Out of some crazy desire to try my hand at paper engineering in three dimensions, a few weeks ago I decided to make Halloween costumes for Boris and myself. The idea was somewhat driven by a commercial project that came my way and would involve making life-sized props from paper. Just the thought of working on these had my mind whirling with ideas so I decided to channel some of these into making the costumes while I waited to hear confirmation about the project.

For Boris I made a two foot high giraffe costume from yellow poster paper. It fits over his own head with a window in the neck for his face to peek through. It was nothing short of hilarious to have him continually try it on and all the silly antics that ensued. Boris painted the brown spots himself, which was the one thing I was willing to hand off to him.

Why a giraffe you might ask? It was something we’d joked about the previous year and I decided we needed to make it happen.

For my own costume I decided to make antlers, which is something I’ve always wanted to have, but with the whimsical twist of adding red leaves. I think of them as “tree branch antlers”.

As with the giraffe, I made these from poster paper. The trickiest part was figuring out how to attach them both to something and have them balance on my head. I used a black headband with elastic as the fitted strap that goes around the back of my head. They seem to balance just fine.

I finished the costumes the day before I began the more commercial project of making paper props for a video shoot. More about this in another post. Both projects have been a terrific learning experience, and made me tap into additional skills I wasn’t previously aware of.