Maple Leaf Mohawk

Since his rainbow mohawk was such a hit, my partner and I knew we needed to make our son a festive version for Canada Day.

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 have been making him a bunch of interchangeable helmet accessories to give him some options to change it up from time to time.

While this was specifically designed for a plagiocephaly helmet, I don't see why you couldn't make one to attach to any party hat or headband. This mohawk could also easily be adapted for the 4th of July by switching the maple leafs for stars and adding blue craft foam.

For this project you'll need:

• adhesive-backed craft foam in multiple colours (ideally the glittery kind in red, white and silver)
• velcro (ideally adhesive-backed)

Craft foam is great for helmet accessories because it is soft, light weight and easy to work with.

Since we had access to YuKonstruct's Silhouette Portrait, we used it to make the maple leaf templates. If you don't have a digital cutting machine, you could cut out the templates by hand.

Open the Silhouette Studio software (available for free at http://www.silhouetteamerica.com/software).

Import the shape you want (in our case, this maple leaf from the Silhouette Design Store).

Scale the shape to the appropriate size. For my son's helmet we wanted the smallest maple leafs to be about 2" x 2".

Copy the shape and make the next one 150% bigger with the scale tool. Repeat again for a third, larger, shape.

Cut the shapes out of cardstock. These will be your templates for cutting the foam.

Unfortunately we don't have a blade deep enough for cutting the foam with the Silhouette Portrait, so we traced and cut the leafs by hand.

Start by tracing 6 copies of the smallest shape on the boldest of the foam colours (in our case red). Cut them out.

For the next colour (white), trace 3 copies of the shape side by side and joined together in the form of your mohawk. Cut it out and trace another copy. Cut that out too.

Repeat for the final colour (silver).

Peel the backing off of the foam and carefully stick the pieces together, starting with the smallest pieces.

Glue two small pieces of the hook side of your velcro to the bottom of the mohawk.

Stick the softer loop side of the velcro to the helmet.

Your sparkly patriotic mohawk is now done!

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.