Minion Costume

This is my first indestructible and is a minion costume I made for my son from mainly cardboard boxes and plaster paris. It was made from materials I had laying about the house . Except for the paint and the Lycra Top which was purchased .

Materials Used :

Cardboard and lots of if . I used old boxes from moving house

Plaster Paris rolls. I used 3 - 4 of these to cover the minion.

Foam - couch or packing foam

2 empty parcel tape rolls

Light Blue Fabric

Yellow Lycra sports top

4 Coat buttons

Yellow and black spray paint - Test on small area first as it took me a few sprays to get the correct colour.

Black Pipe Cleaners

Velcro Strips

Glue Gun and Duct Tape.

My first problem was creating the top of the head for the minion. As I had quite a lot of cardboard I decided to try and create the top using strips held together by tape to form a circle.

The cardboard pieces where cut to fit snuggly next to each other . I wasnt worried about the length as that would be trimmed later.

A Ring of cardboard was made from one long piece to the diameter I required , then my circle was pushed into it . The excess sticking out was removed and secured again by tape to the outer ring.

This was basically two boxes which have been opened out flat and have had the connecting flaps removed so it leaves you with a nice symmetrical rectangle.

These where then recut to the size needed to fit my son.

I attached the first one to my head base I made and then cut and fitted the second cardboard piece to both of them.

The idea was to have my son look out through the mouth of the minion. to do this I realised I needed to create some sort of harness so he could carry the costume on his shoulders. I tried a few different approaches from string to cardboard etc, but realised that it was too uncomfortable on him. So we decided on foam as a cushion with a double layer cardboard structure.

These where tapped and a garden twine was threaded through each end.

Old coat buttons and a square piece of cardboard where used to stop the twine from pulling through the foam. The harness was then attached to the base. Threaded through another square cardboard stopper and secured on the outside with duct tape.

Arm holes were cut out just below the harness and my son had his first walk around although blind at this point.

The mouth was then cut out from the base in as good as a minion smile as I could make . it was measured based on my sons head height as he would need this to see out from.

I then watched my son walk around the kitchen and realised my top of the minion wasnt right. It looked more like a pillar box than a minion. I could redo the cardboard part maybe giving it an extra slope but then realised I could use the dome part of my kitchen bin as a template and use plaster paris.

Because only half the bin lid was a physical structure I did it in two halves. First I covered the half Im going to use in cling film then i proceeded to cover that half with paster paris until complete.

Then after that half had dried I rotated the bin lid underneath and did the second half the same way a hole was cut out on top and 5 black pipe cleaners pushed through and secured from underneath. I wrapped the pipe cleaners in plastic so they would not get damaged or dirty in the up coming stages.

The plaster paris top was then fitted on top of my pillar box design after a bit of trimming.

After the top was attached came the fun part of covering the rest in the plaster paris. We worked from the top down and stopped where the bottom part that would be covered in the fabric as that wouldn't be needed here.

What minion is complete without the goggles. I started these by making circles from strips of cardboard. two strips per lens, with the inner one being smaller in length.

I cut out some foam as a filler and placed this in between the the two cardboard layers. To secure it I taped through each eye piece wrapping around and attached the two lenses together.

To make it more smooth for painting I cut out the shape of the front and sides of the lenses in paper and glued onto the goggles.

Using another sheet of cardboard I created the top of the goggles and cut to size and cut to the shape of the minion base so it fitted snuggly. This layer also gave them extra strength and a sort of stand out 3D effect.

I realised then that the eyes would not hold their shape so I inserted two empty parcel tape rolls into the sockets this was perfect for holding that shape.

There are small studs on the goggles of the minions , so I found old Christmas present tags that have a sticky double sided foam square on the back, these where stuck onto the goggles and then it was sprayed silver using spray paint.

I printed out large picture of the minions eyes and glued that to a piece of cardboard and inserted the eyes into the goggles.

I bought what I thought was the correct yellow paint and as you can see from the first image I was way off . It took me 3 or 4 different sprays before I found the correct shade and sprayed the plaster paris part of the minion. Im sorry but I cant remember the exact colour name of the paint used.

Using foam I cut out some eyebrow shapes and parts for the lips these where hot glued on and sprayed.

I cut out teeth shapes from the foam and sprayed them white and hot glued these to the inside of the mouth.

The goggles where hot glued to the base and a strip of cardboard sprayed black to represent the goggle band around the head was also glued on.

Once dry the plastic on the pipe cleaners was removed and they where glued down onto the head.

The trousers where created from an old sheet which was dyed the blue colour .

It was cut to fit around the the base and made to look like dungarees over the arm holes . These where hot glued onto the costume.

Black buttons where glued onto the ends of where the dungarees would be.

the minion symbol was painted on a piece of cloth cut out to look like a pocket and glued on.

for the arms I bought my son a yellow Lycra sports top that matched the colour perfectly ( Pure luck lol )

The legs where made using squares of the blue material with Velcro at the ends. They where simply wrapped around his legs and the Velcro held them on at the back.

He then decided to dance around the hall in it ;)

That's it for my first indestructible hope it made sense .