Make a space alien costume with paper mache!

Materials you'll need

Design the neck

It has to be big enough for your head - and your glasses, if you wear them.

Use cereal boxes to design a cone which will fit down over your head (and glasses if necessary) and extend up as high as you like.

When you've got a cone that satisfies you, measure its circumference (a waistline measurement is a circumference) at the top and the bottom, and if you want a curve in the neck as I have, measure it part of the way up, too.

Transfer the neck measurements onto a pattern and cut five.

I'd actually meant to use six, but I measured wrong so five was enough for my pattern.

The idea is: take your bottom circumference and divide it by five - that's how wide each panel is at the bottom. Then go to your next measurement up the neck and divide it by five - that's how big each panel is. Do the same at the top. You will make five tapered cereal-box panels. And then you'll glue them together. See how I left tabs on some of them? I used a glue gun to glue the tabs of a tabbed panel to the smooth edge of the non-tabbed panel next to it.

Now choose a bowl size to be the bottom of your alien's head.

Swath the neck in used plastic bags so the paper mache won't stick to the cereal box panels

After I'd glued up the cereal-box panels to make the long neck, I looked around my kitchen and found a bowl of the right size to use for the bottom of the head.

Next: wrap the bowl in plastic bags and paper mache over it. Also wrap the neck in plastic bags and paper-mache over IT. About four layers, if you use grocery bags and other strong paper, should be sufficient.

When the two separate parts are dry (a hair-dryer is wonderful for impatient people) it's time to put the two together, as they look in this picture.

Attach the neck to the lower part of the head.

Trace the circumference of the top of the neck onto the middle of the bottom of the bowl. Cut pie-shaped tabs in the bottom of the bowl and fold them downward.

Cut tabs in the top of the neck. Bend them outward.

Put the bowl-piece on top of the neck. The bowl tabs go inside and get hot-glued to the inside of the neck. The neck tabs go outside and get hot-glued to the outside of the bowl.

This will be a potential weak spot, so after gluing carefully I did several extra layers of paper-mache on the area where the bowl and the neck join.

For the top of the head: use extenders to make your bowl bigger!

Again, old cereal boxes are perfect.

I didn't have a big enough bowl to do the top of the head, so I cut pieces of cereal boxes and taped them all around the top of an almost-big-enough bowl. See how big this made it?

Then, again wrap it in plastic bags and four or so layers of paper-mache.

Give your creature features.

Antennae: made of toilet paper tubs slit up the side and rolled into open cone shapes.

Eyes: paper-mached over whiffle balls wrapped in baggies.

Mouth: a piece of packing foam.

The features don't need more than two layers of papier mache.

Ready for painting.

My chickens were moderately interested in their new neighbor.

Painting: tips for keeping it cheap!

Go to Home Depot or Lowes and look in the paint department for the shelf of paint rejects. These cans are very, very cheap and if you don't care much about the color, you can't beat it.

I actually got a cream-colored gallon for $5.00 and painted the whole thing. Then I used my acrylic paints - to extend the base color, I added GAC, which is cheap, and water, and some glazing compound.

Go wild! Nobody knows what color space aliens are so there's no limit!

Notice the eye holes below? I painted a purple band across them to disguise them a little bit.