Hot Air Balloon Driver Costume

This costume was made using a few simple items, but took a little more engineering. Using a dollar tree basket, I lined the outside with "basket weave" cloth from I bought from Walmart. Then using four T shaped pipe fitting on the inside of the basket, I used thick wooden dowels as the ropes to go upwards. Using plastic balloon sticks from dollar tree, I connected them to make a circle and threaded it through four more T shaped pipe fitting, and put the other side of the wooden dowels in each one to hold the circle aloft. I used a long piece of blue cloth and four red ribbons and attached them at the top of each post using wire. I used a pair of kid suspenders to make a harness on the inside and connected it to the basket using zip ties. I found the jute rope at dollar tree, and hot glued it around the basket, and stuffed little burlap bags from dollar tree with polyfil and tied them to the rope. I hot glued other clumps of polyfil around the bottom of the basket to look like clouds. For the balloon, I watched a youtube video of how to make a ball cover, cut and hot glued red and white cloth according to the video. I would suggest finding a giant inflatable beach ball to reuse to put on the inside of the cover, but I just used a 36 inch balloon from hobby lobby.