Caden the Triceratops

Here's my little grandson, Caden, in his Triceratops Halloween Costume I just finished making.  His outfit is made from orange felt, his eyes are glow in the dark ping pong balls and he's carrying a paper mache dinosaur egg basket...what else would a dinosaur use to hold all his Halloween goodies!

The first step to creating this costume was to make pattern pieces for his face, frill, tail, hands and feet, and then to cut them out of the orange felt. Here's the pattern and instructions I added to my blog. https://pegsgottado.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/triceratops-costume-pattern-and-instructions.pdf

To make sure the face/frill pattern pieces were the right size, I made a "test" one.  Caden tried it on and if fit perfectly!

Once the face/frill was sewn, the next steps were to make and add on the felt horns, glow in the dark ping pong eyes and lids and add the pupils with permanent markers.

For the spots I cut several "spots' and hand sewed them onto his sweats.

His hand gloves and feet covers were sewn together and white felt nails were cutout and hand sewn in place.  The feet covers were sewn to the bottom of his sweat pants.

His tail was sewn, stuffed and sewn to the back of his sweat shirt.

Caden's dinosaur egg basket was made from paper mache:
I used a 12" balloon, added two layers of newspaper pieces with a flour, water and white glue paste.  Each layer was allowed to dry overnight, or longer.
The third layer was pieces of 24lb computer paper to make it stronger and to cover the newsprint.
Once the egg was completely dry I painted it with orange acrylic paint and allowed it to dry.
Using a sea sponge I pounced on a cream acrylic paint allowing some of the orange to remain.
Once dried, I popped the balloon, scalloped the top, added an orange felt handle (with boning in the middle) and then applied two coats of spray on matt sealer.