paper and carefully remove as much of the wrinkles from the paper as possible .
Tape the two pieces (by their upper edges) to a free wall as close together as possible with masking tape.
Then tape the two pieces together, remove from the wall and then flip to reveal the opposite side .

Drawing a Corresponding Grid / Kool-aid Man Template

Draw (with a pencil that has an eraser) a corresponding grid that equals the same number of squares as your first picture of the kool-aid man with the grid.
Holding your Kool-aid man grid in one hand copy the outline of the kool-aid man onto the brown paper
Stand with your back against the brown paper and align and adjust the position brown paper so that the bottom of the "pitcher" outline ends at right at the beginning of your pelvic bone or three inches below your belly button.
With the kool-aid man grid in your hand again draw the eyes, nose, mouth and eyebrows of the kool-aid man on the brown paper.
Next step you will need a friend
Then with your back against the brown paper again make a mark where the top of your head is and where your arms would be if you were to stretch them out to your sides make a mark above and below your arms and connect a both lines across the brown paper.
Cut Kool-aid man template out

Making the Front and Back of Kool-aid Man

Place Kool-aid man template against unfolded cardboard box while using a marking marker trace and cut out .
Using the cut-out from previous step trace the cut-out on another card board box unfolded and cut out

Holding the Kool-aid template over kool-aid cardboard cut outs make small poking marks with x-acto knife through the paper on the cardboard as a layout for the eyes, nose , mouth and eyebrows
Remove template and connect dots/ poking marks with a pencils until your have a good rending of the facial features of the kool-aid man.
Cut out eyes and mouth of kool-aid man

Building Kool-aid Man

Stack the cardboard pieces together so that the pieces line up back to front
If there are any creases within the cardboard tape over with clear packing tape on the side that won't be seen
Measure front to back the side of head- that measurement with decide how wide the connecting side pieces of the kool-aid needs to be.
cut out long pieces of cardboard measuring at least 9 wide (the side length of my head)
The pieces need to be as long until the point that you measured on you Brown paper template where the top of your arm begin and another piece from the line where you bottom of your arm is to about 6".
Roll your cardboard horizontally to allow Hot gluing the pieces of cardboard to one side of the jug piece and when that dries then the other
see pictures.