Transforming Werewolf Costume 2019

I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to take on a classic and went exploring some options. I got hooked on the idea of a werewolf but couldn’t really find anything other than cheesy masks and little kid face painting surprisingly. I came up with the idea for a transforming werewolf with bones and fur breaking through the back and got started about a month before Halloween. I spent about $100 on the supplies, but I also got overly excited about my local Halloween store opening and may have gone a bit overboard. That said, I feel you could customize a lot of this and make this costume for cheaper. As a blonde I thought brown/reddish fur made more sense. You can use any color really.I included some photos of my supplies attached. This was a lot of fun to design.

Supplies;
5x 3”x6” green floral dry foam blocks
Goodwill long sleeve shirt
A length of dark brown fur from craft store
Fabric super glue
4 wire clothes hangers
A teddy bear from goodwill with more of a fur than knit outer
Prosthetic elf ears from Halloween store
Scratch prosthetics kit
Fake claws
Fake teeth
Brown and scar makeup kit
Fake hair and spirit gum (get 2 or 3 of these)
Spray blood
Gel blood
Theater blood
White acrylic paint
Brown and dark brown acrylic paint
Cutting mat
Box cutter
Masking tape
Sharpie
Newspaper ( I usually get this from the mailbox trash)
1cup water
1cup flour
Small paint brush
Make up sponges
Liquid latex

There’s a lot of trial and error here. I never worked with metal to make a frame so I first had to figure out what best design would support the bone growths, while being able to hide naturally under the shirt. I attached a photo of my first couple designs. I ended up going for a sort of waterfall figure eight.

I make the frame in 3 parts. This doubles the support in the key 3 areas where the parts come together, the bottom back of the frame and both shoulders.

Step 1;

Take a pair of pliers and 3 clothes hangers. Clip the hangers on each side, right below the twist that makes the ? Shape. Try to carefully bend your hangers into 3x straight wire lengths.

Note* you could also just buy wire length too but hangers seem to always be around.

1:This is the tricky part that varies on your body shape. Take one of your straight wires and work it into a “V” shape. Make sure the V is more rounded like a heart. The tips of the V shape should sort of “hook” over your shoulders. The V should be wide and curved like a fat U.

2. Alright, now your going to build the 2 back lengths. These are similar to the front except it is going to form a shape more like Y. See my photos. To keep yourself from getting poked a lot while wearing the costume you’ll need to bend each side of the bottom of the Y into a hook shape “J”.

3.Once you have a general shape, take the masking tape and connect your frame together at the shoulder points and the bottom of the back piece or Y.

Note* I recommend trying on and molding and bending multiple times It took me an hour or so until I got the right fit.

I want to warn you that green floral dry foam is super messy and fragile. But you can pretty much carve through it like butter and It’s super light, much better than clay and stronger than styrofoam. I used a mini metal ruler to shape the foam.

1. I traced out a rough shape and went to work getting the desired shape. I decided to make 4 “growths”I called them. 2 large shoulder growths and 1 medium and a small, each of them were shaped like scalene pyramid then whittled down to a desired look.

2. After I had the shapes, I took 1” x 7” strips of the newspaper and soaked the strips in a solution of 1cup flour and 1cup water. I layered the paper Mache about 2 coats deep and set it aside to dry for 24hrs.

Note: I took some left over wire and skewered the growths and stuck them into a box I had laying around. This let them dry on all sides at the same time.

2. After they dried for a day I painted the growths white with Acrylic paint. I coat did the trick. When that dried, I took light brown first then dark brown paint and feathered around a white exposed part of the bone.

3. The paint dried within 15 minutes so I took the long fur length and cut diamonds ceding in size of the growths so the painted bone would show through. Then I attached with the fabric glue.

4. After about 1 hour, the fur was pretty set and ready to be attached to the frame. I went back and forth on how to attach the growths, but ended up un-taping the shoulders of the frame and sliding the growths over the wire. Be careful doing this as one of my growths almost ripped. I went back in and reinforced everything after a few adjustments in the mirror with the shirt on.

For the shirt I wanted to have my skin show through some tears and fur through the others, as well as the growths showing down my back.

1. Gut the teddy bear and make a pelt.

2. Use an the box cutter to create a shredded effect on your desired areas of the shirt. Careful, when shredding, I definitely sliced myself a few times.

3. Line up the pelt and cut it a little bit bigger than the shredded shirt marks. Then glue it by applying glue to the fur side of the pelt and setting from inside the shirt. Be careful not to glue the shirt together when placing the glue lined pelt inside the shirt. Once the glue is dried pull some of the pelt fur through the holes to create a more realistic look.

4. After a couple of hours when the pelt is dried to the shirt, put on your frame and the shirt over it to make any small adjustments in the set.

Teeth:
1. I used a werewolf thermo plastic fang kit from Dracula House.

2. The kit came with instructions and luckily if they don’t fit right or you mess up you can just dip them back in hot water to start over. It took me about 6/7 times to get a good fit. Really cool product, though you could use the .99 ones, these are worth the money.

Nails;

Ears;
1. I took some of the teddy pelt and glued it to the elf ears.

2. Then I added some brown and dark brown paint to blend it to my face make up.

Put it all together! I added an eyeless prosthetic and some make up. Hope you enjoyed!