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Man-Eating Plant/Audrey 2 Costume

By _cassidyclark_ from Louisville, CO

I got inspiration for this costume from a play that our high school put on. It is not too hard to make, but it does require going to the store a few times.

Prep Time: 2 - 3 days

Costume Materials

glue and water for paper mache (I also used flour as another option) -- 1 part glue or flour, 3 parts water
paper strips (plain newspaper)
green, orange, purple, and red paints for headpiece
one old baseball hat (to use as support for headpiece)
suspenders (to hold up the pot)
clay to make 8 teeth on Audrey II (paint the tips with red paint)
foil to mold the baseball hat into Audrey II
fake moss
a 2 1/2 x 2 ft. box (as the pot)
two green shirts, or one undershirt and one green shirt
green felt
black sharpie
painter's tape
scissors
tacky glue or Elmer's glue
terra-cotta colored paint

Costume Instructions

Begin making Audrey II by finding an old baseball hat.
Take as much foil you think you'll need, and wrap it around the bill of the baseball hat to make a rounded look. You may use the painters tape to hold in place if you like. remember to put a lower jaw on Audrey before moving on to the next step.
Next is the fun part! Paper mache-ing can get messy, so I reccomend doing it on a large sheet of cardboard if you can find one. 1 part flour or glue (depending how big your Audrey head is) should be mixed into a bowl with 3 parts water (the amount of flour/glue times 3) and stirred together.
Dip your paper strips into the bowl of flour/glue one at a time and wipe the strips off between your fingers to get off excess goop. (to keep your Audrey head from touching the cardboard sheet, use a bike pump to put your Audrey headpiece on, that way you can sort of get on the inside too)
Place your paper strips carefully around the hat and bill of your Audrey headpiece. Sometimes you can't get the paper mache to stick on the edges, so what I do is let the top dry, then finish by doing the inside last.
Keep dipping and placing the strips onto the hat until you can't see any foil poking out. When you're done, let Audrey II dry for at least 2 hours.
If your Audrey head is completely dry, you can either finish the inside of the hat (if you havent already) or you can start painting! If paper mache-ing, repeat steps 3-6. If painting, use a large paint brush and get out your green paint and go to step 8!
Paint a layer or two of green onto your paper-mached hat (dont paint inside the mouth).
When dried, you may paint another layer or go straight to painting the spots. For painting spots, use a smaller paintbrush (whatever size you think would work best) and paint orange, red, and purple spots onto the dried green paint (make them all different sizes, if you like). While your red paint is already out, paint the inside of Audrey II's mouth with the red paint. When you are waiting to dry, make the clay teeth. (make sure they fit on your Audrey before you bake them.)
When your Audrey head is dry and you have made sure the teeth fit, bake the teeth. After they have been baked, paint the tips with a little bit of red paint as a "blood" effect. Next, Glue them on your Audrey headpiece.
Your headpiece is done! All you have left to make is the collar of leaves and the pot and arms. Make the collar of leaves by taking a strip of green felt, and pieces of felt shaped into different sized leaves. Draw the "leaves lines" onto the leaves with a sharpie marker. Then, sew or glue the felt leaves onto the strip of felt and---voila--- you have the leaves collar! Hold the collar together with safety pins.
Make arms with felt, and draw leaf lines with marker.
Find a 2 1/2 x 2 ft. box at a fed-ex store--or---just buy a new laptop :). Cut out a hole in the bottom of the box around the size of your hips. Then, after cutting off the flaps of the box, use them as extra cardboard to make the lip of the terra cotta pot. Using tape of some sort, tape the "lips" of cardboard onto the pot.
Next, paint the box with the terra cotta paint. Don't paint the top (or bottom) part of the box with the hip-hole.
Take your fake moss and tacky-glue/elmers glue it down around the space where the hip-hole is. If you feel tacky glue or elmers glue will not hold well, use any kind of glue that is available. Then, put strips of tape for suspenders to go on on your pot.
Put it all on! I reccomend putting pants and one of your green shirts/undershirt on before anything else. Then, put on your pot with suspenders on them on, the suspenders over your undershirt. Put your second/first green shirt on over the suspenders and undershirt. Have someone put your leaf collar on for you. Then, put on your Audrey head piece and you're all done! You are welcome to make any variations of Audrey that you wish.