Space Shuttle

Blast off in this awesome costume!

What you need:

White Foam Board (approx 5 sheets)

Black Foam Board (1 sheet)

Exacto knife

Glue Gun

Black Duct tape

Black Permanent marker

Styrofoam cones

Black Spray Paint

Assembly:

Start off by finding a picture of a space shuttle.  You will likely learn more than you ever wanted to know about the contours of that machine!  Like any wheelchair costume, there will be some trial and error as you adapt the costume to work with your particular chair and child and it helped me to look at a few different ideas.

I started my making the sides of the shuttle.   Using two pieces of foam board, I played around with different ways to fit it between the sides of my son’s wheelchair and the wheels.  It was a little tight, but I finally settled on cutting a rectangular notch to secure the foam board over the brakes.  I also could have cut a notch to fit it over the axles, but felt it was secure enough over the axles.  I then trimmed the foam board down so that it would be low enough for my son would be able to reach his wheels.

I then cut a triangular wedge out of the top front end of each side to approximate the rounded contour of the front windows.  I measured and cut out another piece of white foam board to make the front window.  I secured it to each side with hot glue.  I made the black front window using the duct tape and wrapped it around a little to the sides.

The front nose was a little tricky.  I ended up cutting three triangles of black foam board.  Two of the triangles matched up the edge of the side of the shuttle and I then came together in the front.  The length of these triangles should be the distance that you want the nose cone to come out -  I suggest measuring for this step instead of eyeballing ;)  The third matched up the bottom of the front window and came down to meet the two triangles.  Using duct tape, I secured the side triangles first and the placed the top triangles.

Then I made the wings and rudder.   Initially, I made two fantastic to-scale wings that went almost the length of the shuttle.  However they would have blocked the wheels and part of the fun of having a space shuttle the ability to zoom around it in, so I had to drastically reduce their size so that they would fit behind the wheels.  (The little boy in my first inspiration picture looks like he was using a power chair, so long wings made perfect sense for his costume.)   Once I settled on a size, I decorated with black marker and NASA, USA and flag printouts.  For the rudder, I couldn't  think of a simple way to make the one rudder, so I settled on cutting out two trapezoids to approximate the look.  I colored in the details with the black marker and hot glued on.

The last step in the structure was to cut out a black piece for the back and secure it to the sides with duct tape.  I spray painted three styrofoam craft cones to make the after burners. I cut holes in the back piece and foam and secured with glue and duct tape.

I got the astronaut costume and helmet off of Amazon.  One of the unintended benefits of the helmet was that it gave my son, a preschooler, a nice place to hide when the attention got to be a little too much.

Ambulance

What you need:

27in TV box from U-Haul (or any large cardboard box or pieces of cardboard glued together)

Exacto knife

Foam rectangle sheets 

Pipe liner

Internet pics for dashboard and lights

White poster board or white paint

Styrofoam discs

Hot glue gun

Foam sticky letters

Lights of your choice (sticky LED night lights, panel lights, etc)

Assembly:

1.  Cut out the box panels, and slip onto sides of the wheelchair.  Cut basic side shapes allowing room for self propelling.  We just did one side, and traced it for the other side.

2.  Decide how you want to attach it to the chair.  We originally wanted it to go over his head, but it was easiest just to rest everything on his frame and handle bars, rather than affix it to the chair.

3.  Measure and cut the top, front, and back from other box flaps.

4.  Trace all of the pieces onto white poster board, cut them out, and hot glue them to the pieces.  OR If you are better at planning ahead than I am, purchase a large white box to begin with. Or you could use white paint to paint the entire box.

5.  Hot glue all the pieces together, We also reinforced all of the sides with another piece of cardboard folded in half and glued on the inside.  

6.  Decorate!  We used colored foam pieces for the cross shape (you could use posterboard or paint as well), styrofoam discs for the ambulance light on top, and printed the dashboard and lights on glossy paper and glued them onto the sides.  We also used a piece of cardboard and construction paper tilted and hot glued inward for the dashboard.  For the number, we used pipe lining.

Add some lights for an extra touch!

Thanks for sharing Kari, this is such a versatile costume. I love it.

Front Loader/Backhoe Wheelchair Costume

You need:

Yellow spray paint

Black spray pain

5 gift wrapping paper tubes (paper towel tubes aren't long enough)

cardboard

white poster board

Hot glue gun (that baby is your friend)

zip ties

Here is the basics of how I made it:

The big yellow circles covering the wheels is white poster board that I spray painted yellow.

The sides of the front loader and backhoe are cardboard, painted yellow.

The scoop part of the front loader and backhoe are poster board because is it flexible enough to form the scoop.

I spray painted 4 of the gift wrapping tubes black, 1 I painted yellow.

The canopy is a lid to a copy paper box, cut at an angle.

The front loader is hot glued to 2 wrapping paper tubes. I zip tied the front loader to the foot plate of Caleb's chair.

The canopy is hot glued to 2 wrapping paper tubes and then zip tied to the back rest bars on Caleb's chair.

The yellow wrapping tube is used to attach the back hoe, I cut it in 2 pieces to fit over Caleb's handle bar. I think I used a small brad to attach the two pieces together so the backhoe could bend.

And that's it. It is actually a pretty easy costume to put together and you really don't need a lot of supplies. 

Here is another Front Loader/Backhoe Wheelchair costume:

I think we pretty much followed the directions above using cardboard, posterboard and zip ties. The only deviations were using small wooden dowels we bought at home improvement store (spray painted black) and attached the digger and overhead canopy to. We poked holes in both (reinforcing the holes and the diggers edges with yellow duct tape) and attached the dowels with zip ties.

We also used double sided velcro regular to help stabilize the dowels to the back of his wheel chair for the canopy. We attached the wheel "covers" with zip ties to the spokes and cut slits in several places after they were assembled to help them lay flat, just using a glue stick on those slits. We also used yellow latex yellow paint for cardboard. Lastly, we used regular old duct tape to be the reflector on his sweatshirt :)

Thanks Holli from "Our Double Blessings" for sharing Alex' costume!

Police Car Wheelchair Costume

You need:
Cardboard
Spray paint (with primer)
Gray pipe insulation (for the bumper)
Hot glue
Construction paper

We cut the cardboard in the shape of the car and then assembled the pieces together using a glue gun. We cut pipe insulation and glued to the front and back for the bumper. We used thick cardboard covered in yellow paper for the headlights. White construction paper lightly colored with blue chalk for the windows. We attached the car to the wheelchair using garden twine. It kind of rested on the wheel rims and we just tied it in several different places to stay put.

Thank you Michelle for sharing Brendan's costume!

Astronaut Wheelchair Costume

You Need:

a large box big enough to fit over wheelchair
a smaller box to use as the front
2 pieces of cardboard to be used as the wings
2 toilet paper holder to use as the jets
paint
tissue paper
duct tape or hot glue

To assemble the spaceship, we had it pretty easy. The box we found to fit over Grey in his wheelchair fit perfectly, so we just needed to make cut outs for his arms. With the second, smaller box, we made the front part of the ship. We cut some extra pieces of cardboard out as the wings and spraypainted the whole thing silver. We then added the two toilet paper holders (that were already spray-painted) to the back. Once the ship was assembled and spray painted, we used blue, red, yellow, and white paint to add the design on the sides. Finish up with a little tissue paper as first and ta-da...a spaceship!

*side-note this was our first try at a wheelchair costume and I learned that it is best to put the duct tape on the inside of the box, or use hot glue. Even when spray-painted the duct tape shows up.

Also, I had to remind myself that this costume was only going to be used for one day and it was just for fun...it's ok if it's not perfect!

That year we also decided to make a jet-pack out of his walker. We spray painted two 2-liters silver and added the tissue paper as fire. We then hot-glued them together and tied them to his walker.

Thank you Leigh from "Our Little Gibblet" for the great costume idea!