Captain America

What you need:
(Total Cost to create $15 and about two hours of time)
Red, white and blue crafters paint
Metallic silver crafters paint
Foam brushes
Hot glue gun
Poster board (5 sheets)
Red, orange and yellow tissue paper
Pinwheels
Zip ties
Scissors
Stapler

Assembly:

I used different sized pot lids to make the circles for Captain Americas Shield.  Traced the outlines of the circles and painted them according to photos of the actual shield I found online.  Painted each shield and then hot glued them to an extra larger circle to give them more support.  They were hole punched in three locations and secured with zip ties to the wheels of the wheelchair.

The exhaust pipes were made with rolled up poster board, hot glued to maintain shape and then stapled to the second tube.  I used two tubes on each safety bar and painted with metallic crafting paint.  The tubes were made wide enough to fit over the anti-tipping guards and the guards were turned up to attach the exhaust.  I them stuffed the tubes with the colored tissue paper to give it a flame appearance.

Behind the wheelchair I attached my sons real Captain America shield using ribbon to be able to take it on and off when he wanted to use the shield.

Lastly to add a little pizzazz, I added red, white and blue pinwheels to the front.  They were attached with hot glue.

I love the simplicity of this costume! This is proof that you can create something really fun and amazing with just a few supplies and a couple of hours. It's perfect Kerri, thanks for sharing Jarrett's costume with us!

Pirate Ship

What you need:

Black Garbage bags

Blue recycling bags

Large box

Duct tape

Black

Skull and crossbones

Glue gun and glue

White Foam skull decals

Orange foam roll (orange)

Foam squares (yellow, red, blue)

Broom handle

Wire hangers

Pirate flag (or pirate skullcap hat)

Black fabric

Pipe cleaners

Letter decals

Assemby:

Living in Canada, making a Halloween costume that is waterproof is very important. As expected, there was rain on Halloween night and the costume held up great. Looking for materials that could stand up against the rain and still pop with colour. Foam became my new best friend, it was bright, easy to cut and manipulate and could get wet. You can cut it, glue it, colour it.

We found a box that fit over the entire wheelchair and cut out a hole to fit over the seat, with space enough to sit. Covering the wheels meant that my son couldn't move himself, but at the time he didn't show any interest. The box rested on the armrests and sat just above the ground. It stayed in place without anything to strap it in. Cut open up the garbage bags and position the bag so that the top hangs along the bottom of the box. Tape the bags in place along the cut-out hole, we used skull and cross-bone duct tape to hold it in place (duct tape does have latex in it). I also used tape or glue the garbage bags down along the bottom.

I bunched up blue recycling bags up and glue them along the bottom of the box (so that it looks like waves). I used foam to decorate the boat. With a foam roll cut into the shape of the railings, and port holes as well as a skull and crossbones foam decal. I used glue to stick everything onto sides and front. I overlapped the railing so that it sits partly above the box.

With the foam I also cut out a captain's wheel, anchor from foam. I traced and cut out the design first and then outlined it in permanent marker. We had a treasure chest lunch box, so I got fake jewels from the dollar store (and an odd crown or so) and filled the lunch box. To complete the costume we also had a stuffed parrot and a sword.

For a name I added some stick-on letters. The Jolly Wheeler.

For the flag and mast I used a broom stick for the mast. When I first started making the flag we only had a pirate skull-cap I got from the dollar store, but by Halloween we had an actual pirate flag.  It was important for the flag to be ‘flying’ and not just hanging limp, so I used cardboard in the cap to hold it up, and then glued the cap together. 

I cut black fabric for the sails. I cut a hole in the middle so it will fit over the broom handle. The coat hangers, taped in upside down (with the hanger part cut off) held the fabric in place. 

The flag and past sat up against the back of the wheelchair, with a loop made from pipe cleaner that was taped into place.

My son preferred his walker for smaller areas, so I wanted a wheelchair and a walker costume. A lot of the extras from the wheelchair could be moved over and onto the walker ‘ship’. For the walker I cut up a cardboard box. I cut the bottom off of the box, and one end, then I cut a hole in the top of the box, leaving a slight edge. Then covered with black garbage bags, using tape and glue to keep it down. The front of the walker is left open for movement.

To keep the box in place over the walker I cut a line in the centre of the back to hold the lunch bag in place over the back. Using pipe cleaner, and tape I held it in place along the back of the handle and over the front wheels.

I cut out similar shapes to the wheelchair in foam to decorate. The anchor, captain wheel, flag and mast and treasure chest all moved from the wheelchair. I created a spy-glass from a paper towel roll and covered in construction paper. For water we cut up the blue recycling bags.

The Jolly Walker had a little loop from pipe-cleaners to hold the sword and also to help to keep the mast in place.

Wow, thanks for the thorough instructions Amanda! These costumes are great.

Pirate Ship

What you need:

PVC Pipe
Box cutter
Card Board (Refrigerator Size)
Bolts
2” C-clamp
Gorilla Glue
Skull (party city)
Pirate lunch box
Pirate’s gold (party city)
Anchor chain (party city)
Black raven (party city)
Metallic link chain (party city)
Jute roll (party city)
Old carpet roll
Duck tape
Black curtain
Black and white felt
Brown spray paint
Brown Tempera paint

Assembly:

We shaped the cardboard box into a pirate ship. We used PVC pipe to make the frame and used bolts and gorilla glue to hold it all together. Once we made the frame we used c-clamps to anchor the ship to Jacob’s chair. I painted the ship with brown tempera paint and used a back and forth motion to give it that old wood look. We I spray painted the old carpet roll with brown spray paint and placed it on the back of Jacob’s chair in between some metal pieces that came out of the back end of his chair. We cut a hole through the carpet pole and glued it in. We then tied the black curtain to the PVC to make the sails. I draped the jute roll over the pirate ship and cut a whole big enough to sit Jacob inside of his pirate ship. I used gorilla glue to hold the skull on the front of the ship and placed pieces of gold and treasures on the top of his ship. Good Luck!

Another great costume from Clarrissa! We love it.

Batman Wheels

I used vinyl peel and stick sticker material (like for the cricut machine) but anything would work fabric/paper/durable plastic/painted cardboard...I just cut out the pattern and stuck it on!

This is great Dawn! I love how simple and easy this is. A wheelchair costume doesn't have to be complicated or hard. Thanks for sharing!

Batmobile Wheelchair Costume

You need:

Cardboard

Black Spray Paint

Half sphere styrofoam shape

2 Styrofoam circles (one small, one bigger)

Reflectors

Red and orange tissue paper

Hot Glue Gun

Batman symbol printed out

Dashboard decorations (optional)

Here's how we did it:

First we cut out the cardboard into the shape we wanted for the sides of the Batmobile. I cut out a rectangle for the back of the Batmobile and a square for the front. I spray painted the cardboard black, at least 2 coats of paint.

The smaller styrofoam circle was painted silver. The larger one I painted black. I also painted the half sphere black.

Then I glued the front square to the sides and finished it up by gluing the back rectangle. That gives you the Batmobile shape. It only takes 4 pieces of cardboard to make the Batmobile. At the last minute I cut out a thin rectangle shape, painted it black, and added it to the front of the Batmobile to make a dashboard

I clued the large styrofoam circle to the front and glued the half sphere in the middle.

For the dashboard, I printed out a MPH gauge and a smaller batman symbol. I glued those to the dashboard. You could also add a small steering wheel if you want.

For the back I added 2 reflectors (bought at Walmart). I glued the smaller silver styrofoam circle in the center and added red and orange tissue paper to look like flames. I added larger Batman symbols to each side of the Batmobile.

The Batmobile fit really nice around Caleb's chair so we only had to add a little string to tie it to his back seat bars.

Pirate Ship Wheelchair Costume

This was my first attempt at a wheelchair costume. You could describe this as a crafty creation for the extremely uncrafty. Very low difficulty!


You Need:
a big box that will fit over the wheelchair and extends out in the front and back
exacto knife or awesome scissors
black duct tape (or a hot glue gun)
a thin and a thicker dowel (round pieces of wood)
black cloth
brown spray paint
black and yellow construction paper
berry basket or other plastic container
zip ties and/or plastic bottle
drop cloth (to paint on)
pirate costume
parrot, chains, etc (optional)

We are in the process of packing up our house, so boxes were easy to come by. We found one that was roughly the width of Kingsley's chair, on the inside of the wheels and twice the length, which was perfect.

1. Cut off the bottom of the box.
2. Tape the side flaps on the end of the box so that they form a point in the front and back. Trim the top flap to make a triangle and tape it to the point.
*I had to trim the length of my box first. I wanted it the length of my van trunk so that it would travel easily.
3. Put the box on the wheelchair, go underneath and draw where the handle bars and seat are or whatever you want cut off the top. Cut that out. We made two holes - one for the handles and one for Kingsley to go in and out without having to take off the costume. Making two holes instead of one big one allowed it to rest on the back of his seat for more support.
4. Trim the bottom to fit over the chair. We trimmed around the wheels, the brakes, and the foot rest so that the box rested on these things and didn't need to be strapped on to the chair at all. It was a lot of random trimming and guessing.
5. Put your kid in and see if they can reach the wheels. If not, trim the sides so they don't get underarm chaffing. Make sure you can do up the seat belt, brake the brakes, push from the side and whatever else is important for you. Trim as needed.
6. Tape all the edges if you are a lousy cutter and it's all jagged and uneven... which mine was. I also added tape inside to reinforce where the sides of the chair rubbed the inside of the box.

7. Cut the thinner dowel to be just a big smaller than the width of the black cloth (we used a bandanna). Tape the short/thin dowel to the long, thicker dowel to make a cross (a t, not an x). Snip a small hole in the middle of the cloth and slide it on to look like a sail.
8. Cut a hole in the bottom of the basket so that it can slide onto the thicker dowel. Decide where you want the crow's nest (the basket)... probably somewhere above the bandanna/thin dowel. Tape a ring below to keep it from sliding.
9. Go outside or in an open garage, put down the drop cloth, spray paint the mast (the dowel creation) and the big box ship.

10. While everything is drying, have a cup of tea. You've been working hard.
11. Get your black construction paper and cut out some big circles. Get the yellow and cut slightly bigger circles or rings.
12. Google "Jolly Roger" and print out a flag or free hand draw if you're a rockstar.
13. Dig up some of those cardboard box scraps and cut out an anchor. You might want to google so you can remember what they look like.
14. If you have time, you can do another coat of spray paint on the box. If you've maxed out your craftiness at this point, no worries, everyone will be so amazed that you made it this far, they won't even notice.
15. Raid your kids craft bin and find some glue or just use that tape you still have to add the portholes (those circles you cut out) and the anchor to the side of your ship (put it on the wheelchair first so you don't add them to where the wheel is), and the flag to the top of the mast.
16. If the costume is going to be a one-shot deal, zip tie the mast to the back of the chair and you are all set. If you'll be transporting it and need to remove the mast to fit in your vehicle, get a waterbottle, wedge and/or zip tie it behind the chair. Drop the mast into the bottle. Remove as needed.
17. Teach your kid to yell AARGH!
18. Break open the Halloween candy and indulge. Well done.

Thank you Jill from "The Little King" for sharing this arrrgghhsome costume!