This year, Toby decided that he wanted to be a “Robot Turtle named T1” for Halloween. He loves Turtles. He loves Robots. It’s a natural fit. Only problem was, how were we going to get our hands on one of those? Well, we’d have to make one! First things first, we looked around online for homemade turtle costumes. We got some great ideas by searching for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costumes – especially the notion that you can use an aluminum turkey pan for a turtle shell [Check out Tonya’s beautiful post over at Soirée Event Design for a really awesome TMNT get-up]. With that in mind, the guys hit the dollar store and got a slew of things they thought they might need to put the costume together. Then, we built it!
The basic idea was to make a “vest” or “shield’ by decorating two aluminum tins, one flat, and one shell-shaped. To decorate the front, Toby looked at images of old circuit boards in one of Blaise’s Robot books and drew one of his own. They then created an opening in the flat aluminum pan and duct-taped this image in, with a bit of vellum for protection on top. They decorated the rest of this pan and the “shell” tin with coloured duct tape and stick-on jewels. I know! Stick on Jewels! I have to say, they looked extremely modern and masculine in this application! Then, I used strips of velcro [which I taped onto the pans] to attach the front and back together. On to headgear…the boys sawed off the handle of a colander and stuck on a headlamp with more green tape. And, then, I took a few of those push-on-push-off stick-em-anywhere lights and taped on some armbands of elastic. Hence, the creation of the Light-up Robot Turtle, a.k.a. T1!
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T1 – The Light-Up Robot Turtle Costume – How We Did It
[Or, just check out the video, above!]
Light-up Robot Turtle Costume Materials
Aluminum Baking Tray
Aluminum Turkey Roasting pan
1 piece of clear plastic or vellum
Plain Paper & Markers
Duct tape in: Green, Yellow, Red & Blue
Small Stick-on “diamonds” and “rubies”
Long strips of velcro.
Scissors
X-acto knife
Small saw/hacksaw
Spelunking-style Dollar-Store Head-Lamp
Green Colander
Touch-to-Turn-On Puck or Accent Lights
Elastic
Long sleeved green t-shirt
Pants & Shoes
Light-up Robot Turtle Costume Method, a Brief Survey
Draw a cool picture of a circuit board on a plain piece of paper.
Using a knife cut a rectangle in the centre of the baking tray.
Place vellum on the underside of the tray within this opening.
Place image underneath the vellum.
Tape the image and vellum on the underside of the aluminum tray to secure.
Tape around the image/opening on the front of the aluminum tray creating the look of a mat within a frame.
Decorate the aluminum baking tray with tape and stick-on jewels as you see fit.
Decorate the “bottom” of the aluminum roasting pan with tape and stick-on jewels or drawings.
Cut two “shoulder straps” out of long strips of velcro that will attach the two aluminum trays to chest and back.
Use tape (and, if necessary, staples) to secure the velcro to the pans.
Cut the handle off of the colander with a small saw.
Secure the spelunking-style-light to the “front” of the colander with tape.
Secure wrist and arm-cirumference lengths of elastic to the backs of the touch lights with tape.
Put on a green shirt, pants and shoes.
Put elasticated lights on arms.
Put robot-turtle vest on by securing the velcro straps.
Put colander on head.
Turn on all of the lights on the costume.
Turn off all of the lights in the room!
Go Trick-or-Treatin’!
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