DIY Bigfoot Costume for a Bigfoot Fanatic!!

Hi everybody!!

My son, Owen, as bigfoot.

Today I finally have a minute to have share the costume that I created for my 8-year-old Owen. He has been into Cryptozoology for over a year and he REALLY wanted to be Sasquatch for Halloween this year. I will take this blog post to take you on our Bigfoot Costume Journey! :)

We started with an Incredible Hulk mask ($2 from Goodwill) and a Bear in the Big Blue House ($10 at a re-sale) Disney Store fur suit costume. 

First I altered the Bear Costume to fit my son. it was about 2 sizes too big, I removed the face, the bean-bag belly and bottom, and used scraps to cover the yellow chest.

Here is the fur suit after the alterations. You can also see the unaltered Hulk Mask. :) I added bulk to the hood area to give him the Bigfoot shaped head too. 

I bought quite a few cans of fabric spray paint from Joanns (I used the 40% off coupon and they were still over $6 each). I used dark brown, medium brown and black. After many layers of paint and lots of money spent, I resorted to good old spray paint. It was smellier, but with the pre-planning I did, the smell has subsided well. You can see in the first picture, I have the costume hung on a hanger, but I found the coverage was much better when I stuffed the costume with paper. The dimension helped get even coverage without folds in the fabric.

 For the mask, first I sprayed the mask a combination of browns and black. Then I used scraps of the fur suit to add the fur around the Hulk face. I then touched up the fur.

With all that wonderful spray paint, the teeth were quite brown.... So we first added some off-white acrylic paint and then added some glow-in-the-dark paint.

Onto the feet!!!  I bought these feet on Ebay. They are a little hard to come by. They are called "Funny Feet" and were perfect for this costume!! First I cut off the tops and glued them to the tops of a pair of my old shoes. Owen needed slip on shoes with these feet, and I was the only one who had a spare pair.

Here, I used E6000 glue to attach the funny feet to the tops of the slip-on shoes. In case you were wondering, I had about a week from the time I ordered these feet to when they came, so I pre-painted my shoes for this project. 

I used zip-ties (or cable ties) to hold the tops onto the shoes while the glue dried. We let these set about two days. It was super hard the wait for the next step!!

Okay, first I tried spray painting these feet... don't do that.... it doesn't work.... the paint and the silicone material these feet are made of don't get along!! So the second step was strip all that spray-paint and apply one coat of acrylic primer and three coats of brown acrylic paint. 

The next step was to apply the toenails. I painted two coats of the toenail color (we used a cream color). Then I added a very fine mist of cream spray-paint to create a dirty look. Then, I applied two coats of an acrylic sealer.

See, look pretty Squatch-y don't they?? In case you were wondering, these measure roughly a size Men's 11!! Because they are mounted up off the toe, my eight-year-old had no problems walking in them... in fact, he had no problem running and playing in them!

Here is the completed mask/hood look. On Halloween, we are going to be underpainting Owen's eye's a brown so they don't stick out as much.

Here is Owen doing the classic bigfoot stance as seen in the Bluff Creek, CA pics by Patterson/Gimlin in 1967. See those impressive feet sticking out?? They make me so happy!!

And lastly, here is the candy bag Owen will be toting all his goodies in.... and in case anyone thinks he is a monkey, bear, or Chewbacca, it says he is a BIGFOOT!!!

I used two bandannas for the bag body (measuring 11' x 14 1/2") and lined it in black cotton. I created the logo using Photoshop and printed it on iron-on paper. I then ironed it onto yellow cotton and stiched it down to the camouflage fabric before sewing it into the bag.  Owen wanted it to be reversible, so we made another yellow logo panel for the black inside layers. Lastly, we added a black nylon cross-body strap so he doesn't have to hold it while trick-or-treating.

Here are some quick "before" and "after" pics I just had to share:

And in case you were wondering, before we started this costume we were searching and searching for a diy, instructions or tutorial for a Sasquatch or Bigfoot costume and THERE WERE NONE TO BE FOUND!! So, this costume run-down is our contribution to all those other people looking for directions for creating their own Bigfoot costume. :)