Helmet Horns

My son wears a plagiocephaly helmet, also known as a cranial remolding orthosis. Because he has to wear it 23 hours a day, every day, we wanted to give him some options to change it up from time to time.

After getting the green light from our awesome orthotist, Lourdes, my partner and I decided to make a bunch of interchangeable helmet accessories.

First up: devil horns

We decided to make the horns out of sugru because it stays flexible when cured (an important consideration when your baby enjoys headbutting) and we happened to have a large pack of red sugru that was about to expire.

Unfortunately they are no longer selling sugru in the big packs, but you can still make your own horns by combining multiple little packages.

Follow the instructions on the sugru package. Shape the sugru into two horns with your hands. If you don't have the velcro ready, set the horns aside on some wax paper. Let the sugru cure for 24 hours.

Safety Warnings:

Small objects can be a choking hazard for children under 3 years old. Make sure any helmet accessories you make are at least 2¼" long and have a diameter of at least 1¼". Remove them before putting your child to sleep or leaving him unattended.

Plagiocephaly helmets are not safety helmets. Adding adhesives and accessories to a bicycle helmet or other protective helmet may prevent it from functioning properly in a crash.

We decided to attach the helmet accessories with velcro so they would be easy to remove and switch up.

Cut two pieces of the hook side of the velcro to fit the bottom of the horns. If you planned ahead, you can attach the horns to the velcro in the 30 minutes that the sugru is still sticky. If not, you can do what we did and glue the velcro to the sugru with super glue.

Attach two pieces of velcro to the helmet. The white fuzzy loop side of the velcro that we used had an adhesive backing, if yours doesn't, you can use super glue or epoxy to stick it to the helmet.

Our goal is to make our son's helmet like Mr. Potato Head, with all sorts of different accessories.

If you make any helmet accessories, please post pictures in the comments. We'd love to see them!