Cyborg Costume

My 9 year old son decided on a cyborg costume for Halloween this year. Not THE Cyborg from DC Comics, but one of his own design. So we sat down and made sketches from his imagination and then I set to work with cardboard, duct tape, and my trusty Janome sewing machine and Cricut Expore Air2.

He decided he wanted a full body suit of silver. I found this Simplicity pattern 8520 for a jumpsuit (which I made without the hood or kangaroo pocket) and some awesome silver material at Walmart. The material proved to be tricky to work with as it is rather thick and resulted in a lot of thread breaks. Eventually I switched to elastic thread, which helped.

I traced the chest-plate armor shape my kiddo designed onto a large piece of cardboard (leftover from a new desk purchase). In order to fold the cardboard neatly, I scored the backside with a box cutter to act as foldlines. After cutting the cardboard, I covered it with several coats of black acrylic paint and finished the edges with black duct tape.

I made a separate front and back plate since he could not fit his head through the neck opening. I added adhesive hook and loop fasteners to the shoulders so he could easily fasten the pieces together.

Using box flaps from an Amazon shipment (one for each arm) I again scored the backsides to allow for 6 segments to form around his arms and then cut to his desired shapes. Each piece was painted with electric blue acrylic paint and edged in black duct tape. I placed hook and loop fasteners at the base of each piece to wrap around his wrists. I tried adding pieces to the top of the plates too, but it interfered with his movement (which is unacceptable during trick or treat!) so those were removed.

My son wanted his cyborg to look modern (not like a boxy robot) so we added circuit-inspired decorations. I Googled "circuit clip-art" and found several simplified images that he liked. I added these to Cricut design space and used my Cricut ExploreAir 2 to create several different vinyl decals (in shiny silver) to place on his chest, back and arm plates.

Initially I made a mask by cutting apart a gallon milk jug and painting it electric blue (acrylic paint), and adding more vinyl decals. My son found the mask uncomfortable as it kept riding up his face. Luckily, I found an actual DC Cyborg mask on clearance at Target, so we used that instead. He wanted the eyehole to be colored, so I cut a piece of transparent blue plastic and taped it to the inside of his mask.

From the beginning, kiddo wanted his costume to light up somehow. I found these affordable and colorful LED puck lights on Amazon which worked perfectly. They came with double-sided adhesives, so it was easy to stick one over his heart on his chest-plate. The remote allowed him to change the color of the light, which he enjoyed doing to reflect the cyborg's "mood."

Kiddo had a blast wearing his costume to a friend's Halloween party, to his school party, and trick-or-treating (of course!). He got tons of compliments from his buddies and their moms were wowed that this was homemade. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and please let me know if you have any questions!