How to Make a DC: "Blue Beetle" Costume

When the Blue Beetle Scarab is found by Jaime Reyes, he becomes the new “Blue Beetle”. He basically looks like a blue bug-like iron man . But still, pretty cool nonetheless.


Materials:

-Blue Craft foam

-White Craft foam

-tall boots

-reflective sunglasses

- double sided zelcro

-Black Zenta suit

-Hot Glue cooling pad (can get it usually at an arts store. you can leave your glue gun on it without it sticking to it)

-children’s backpack

-metal clothing hangers

-black lipstick or face paint


Optional

-Dancer’s belt (it prevents your junk being outlined in your skintight suit)

-grey or silver fine tip fabric pen

-blue metallic paint

Grab your boots and make your choice if you are going to make them permanently your “blue beetle” boots, or you are only going to use these temporarily and want to salvage your boots later. Follow my link below in my “how to make a robin costume: damien wayne” post. The explanation is located in the “shoes section”

https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-Batman-Robin-Damien-Wayne-costume/

We went with option 2, where we covered boots with masking tape (leaving the zipper exposed, and then started putting blue craft foam over the boot. If you raise the foam high enough, you can just add the knee cover onto the boot itself.

Cut out 4 ovals from the white foam. I found the easiest way how to do this is to take a piece of paper and fold it in half. cut out a half oval and unfold it until you get the oval shape. then trace it onto your white foam and cut away. now you have your 4 ovals. Set those aside.

Using the same paper template as the above step, cut a little more off the template to make 4 smaller ovals. Once you have them, you should have 8 ovals total (4 small, and 4 slightly larger)..

4 go on each side of the thigh, in a small, large, large small order. (pic A).. the toy had 4 circles, the comic sometimes has 3.

Lights
*if you know how to use lighting and LEDS, you could probably devise something where you could make these ovals glow. my costume making skills are not there yet, but someday i hope to be able to use lights.

Take 1 sheet of your blue foam and cut the chest and back shapes from pic B. you might need to just try cutting  and trying on in order to get a good fit. The back is in two pieces so that it will run along either side of the zipper. DO NOT glue on yet.

To make pectoral segments for the chest, take two more pieces of blue foam and cut two pectoral pieces (pic C). Glue them on top of the chest piece from pic B. from there, take an exacto knife and cut out the design in the front. Once this is completed, NOW you can glue the front and back pieces on. Remember to put the glue pad on the inside of the zenta suit first.

Cut a piece of blue foam and glue it to the neck part (pic D). Use the heat pad on the inside, and remember to leave space so that the zipper is still able to open and close.

Arms
Take your blue foam and cut long rectangles that will go inside your elbow joints. (pic E). heat pad and glue.


Shoulders
For the shoulders, cut out two circles from the blue foam. Use a heat gun or a blow dryer and stretch the foam over something curved, like a bowl or a ball to give it a curved shape. Once done, put your heat pad inside your zenta suit and glue them in place.

(Image 1 + Image 2)
The mask was the most complicated part of the costume. I took some chalk and outlined the person’s eyes so i knew where their placement was. This is complicated, but hang in there. I used a heat gun/ blow dryer to assist with shaping the foam. be careful if you use a heat gun, as it gets really REALLY HOT. Take a sheet of blue foam and fold it around the face. It might even be better to fold the foam in half and cut out the outline first prior to placing it on the head.. But glue ONLY the front of the face in. (pic G)

(Image 3)
Next, cut along the person’s jaw line. Afterwards,cut the foam at the top of the head and do your best to make the foam line up. Cut a strip and put it on the top to cover the seam. Also, cut a chin piece to cover the chin space. (pic H)

Now, take a large rectangle of blue foam. only glue one side down, and put velcro on the other so you can open and close the back piece to hide the zipper. (pic I)

your mask should look somewhat similar to pic J now

Eyes
Once that is settled, make your eye pieces. As stated, i used chalk to outline the persons’ real eye, so it helped with placement. DO NOT Glue these yet. Set them to the side. (pic K)

Pop out your lenses from your reflective sunglasses and cut them into the size of persons eyes. This is where the chalk comes in handy. It also might be easier to take the foam pieces and put them over the sunglasses themselves to make an outline. I took a dremel to it and carved them out. if you know how to use LEDS, you might try making light up eyes.

Once done, USE THE HEAT PAD and glue those SECURELY in place on the person’s eyes. the reason i say this is because once done, you can cut out the zenta fabric from underneath the mask. If the lenses are SECURELY glued in, the mask should not fray. Now, glue the foam eye pieces on top of the lenses.

Mouth
Lastly, carefully cut out the mouth. you can either glue a hem so it doesn’t fray, or you can sew the edges by taking thread and continuously wrapping it around the border of the tear. i believe we glued it.

Before you put on your mask, take your lipstick or black paint and outline your mouth so it will look black. For the blue beetle character, he actually has a mouth (don’t ask me how)

(Image 1)
First, take your hangers and bend them into the correct “pincher” shape. i believe i used 4 hangers total.

(Image 2)
once completed, cover the hangers with blue foam and set aside.

(Image 1)
Now, take your children’s backpack and cut off the straps. Cover the whole backpack in blue foam. Just follow the outline of the backpack as a guide.

*If you do this right, you can actually use the backpack. we kept our cellphones,wallets, and snacks inside. you can’t put alot of weight inside of it, but it’s  strong enough to hold some things.

(Image 2)
From there, glue the pinchers onto the the backpack (between YOUR back and the backpack itself). we then made 6 straps and connected them to the backpack itself. attach velcro to the straps and velcro to your zenta suit. heating pad people, heating pad! i say this repeatedly because we forgot to use it once and totally put a dollop of hot glue directly on my friend by accident.