Turtle in a half shell!! TURTLE POWER!!!

As you all know Chad & I love to make nothing into something!!! So when one of our kids came up to me last weekend and told me about the Super Hero day his school had,…… that he didn’t dress up for……… but would have IF he remembered to tell us about it!!! Weeeeee were bummed out about it to say the least….. Just dreaming about the endless possibilities of crazy,weird, awesomeness that we could have built was tragic. Soo after threatening him with groundation if he ever forgot such a cool day again, we moved on from the tragedy…. Sooooo then he did something like this………an totally redeemed himself  (yes dumb n dumber reference, sorry…..couldn’t help it)  😉 Cheeziness aside, he came to us last night telling us he had to go to a birthday party to following afternoon….what kind of birthday party you ask……assuming it is some sort of different days of birth kind of celebration… well you guessed correct then. Cause its a HALLOWEEEEEEN COSTUME PARTY!!!! So things got real..quick. He knew what he wanted to be….. Teenage mutant ninja turtle, Raphael.  So we threw together a little list of things we might need to create such a thing. Chad went to the thrift & store while I stayed home to man the fort & start working on his mask & belt buckle. It came out way more awesome than I pictured Time was ticking, it was about 8 45 at night and we only had a few hours to actually put this together.

 

Materials Needed

A good amount of cardboard

Colored Felt

Acrylic Paint ( Black, Dark brown, dark green, light brown,light green, bright yellow)

Glue sticks

Green shirt

stretchy black fabric (for straps, belt, wrist bindings) We used ones from thrift store

Kids sweatpants (got at thrift)

Black Marker

and weapon of choice!!

Mask

I started with the mask while they were out at the store, I used red felt, black foam, and glue stix & gun. I used pretty much the same techniques as in my Superhero DIY Post.

For the belt & buckle

I cut out some circles each a little larger than the other, then glued to layer, and created the Letter R for the belt buckle.

To give it more or a finished put together look I took some fabric paint I had from previous awesome fun and just outlined my Letter & created that little design in black around edges.

Let that dry for the night.

Turtle Shell

  The turtle shell  obviously took the most time, the mask & belt buckle took like 20 minutes in all. My handsome man…that you can’t see unfortunately for you, cut out the shape of the shell with some boxes he brought home (along with a kids green shirt, kids black sweatpants, black kid yoga pants (thrift finds)…..and at the store got  a few colors in acrylic paint & glue sticks and apparently he found those fork like weapon things that I have never known what they actually are, for a dollar at the store…. which is awesome because knowing my love like I do, he would have  actually started hand carving wooden toy weapons for him all thru out the night. lol He’s kinda amazing. Oh and they informed me, they are not fork like weapons…….  Raphael wields twin SAI!!!!!   So to give the shell some dimension we cut out these stop sign like shapes, with the biggest on in the middle and then smaller sized ones to encircle it.. We beat them up a bit kind of mashing our hands n bending them around a bit to make them raised and bump like,   We created a 3D shell filler with cardboard so it would keep some shape, You can use anything you can find thats handy to just fill that space. Then using your glue, glue that sucker to the back of your turtle shell!!   Chad then cut the edges to follow and line up with our shell form. and then we beat the shell up a little more to give it that bowed appearance.   Then is was time to paint!!! Started with the brown and dry brushing it onto the shell. we used dark colors around all the edges (Blacks, Browns, Dark Greens.) Then to the Brightest (Light Browns, Light Greens, Bright Yellows)     Chad had the greatest idea to create battle gashes into the shell, He did that by using the glue gun and creating that dimensional clawed appearance. It’s Glorious!!!   Chad then took some spray paint acrylic clear coat gloss. which you will see on the finished pic, but it truly brought the shell to life!!! It made it so it didn’t look like a cardboard cut out.     Chad took the green shirt he got at the thrift and panted on the Abs with some yellow acrylic paint and took a sharpie to outline them.   While the shell was drying, we cute up the black yoga pants and created a belt for the buckle, and some wraps for his wrists. Then we cute up the bottom of his sweatpants all jagged like.     Heres the shell after the acrylic clear coat.     Finished Look! And with exactly only 23 minutes to kill till the party, we had just enough time to wrap the gift and get dressed!!!!