DIY CARDBOARD POLAR BEAR AND PENGUIN COSTUMES

This post is sponsored by Kinder Joy.

Half the fun of Halloween, other than the fun candy treats and spooky decorations, are the costumes! Some would say costumes are actually the star and in our family we must agree!

I always DIY my kids’ Halloween costumes to surprise and delight them each year and this Halloween is no exception.

My secret to making Halloween costumes year after year (as they do take additional time than buying at a store) is to keep them simple like these adorable arctic polar bear and penguin costumes!

These one-dimensional cardboard costumes are easy as you just need a piece of flat cardboard! You can easily dress them with paper details like we did with our Woodland Animal Costumes or in this case use felt for additional texture and details.

These costumes definitely surprised and delighted my kids, as much as when they unwrap a delicious Kinder Joy egg. If you haven’t tried Kinder Joy eggs, you’re in for a treat and surprise! One half of the egg contains two layers of milky sweet cream and includes two crispy cocoa bites. The other half of the egg contains a fun surprise toy to charm your kids.

Halloween is only once a year and we say always say yes to surprising and adding fun to the everyday, whether it be through a delightful treat like Kinder Joy or a cute handmade Halloween costume made with love.

Find Kinder Joy here

Arctic Animals Costumes – Materials:

Large flat piece of cardboard (size depends on your child, please scale the costume accordingly using our images as design examples)
Felt in black, white, red, pink, gray, orange
Hot glue gun
Craft knife and scissors
Red yarn and pie cleaners (optional for penguin ear muffs)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Polar Bear

Step 1. Draw a simple polar bear shape (refer to images here for design inspiration) onto cardboard. Make sure the size is correlated to your child’s frame.

Step 2. Cut out a semi-circle in the center of polar bear’s cardboard body and make sure your child’s arm will fit through. Save the semi-circle as you’ll be glueing it back on later.

Step 3. Use the cardboards as a template to cut out a white felt body (including the semi circle hole) and glue to cardboard. Take the semi-circle cardboard piece you saved, add white felt on top and glue that back to the polar bear so it becomes a flap.

Step 4.Cut out two pink pieces of felt for ears, glue on bear.

Step 5. Cut out two pink cheeks, an oval-ish gray mouth, and two black felt whiskers, glue to face.

Step 5. Cut out two black felt eyes and eyelashes, glue to face.

Step 6. To add the back legs and shadowing, cut out in grey felt, the front back legs, and back legs and add a cardboard behind them to reinforce. Glue legs to bear. Cut a wide semi-circle of gray felt to glue to bear underbelly to add an illusion of shadowing.

Step 7. Take a wide strip of red felt that will fit around your polar bear neck and cut fringes on both ends. Glue scarf around his neck.

Penguin

Step 1. Draw a simple penguin shape (refer to images here for design inspiration) onto cardboard. Make sure the size is correlated to your child’s frame.

Step 2. Cut out a semi-circle in the center of penguin’s cardboard body and make sure your child’s arm will fit through. Save the semi-circle as you’ll be glueing it back on later.

Step 3. Use the cardboards as a template to cut out a black felt body (including the semi circle hole) and glue to cardboard. Cut out an inner white body using white felt and clue on top of black body.

Step 4. Take the semi-circle cardboard piece you saved, add white felt on top and glue that back to the penguin so it becomes a flap.

Step 5. Cut out cardboard feet and wing and use as templates to cut out orange felt an black felt. Glue on cardboard and glue feet and wings to penguin.

Step 6. Cut two pink cheeks out of felt, two black eyes and an orange beak. Glue to penguin face.

Step 7. Cut out small ovals in gray fell to add to inner white of penguin’s body as additional details (optional).

Step 8. Make the ear muffs (optional). Create two large red yarn pom poms. An easy way to do this is to wrap yea around a piece of cardboard. The larger the diameter of your cardboard, the larger your pom pom. To make it fluffy, wrap many times until it’s the thickness you want. Then take out from the cardboard, and tie a piece of yarn in the middle. Use scissors to snip the yarn loops open on both ends. Then give your pom pom a “haircut” by trimming all around it evenly. Take 4 pipe cleaners and twist them together. Hot glue around the penguin’s head. Then hot glue your pom poms on each end to create ear muffs.