I decided to start a blog because I just made a pretty killer costume for my son Chance. He is 3 and wanted to be Batman really, really bad. We took many different trips to many different department stores only to find that they didn't have any Batman costumes in his size!! I was kind of hoping I could get him to change his mind, but that didn't work. He has been talking non-stop of being Batman for almost a month.
I finally decided that my best be would be to make one. After making another quick trip to the store, we ended up with a cheap fabric belt, black gloves (they were cloth and were extra long...perfect length for the spikes on Batman's gloves), a black thermal long-sleeved shirt, black sweatpants, and black and yellow spray paint for plastic (we had a tricycle that came from a rummage sale, so I turned it into a Batcycle). I already had a yellow sheet of foam and yellow felt at home as well as a hot glue gun and glue sticks.
I started by looking up a Batman symbol. Here is the exact symbol that I used:
This worked perfectly because I was able to make it large enough to trace it. You don't want to see my freehanded Batman symbol lol!
I cut the symbols out of the yellow foam sheet (I recommend that over the felt) and also the felt. Felt is hard to deal with if you don't have very sharp scissors. My scissors are ok, but I liked the foam better. You can get colored sheets of foam at just about any craft store as well as felt.
After I got different sizes of the Batman symbol cut out, I decided which one I liked best for the front of his costume. I went with the outline of the bat, and I made it big enough to go from one side of his chest to the other. Glued it down and volia....Batman shirt complete.
I decided to work on his utility belt next. It is quite possibly my favorite part of the costume. I bought a belt that was marked down in price because it was supposed to be 2 belts, but one was missing. Pretty much any belt will do. The belt I bought was brown and blue cloth, so I spray painted it black. Hey, whatever works, right?
I was a little stumped on how to make him one really cool Batman belt, so I looked up a few tutorials online. There were some pretty cool ones, and from them I was able to come up with my own version of Batman's utility belt. I searched my son's toybox for any containers that he wouldn't care if I painted and glued to his belt. I ended up finding these really cool mini Star Wars lightsabers that used to have candy in them. I peeled off the stickers and snapped off the tubes that were covering the lights. I covered the lights with paper towels, and spraypainted the body of them yellow. Here is a picture of the lightsabers I am talking about. These turned into a heat-ray and a freeze-ray.
Once the paint dried, I took a container that holds wax cubes, and I cut the plastic cubes the wax sits in. In the end I had 4 little plastic cubes that had one side open, and I glued them over the lights.
I also found a stopwatch in his bedroom and a plastic gernade. I put those both on his belt and I glued some felt strips to his belt so he could take his heat-ray and freeze-ray off of the belt whenever he pleased. I also ended up finding a golden, foam like Batman batarang. It came with a cape and mask a friend bought for him, and worked gread for the center of the belt. Here is a picture of the batarangs and the finished result.
My son was fortunate in that he already had a cape and a mask for Batman, but these things can easily be found in the toy aisle where they have most of the superhero action figures. I also added a turtle neck under his Batman shirt, and I put a black beenie on his head under his Batman mask since where we live it is really cold for trick or treating.
Next on my list of things to do were his gloves. These were simple. I cut out spikes from cardboard and spray painted them black. I cut holes in his gloves where I wanted the spikes to be and then I hot glued them to the gloves. Now, the gloves I bought were too big for my son, so I cut the fingers of the gloves off and used them more like arm warmers with spikes sticking out the side. I then got gloves that were more his size for under a dollar. For Batman boots, my sister found a pair of girls black snow boots at a local thrift store for $4! Here is his finished Batman costume:
Once I completed his whole outfit, I went on to making his Batcycle. My sister came over and she took plastic and covered all of the parts of the tricycle that I didn't want to paint. Fortunately for me, these parts were already yellow or silver, so I wanted to keep them the original colors. The body of the tricycle was red, so we painted it black. I then took thin, clear plastic that I had from an old box that a toy castle set came out of, and I cut out two more Batman symbols. I spray painted them yellow and I hot glued them to the bike once the paint dried. We also took a paper plate and cut it into a rectangle and wrote Batman on it to look like a license plate. Here's the finished Batcycle:
I really enjoyed making this costume, it was quite a bit easier than I thought it would be. I wanted to post a blog about it because when I was brainstorming ideas on what to do, I couldn't really find anything on the internet that helped aside from the Batman utility belt tutorial I found. I hope somebody really finds this as useful! My son is absolutely thrilled with his costume, and we've already been trick or treating in it and go quite a bit of good feedback on how it looks.
Thanks for reading!!
Raising a Rugrat
mommyofchance09@blogspot.com
