Bookworm Costume To Whip Up In One Night!
Last Purim my now eleven year old son agreed to dress up in a homemade bookworm costume, which is perfect for him as he truly eats books. We even have to limit his reading time if you can believe that! While I found very little good inspiration on the internet, I was fortunately able to come up with my own version which was super cute and relatively easy!
You'll Need:
- large plastic costume glasses
- a crocheted or knit green beanie
- 2 green pom poms, wire, pipe cleaners and a girls plastic headband
- a large green jacket,shirt, sweatshirt etc
- a white shirt and a black bow tie
- felt
- foam core or cardboard
- a hot glue gun
- a leather belt to make the book strap (optional)
How To Make A Bookworm Costume Beanie:
First either crochet a beanie using a double crochet stitch, or purchase something ready made. I added ridges to the hat by crocheting rows of chain stitch over the double crochet. One could do this with embroidery on a purchased hat of some kind, or even by hot glueing strips of felt onto the hat.
The antennae were made by attaching wire to a plastic girl's headband and then poking those wires throught the top of the hat in the desired spots and then attaching the pom pom to the end of the wire. I added some colored pipe cleaners to the wire to complete the look. I'm sure there must be another way to make antennae, but this was what I came up with and there were no complaints from the wearer!
How To Make A Bookworm Costume Jacket With Felt Books:
I've had this stamped velvet green jacket sitting in our Purim box for years and was so relieved that my son agreed to wear it as part of his costume! Books glued to a costume need to be light weight, so I decided to make my own from felt. One could also use actual book covers if you have access to books you don't mind tearing up, or print book covers with topics relevant to the costume wearer if desired. Once I figured out how to make the felt books, it went much more quickly than any other good option I do believe!
Make books in a bunch of sizes appropriate to the size of the costume wearer's chest. Cut three pieces of foam core for each book, front cover, back cover and spine. Line the pieces up with the spine piece in the middle, and hot glue these three pieces of foam core to a piece of felt, leaving a 1" border of felt around the pieces. Fold the felt over the edges and secure with hot glue. Ever seen those boxes made to look like books? So imagining that, cut more pieces of foam core (three per book) to form the walls of the box, which when closed will look like pages. Got it? Use a black or brown pen to draw thin parallel lines on the outside walls of the "box" so they will look like pages. Add details to your books if desired, even just a few striped on the spine will do, and hot glue them to the costume.
Make a few larger books and hot glue those together and then wrap a leather belt around them for the vintage school book prop.
That is it! Enjoy!
