How to be the Talk of the Neighborhood by Making Ridiculously Elaborate Halloween Costumes with HomeRight Tools

Every Halloween, Tom sets out to create an incredibly elaborate costume for Zack.  I think it started when Zack was a toddler, and I would sew cute little costumes for him, like a “Zack in the Box” and a Munchkin.  Secretly, or maybe not so secretly, Tom wanted to prove that he could make better costumes than me.  But, that’s okay, because now Halloween is his problem and not mine.

This year, Zack really wanted to be a dragon.  If it were me, I would have hot glued some wings and spikes onto a hoodie and called it a day.  But oh, no.  In the Ballard household, things get quickly out of hand.

It’s hard to tell from this picture since it was taken in the daylight, but the dragon’s eyes light up red and the mouth glows white.  There’s also a hidden Bluetooth speaker hidden inside the mouth that Tom could control from his phone and make it roar.  Yes, it was absolutely ridiculous.

However, none of this could have been possible without the use of some of our favorite HomeRight tools in the garage.  As I’ve previously written, Tom used the Dual Temperature Heat Gun (Amazon affiliate) to bend PVC pipes to make the internal frame of the dragon.

He used cardboard to build up sections of the skeleton and then covered it with brown paper.  He used duct tape to tape the paper onto the skeleton, and then used spray glue to cover the tape with smaller pieces of brown paper.  It ended up looking a little like papier-mâché, so it was a neat effect.  He cut cardboard triangles out of old boxes and covered them with brown paper.  He also formed a head out of cardboard and covered it with paper.

Then, it was my turn to take the costume reigns, as the dragon needed to be painted red (per Zack’s request).  But, oops!  He was far too large to fit into my HomeRight Spray Shelter (Amazon affiliate).

This is actually not that big of a problem, though.  I basically just spray painted him in sections – only focusing on the parts of the costume that fit well inside of the Spray Shelter.

Once that coat was dry, I flipped it over and painted the other side.  I think I had to do 4 different sections of painting (back top, back bottom, front top and front bottom), but since I was painting paper, I only had to wait about 30 minutes between sections due to the quick dry time.

After he was dry, Tom put the finishing touches on him.  He drew eyes on clear sheet protectors and backed them with red sandwich baggies.  He cut teeth out of manilla file folders so they wouldn’t be too glaringly white.  He made wings out of wire hangers and black plastic trash bags.  We love to use stuff that we already have around the house, so think outside of the box when you have details to add to a project like this.

As you can tell from his little face, Zack absolutely loved the end result.  It ended up weighing about 10 or 15 pounds, but he wore that thing proudly for a few hours.

Here are a few more detailed shots:

And because I want to poke the beast, here’s a shot of Zack and Emma together.  I was in charge of her puppy costume.  I just hot glued some stuff on an existing piece of clothing.  It took me 15 minutes, and it’s adorable.  Take that, Tom.

HomeRight is giving away one of their awesome Spray Shelters to one of my readers – now you can make your own Halloween costumes next year a la Tom.  ?  Simply fill out the Rafflecopter box below to be entered to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Good luck!

As a HomeRight Ambassador, I have been compensated for this post.  All opinions are my own.