Every year for Halloween, my brothers company go all out and create a themed walk thru for family and friends. This year their theme was Alice in Wonderland. He and his boss were to dress up as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. So its been tradition to make the costume and not just go and buy it. At first we thought it wouldn't bee too hard. Just a couple paper maché heads. Well, we ran into a bunch of problems and even started over on one. But we tried to take pictures along the way in case any of you would like to try your hand at making them.
We began with a big balloon. Then we added the mouth shape with craft foam. Then we added the eyes and nose from styrofoam balls shaped how we liked. Then we found plastic bowls that made the perfect hats. We added a brim to the hats and rounded them off with tin foil. We didn't want perfectly round shaped heads so we gave it some shape by using plastic bags. Then we paper machéd both heads and a few layers of it. We wanted them to be strong and last so we applied a curing plastic coating to them but you could skip that step. We added hair by carving shapes out of white packing foam. Then we primed them both for paint and painted them. We quickly made "this way" and "that way" signs for the characters to hold.
I'm happy with how they turned out but learned a lot along the way. I would first begin by paper maché the balloon before adding the mouth and shape to it. Let it dry completely. The problems we had were that the balloon would expand and contract. One balloon even had a hole so we had to start over after we had gone so far. We initially thought a plaster would give us the strength we wanted but it just chipped and flaked off.
But they look great together in full costume. If you want to rent them for halloween or birthdays or tea parties then message me. I live in Midvale, UT.
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