Off to see the Wizard

This year Skylar and his friends are characters from the Wizard of Oz. Skylar gets to be the Tin Woodman. This posed quite a challenge for us. How do we make a Tin Man costume? Guy came up with the idea of making it out of poster board. I was very skeptical and could not envision it at all. So I went to the fabric store to see about making it out of material. Well I did not like any of the patterns. They looked super silly. So Guy used some regular paper to make some models for a proof of concept. When he finally thought he had a plan we headed off to buy the supplies: silver poster board, rivets, snaps, elastic, funnel, and paint.

Here's the version 1 prototype, done 1 week ahead of the deadline.

We learned much from this one: the size needed to be adjusted in various places, it was a little flimsy, the arm holes need some help, but over all it was pretty cool.

So on Saturday morning we had just 6 hours to make the real one. This time I had the idea of lining the whole thing with duct tape. That made a huge difference. The arms and legs were shaped differently and the body was better constructed.

There's Guy working with the clock ticking. For the most part the boys made it easy for us, but still Niko needed some attention.

Ta-da! It's finished! We did it just in the nick of time. Skylar woke up just a few minutes later and we packed everything up to walk over to the party.

Guy was awesome during this, foregoing even food that morning in order to make the deadline. He is so creative. I don't know how he was able to come up with the idea but he just blew me away.

Here's Skylar in his completed Tin Man costume.
(We had problems with the bottom leg pieces but they will be done for Friday's costume contest!)

Another shot. Skylar looked so good! Great Job Guy!!!!