Dress up days were some of my favourite primary school memories! Costumes and Easter hats made for us by Mum and Dad from cardboard, masking tape and things found in the dress up box, paraded proudly around the quadrangle in front of all of our class mates and then a day spent at school and out of uniform, it was like a holiday, but at school… so exciting!
Book Week 2016 was our first chance to create something for Sammy (we missed 2015 because we were in Ireland for my sisters wedding) and had an Aussie Theme which worked out perfectly because Sammy had already decided she wanted to go dressed as Grug… Grug is a series of children’s picture books by Ted Prior.
(source: http://www.simonandschuster.com.au)
A quick google landed not a whole lot of inspiration (or instructions, see below for ours) so we winged it! A trip to the local newsagent and then Big W landed us everything we might need. I’ll add here for those who haven’t needed it for a long time… crepe paper does not come in the long packets it used to, it took me too long to figure out that it is now packed up the same way as tissue paper!
Sammy loved her Grug costume but did request that next year we make something that she can sit in so she doesn’t have to stand up for the whole parade haha!
A Quick guide to how we made our Grug Costume
What we used:
x4 sheets of creamy coloured cardboard (what we used for school projects as kids!)
x1 roll of wide masking tape
x2 packs of burgundy streamers (couldn’t find brown anywhere!)
x2 packs of yellow crepe paper (cut into strips… bought these before i found the streamers!)
Black Marking Pen
Pencil
Ruler
x1 burgundy track suit ($6 complete set from the clearance rack, again no brown which worked out perfectly in the end and if it hadn’t been on clearance I would have just found something at home!)
x1 old plastic headband
x4 drinking straws
How we put it together:
I started out cutting up a couple of pieces of paper to work out how I was going to shape to main body… I didn’t want to go buy more cardboard if I stuffed it up haha! I ended up cutting each sheet into three triangle shaped pieces and tipped the two smaller end bits upside down (a bit like this) and taped it all together, inside and out with some extra tape around the joins at the top and bottom. I used four large and four small pieces and saved the spare bits to make the eyes, mouth and nose.
Once it was all taped up I cut some arm holes and started adding on the “hair”, well I guess it is hair that Grug has! I drew a rough guide using a pencil and ruler to make it easier to get the hair straight and cut the crepe paper and streamers into roughly even lengths. I lay the strips down so that one end was even and slightly overlapping the last, then ran a strip of tape along the top. Starting at the bottom and working my way up, lined up the large chunk of “hair” with my pencil line and pressed it on. Rinse & Repeat!
I found a plastic tray in our recycling pile… I think it was a strawberry tray, and cut some pieces to use as reinforcing over the shoulders and masking taped it in there.
The headband was a last minute addition for head hair… and the drinking straws for his little patch of spiky hair.
All up I probably spent about $25 on supplies and four hours from working out how to cut and tape to the right shape through to the finish off. Not to bad at all for such a cute costume and I don’t doubt this will be the pinnacle of our book week costume career 😉
