Luke's Lego Minifig Costume

He wanted it to look exactly like his minifig character in Lego Universe and he's very pleased with the result. I'd like to print out the Lego logo and glue it to the front of the body but Luke's not having any of that.

We took some inspiration from these extremely handy fellows but simplified, simplified, simplified. The fancy costumes they made -- they're practically perfect replicas -- took 40-50 hours each to make and required the use of a variety of power hand tools. Ours took probably 4 hours, tops.

For the mask, we used two sheets of yellow craft foam, taped together with yellow duct tape. Luckily, the tape and the foam were the same perfect colour. The  most finicky part was using said yellow duct tape to fasten a flat circle cut frome the same kind of foam to the top of the mask. We ended up using the glue gun as well and just fiddled a lot. The eyes were a bit fiddly, too -- they needed to look like minifig eyes but they also needed to be in the right places for Luke to see through them. We marked the positions of his eyes with a pencil and used an exacto knife to cut out circles. (Note: NOT while Luke was wearing the mask.) The smile was drawn on with a sharpie marker.

The little round connecter on the very top of the mask and the hands were both made from little round craft boxes we found at Walmart for two dollars each. For the top, we just covered it in the yellow duct tape and hot-glued it on. For the hands, we cut out the bottoms of the boxes, snipped a section out of the sides, covered them in yellow duct tape, and taped them to the backs of fingerless gloves that Luke keeps tucked inside his sleeves. (We had a pair of red mittens that would have worked better but Luke insisted that he will need his fingers free to select his Halloween treats.)

We purchased two cardboard display boards, one in red and one in blue, and simply cut out a front and back from the red in the correct shape for the body. We hotglued two strips of red fleece, cut from an old blanket, to them for shoulder straps. The body fits him like a sandwich board. (The cardboard display boards  each cost $11 at a craft store -- if you wanted to save money, you could just use any old cardboard and paint it.)

The legs are also glued to a strip of red fleece that wraps around Luke's middle and is fastened in the back with a couple of safety pins. If I had to do it again, I think I'd make the legs out of one piece of cardboard instead of two, as they tend to get kicked out to the sides as he walks.

When Luke isn't wearing his costume, Sylvie likes to put on the mask and walk around intoning "I BE ROBOT. I BE ROBOT." We have no idea where she picked this up.

It's been a busy couple of weeks for minifigs -- a mysterious 8-foot-tall one recently washed up on a beach in Florida.

Comments

[Teena in Toronto]

So cute!

[Sara]

That is so perfect!