Minotaur Variants (Musk Ox & Caribou) Costume

We love mythological creatures & decided to be minotaurs, which are traditionally half human, half bull. To make our costumes more interesting and original, we chose different cloven-hooved animals to derive our designs from: a musk ox and a caribou.

To create our masks, we started by making paper mache molds of our heads. We attached paper cups & plastic bottles for the muzzles, and wire coat hangers for the horns & antlers to get our basic armatures. We built out from there, sculpting with aluminum foil, masking tape, and more paper mache. Final details were created with glass taxidermy eyes, faux fur, air-dry clay, and acrylic paint.

We covered some cheap pants we bought from the thrift store with faux fur, extending and widening the pant legs so they would fit over our jumping stilts. For the hooves and gloves, we used more faux fur, paper mache, foam padding, and black duct tape.

The staves are laquered bamboo decorated with battery-powered led lights, feathers, twine, and thistles. They not only make nice looking accessories, but they also help a lot with balancing on those stilts!

I'm not sure exactly how many hours we put in, but it took us about a month to create these homemade costumes. We spent around $300 on materials, the most expensive being the jumping stilts and the faux fur.

Field photos by our amazing friend Amanda Tipton