Okay, some of you may wonder why I attempted such a daunting project. Well, it just seemed worth it. One of my boyfriend's best friends from New Orleans used to have a bunny suit, and he wore it to every Mardi Gras for the last 13 years.
Needless to say, Hurricane Katrina flooded his house and the bunny suit got trashed. My boyfriend and I looked into buying a new bunny "mascot" costume, but they cost ~$300 and up. Gulp.
A friend of mine enlightened me that with a little chicken wire and some spray foam, I could make one myself. You can too, and here's how!
1. WIRE FRAME
Use chickenwire to sculpt a framework for the head. This isn't an exact science -- you just gotta go with it. I started by building a collar to sit on the shoulders. In retrospect, I wish I'd made this a little smaller. I think it looks a bit bulky in the finished product. Next, I attached a cylinder to make the head itself. I tapered this at the top by scrunching and folding the wire. Finally, I added the contoured parts -- cheeks and the back of the head. I took small rectangles of chicken wire, shaped them until they looked good, and then wired them onto the main head.
Be sure to wear gloves -- elbow length if you've got 'em. The chickenwire is nasty stuff and scratched me up pretty good, even WITH the gloves.
2. FOAM
Line the wire form with a garbage bag and stuff it with newspaper. Use that spray foam stuff to coat the head. You want the kind that says it dries hard and can be sanded/painted. I recommend the "Great Stuff" brand. You don't have to spray underneath the chicken wire -- the foam will stick to it just fine. Remember that the foam expands a bunch, so don't use too much to start out with -- you can always go back and add more if you need to. Overall, I think I used four cans.
Let the foam cure for a day or so. It will look fairly blobby (see left side of picture), but you can shape it pretty easily and smooth things out (right side). I found that a non-serrated kitchen knife works best for shaving the foam. Just be sure to have a good knife sharpener handy -- the stuff really seemed to dull my knife. With a bit of patience and imagination, you can get the head looking like a bunny (or whatever animal you're making).
Here's a shot with the eyes, mouth, nose and ears attached. I used drywall sanding screens to cover the openings for the eyes and mouth (dontcha love wandering the hardware store looking for just the right odds and ends!). These work great because they look opaque from a distance, but you can see through them when you have the head on. I dry fit these but didn't glue them in until the fur was all done. The nose is a piece of velveteen that I stretched over the foam under-nose and glued in place prior to the white fur. The ears were made from the same pattern as the suit (McCall's 8953).
3. FUR!!!
So I used McCall's 8953 for the suit, making a few alterations along the way. I added patch pockets to the inside of the suit and lengthened it for my 6'7" friend. That was the easy part. The hard part was fitting the fur on the head.
I draped the fur over the head, made some markings, and sewed some seams. Amazingly, I was able to make a "sleeve" of fur that fit pretty tight over the top part of the head. I sprayed the fur and the head with 3M Super 77 spray adhesive and glued 'er in place. It was a little tough to deal with the bottom part of the head because the fur tended to bunch around the neck. I stuck it down as good as I could but ended up making a bunch hand-stitched darts around the neck and collar. Last, but not least, I glued the eye and mouth coverings in place with some E-6000 carefully applied around the openings.
All in all I think it turned out pretty great!
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