"The Thing, Fantastic 4 Costume"

Costume Instructions

Costume Materials
You will need:
1. About 5 Cans of Big Stuff expanding foam from Home Depot or Lowes. 2. A Bald Cap 3. Old Sweat Shirt 4. Half mask from a craft store 5.Blue Vinyl Material about 2 yards, depending on the height of your child. 6. 1 strip of black vinyl material about 3 inches wide and 36 inches long, for the belt. 7. Velcro Strips about the length of the sweatshirt, and about 3 inches for the belt closure. 8. 1 pair of old shoes 9. card board big enough to trace your 2 hands. 10. 16 inches of elastic for the hands to hold on. 11. 3 Cans of Spray Paint, Stone Effect color terra cotta 12. Styrofoam wig base 13.Dress form or newspaper 13. Wax paper, few sheets 14. Real small rocks or pebbles for the teeth, about 10 or 12 15. Hot Glue Gun & about 6 glue sticks

Costume Instructions
Start with an Old Sweatshirt, cut the back from top to bottom. Sew or hot glue gun a velcro tape to both sides of the shirt so you now have a way to close the shirt in the back. Makes for easy entry & access. Grab a can of Big stuff expanding foam and start making foam balls on the sweatshirt around the wrists working your way thru the whole shirt. I stuffed the sweatshirt with newspaper to give it a form of a body, it made it easier to get the foam on. If you have a dress form you could put the shirt on that, then add the foam to the shirt. Be careful to take your time the foam expands quite quickly and a small ball turns out to be quite big. Also, keep in mind yu are trying to make it look like rocks. Apply the foam to the entire shirt, I tried to make muscles on the chest. Let dry & spray paint the shirt. I made a pair of pants out of the Blue vinyl and used elastic in the waist. I cut a piece of black vinyl for the belt, closed it with velcro and cut out a big number "4" for the front of the belt, you can velcro or hot glue the "4" on the belt. Then I got a bald cap and put it on a old wig head for shape. Again I made foam balls all over the bald cap. Be careful not to go too far down on the forehead. I used wax paper to flatten the foam before it dried to make the rocks less bulky on the head. I then took the half mask attached it to the wig form and proceeded to cover the half mask with foam. I hot glued the pebbles on the mask, attached to the foam. When finished, again spray paint the bald cap covered with foam and the half mask, which is now a full face mask. For the feet take a piece of the card board and trace your toes, cut out an add these toes, about an extra 5 or 6 inches to the shoes using the glue gun. I then used the Big Stuff foam to make rock like balls on the card board form & incorporated it onto the whole shoe. Allow room for them to slip into the shoes. After all the rocks are made on the shoes, spray paint with the Terra Cotta stone look paint. The hands are really easy, trace your 2 hands on cardboard, cut out, on one side of the cardboard hot glue little strips of elastic, about 3 to the one side of the card board. This is the side where your hands will fit into the elastic strips, holding on the rock hands. I put an elastic strip on the thumb, the pinky, ring finger and wrist. to hold it on your hand. On the other side I made more foam rocks to cover the cardboard. Paint with stone spray paint and Wa La you are finally finished! Assemble and have a blast. Everyone will ask you how you made it!