Make a Teddy Bear Assassin Costume

For those who enjoy costumes of ironic humor for Halloween, the Teddy Bear Assassin costume is quick and easy, and would probably come out really great looking for anyone who has more than 1 week to pull a costume together. This took about9 hours and cost less than 20 bucks with all items found in a fabric store. You'll need:

1. 1 yard of fake fur fabric (or fabric of your choice)
2. Polyfill (1 bag)
3. 3 felt squares - 1 in a dark color, 2 in a light color
4. Some cardboard (in sheets long enough to cut strips that would wrap once around your head).
5 Quilting thread and a sewing needle (this will be much faster project if using a sewing machine)
6. Hi-Temp Glue Gun (my project took almost an entire bag of 30 mini sticks)
7. Red acrylic paint or fake blood

Optional items:

1. Cylindrical oatmeal container
2. Aluminum foil
3. Duct tape
4. Solid color t-shirt
5. Black Sharpie .

This mask design is ideal for those who wear glasses or don't want something that covers their entire face.

The first step to the mask is constructing a simple and easy base to which the fur will eventually be attached. Cut one strip (about 1 1/2 inches wide) long enough to wrap around your head and one strip (of the same width) that will run from one side of your head (your ears make a good marker for a half-way point) to the other. Attach the two pieces. (Note: for greater flexibility with cardboard, curl the strips with your finger or a scissor).

If you choose to add the fabric and design the mask a different way, this can still be used as your initial base. However, for this project, the mask was built higher on top of the head, which required adding two more strips to the foundational base. These were long strips attached in the same-x pattern, but the strips were longer by probably 6 inches or so. The additional height is discretionary since the attachment of the rest of the materials is pretty simple and adjustable to the design you want.

Attach these strips with the hot glue gun.

This step of making the mask if really a trial-and-error process unless you perfectly measure your base before beginning, which I did not. The difficulty arises because you aren't working with a perfectly geometric shape.

Find a corner of your fabric and on the base, find two strips run downward from the top. One side of the corner of fabric will be glued along one of those strips, the other side of the corner will be glued down along the other cardboard strip. The third step will be to glue the piece to the bottom of the base. Essentially, you will have a piece that looks like a triangle when you finish.

Repeat this for the remaining three sections. The good thing about working with fake fur is that if you mess up or have jagged edges, it usually won't show up. If you can't attach certain parts of the fabric using the glue, switch to the needle and thread and either sew the fabric together (some of it should be glued down to the base) or to the cardboard itself (and attach other fabric accordingly. It may be easier to do two opposite corner first.

There was an additional piece sewn along half of the bottom of the mask which covers the neck starting from one ear and running to the other. The was added (attached by sewing rather than gluing to the covered base) for temperature consideration (the weather was expected to be frightful!).

To create the facial features for the mask, you will need the fabric, Polyfil, and felt squares.

Build the ears first by making a pattern from a sheet of paper. Fold your fabric and lay it down on top, cutting a piece that is larger on all sides than the pattern since you have to account for the seams. When you begin to sew, make sure you are looking at the back of the fabric on each side (the fur side is facing away from you). When you sew almost all the way around, either with the needle/thread or on a sewing machine, you will flip the piece inside out so that the correct side is showing.

Once you have sewn the ears, stuff them with the Polyfil and carefully glue these to each side of the head. It may be better to have someone hold the ears as you apply the glue or, if you choose, attach with the thread. So the bottoms of the ears don't look unfinished, make sure you sew these with the ends turned in under the piece of the ear. Do the same if you are attaching this with thread.

For this mask, I cut two smaller shapes identical to the shapes of the ears from the dark colored felt and glued these in the center of each ear.

Next, create the nose using the dark piece of felt and apply it using the same process you did to create the ear. Sew only about 3/4 of the way around, flip inside out and stuff with Polyfil, then attach the piece to the mask by gluing or sewing with the ends turned inward.

Next, use the light colored sheet of felt to cut two eyes and attach these with glue. If you are using a glue gun, be careful how you apply this to the light fabric as it has a tendency to bleed through lighter fabric. This can be corrected by applying a different glue (Elmer's for example, but it will take much longer to dry) , applying hi-temp glue along furthest edges of the eyes, or sewing the eyes instead of gluing them to the face.

When the eyes are attached, cut two strips from the dark fabric and attach them like a V over the eyes. These are the eyebrows.

The final facial feature are the fangs. Using the light colored felt, cut two large triangles and use the same process you did for creating the ears and nose. Sew them along the edge and turn them inside out. Fill them with the Polyfil. And finally, attach this to the bottom of the base of the mask, just under the fabric.

Once the face was completed, I applied fake blood to the fur underneath the nose and the fangs. Red acrylic paint will work better because the fabric eventually absorbed the fake blood and the color was not as rich.

For this costume, I created two sleeves from the fake fur. They begin several inches above my elbow and run to the center of my palm. These are especially quick and easy to do with a sewing machine. Fold the fabric in two and measure out your sleeve. Sew them with the back side of the fabric facing you. Sew along the length of the sleeve and then turn inside out.

Sleeves can be worn several ways. The easiest is to wear a shirt with sleeves long enough and fitted enough to tuck the fake fur sleeves under. Another option is to use a piece of elastic and sew it to fit the diameter of the top part of your arm, something like a garter belt style. You can also try rubber bands and then once again, hide the top part of the fur sleeve underneath a shirt sleeve.

Next, sew or glue a small part of the bottom of the sleeve over the space between your thumb and first finger. Fake fur tends to hold in heat and these style of sleeves not only account for that, but also provide flexibility for your fingers rather than havig to slip gloves on and off all night. An alternative choice might be to pick up white cartoon-style gloves from the costume shop (Party City typically sells these every year) or some other type of glove.

If not in a hurry to create the costume, a glove may also be cut and sewn from the fur itself.

There were several ideas for weapons that initially went with this costume, the first being an oversized cartoonish-looking gun or knife. In the end, due to time constraints, I settled on creatng a simple mallet.

To create the mallet, you will need the oatmeal container, a long sheet of cardboard, your glue gun and duct tape. The oatmeal container serves as the top of the mallet and, by rolling up the sheet of cardboard lengthwise and wrapping it with duct tape, this will become the handle of the mallet.

To attach the handle to the mallet head, cut a hold in the side of the oatmeal box just large enough to accomodate the mallet handle and apply the hi-temp glue aound all sides to hold this in place.

You can either paint parts of the mallet, most likely with spray paint, or, as I have done here, cover the mallet head first in tin foil.

Apply the red acrylic paint to the base of the mallet head for effect. Splattering works best.

As the final touch, I took an old t-shirt and applied a simple logo - a happy looking bear head that somewhat resembled the shape of the mask. The attached picture was taking after I had worn the costume and washed the shirt, so the yellow highlighter used to color the face as well as the fake blood splattered on the shirt had both washed out. This step took only about 10 minutes, but obviously, with more time, can be made to look much better.