Charlotte (my 9 year old daughter) fell in love with Hillbilly Healy's Metal Men http://www.popcornposters.com/catalogs/metalmen/index.html at the Maker Faire in RI, and has been wanting to make one since. We have been gathering parts for while and finally sat down this weekend and did our first (what Charlotte calls) Art-bot. It was a great experience for both of us, and we're both quite satisfied with the result. Thanks Bill for the inspiration!

My daughter recently learned how to make these, and I think her results are terrific. She even specifies what worry each doll is for, or is personalized for a person (she made one to resemble her older brother.)
She twists pipecleaners into the basic shape, puts a wooden bead on for a head and then wraps the torso and limbs with embroidery floss. She then cuts out and ties on clothes made out of felt. The hats are attached with hot glue.

Here's the finished costume:


The finishing touches were to line the inside, (leaving a flap to turn on the lights) and adding the straps.
I spray painted the head/big brain and it ended up melting the styrofoam balls. I ended up covering them in
Metal foil tape (real duct tape). We wanted him to have silver makeup too, but we didn't have any and we
were putting this together right up to the last minute.

Here are the finished costumes:
Space Alien/saucer and Vampire puppy.





We got lots of oohs and even a round of applause during trick or treating!
The saucer looked especially awesome after dark with the lights around the rim. Unfortunately I didn't photograph it then

Thanks folks. Boy, I feel like I need one more day...
My wife made a wonderful silvery shirt for him and we had some shiny gloves in the costume box.
I decided he had to have a big brain and antennae. So hmm, I know.. Whip out the duct tape!



This is before painting (more on this later...)

Taping the seams


Almost done, need to add strap and interior walls


My wife did up a skin tight shirt out of silvery lizardy material. Coming up with a headpiece tonight

I don't know why that one pic isn't showing up
here's another try:

Woohoo, I'm no longer a spambot! Good Grief!

My son wanted to be an alien with a flying saucer this Halloween, and as usual, I'm getting a late start on this.
I needed something lightweight, so I picked foam insulation board. The closed cell stuff is easier to cut, but the material that home depot had came in narrow sheets, and I wanted a 4 ft circle. If I tried to piece it together I thought it wouldn't be strong enough, so I bought a 4x8 sheet of foil backed Styrofoam.

Styrofoam is a pain, as the little blobs peel off when you try to cut it unless you have  a hot knife or wire foam cutter.
I don't so I used a rotozip spiral cutter. Lots of static-y dust particles and cleanup later, I have an OK circle/donut. I sealed the edges with a butane lighter. It's a little irregular, and I wish I had taken more time then I could have cut identical panels for the hull, but now I have to piece them together.
Here's the circle as I'm starting to attach some fuselage/framework made from the pink foam (I had lying around):


I made a lot of identical framework triangles and as the edges were a little rough I sanded them. They weren't perfect either so I attached them with construction adhesive and hot glue fillets.

I also attached a string of led battery powered christmas lights along the edge with hot glue and staples (to hold them in place while the hot glue hardened.)

I'm covering the "hull" with a bubblewrap type of insulation (I had left over from some ductwork insulation)



I plan to seal the seams with foil tape. I still have to figure out how to hang it from him, I assume some sort of straps over the shoulders.

I'll post completed pictures here, and with the rest of his costume in the "completed costume" thread.