DIY Dragon Costume

This costume was made in 2014 for my son Vincent who was 8 at the time. He told me he wanted to be a dragon, but when I looked for a costume there wasn't anything available that didn't look baby-ish or silly. So I went through the task of creating something. I salvaged different parts of simple patterns for the body which I separated into two pieces so that it would be easy to get on and off. The top piece has a long tail attached which I stuffed with fiberfill. The spikes are reinforced with cardboard.

The mask was the bigger challenge. Since masks are sometimes not allowed at church parties, I had to come up with a way to show his face, so I had it coming out of the dragon's mouth. :) I measured my son's head and blew up a balloon to the same size. Then, using thin wire and paper cups, toilet tubes - anything that would work, I molded a dragon head out of paper mache, leaving almond-shaped holes for the eyes, and a large opening for his face.

After painting the basic skin shade (copying the leathery red fabric I was able to find) I added spikes and other horns and things using cardboard. Some of it I wrapped in black electrical tape. Most of the spikes were reinforced with paper mache.

I lined the inside of the mask with soft felt, for comfort. Then I made little pockets on the inside where I could stick tea lights. The tips came out of the eye holes and glowed - it looked really cool!

The teeth were made with foam core, paper mache, and masking tape which I painted with glow-in-the-dark paint. That part didn't work as well as I'd hoped. :/ But I attached them with wires and hot glue and the whole thing worked great.

I also added grey leather pieces to the mask to give it more texture.

I had to attach a neck piece to the front of the mask to tuck down the front of his jacket. The jacket included a hood with it's own spikes attached so that it looks like the spikes go all the way down from head to tail. The end of the tail is made with the same grey leather as the front of the jacket as well as the mask.

I also made gloves using paper mache to form claws which were then wrapped with electrical tape.

For the feet I made shoe coverings that fit his tennis shoes. Same process as the hands with three claws per foot, plus one in the back. (The hands only have 3 claws each).

The wings were REALLY tricky. I wasn't sure how to attach them. In the end I was able to build a kind of harness that went on underneath his jacket. I cut holes in the back of the jacket for the wings to go through. I used magic markers; the lid was in the harness and the stem was attached to the wing. You stick the stem through the hole in the jacket into the lid attached to the harness. The only problem was that despite adding securing fasteners to the harness to hold them down tight, the wings tended to want to move around in their magic marker casing.

I made the actual wings out of wire and paper mache. I sewed on netting which I spray-painted black (white was all I had on hand, but spray painting worked surprisingly well). Electrical tape was also used.

People were blown away by this costume when we took it places! Especially at night when his dragon eyes glowed. It was surprisingly warm and comfortable also, which I'm proud of.