WhyKid wants to be Wash for Halloween. Cool kid. Pretty easy costume. We’re thinking long sleeved brown tee, hawaiian or orangey polo over it (depending on what we find at the thrift store), khaki or brown cargo pants, a couple of plastic dinosaurs dangling from the beltloops - all pretty easy.
But he wants a stake through his chest. He’s no dummy - he knows only like 3 people will know who he is, and he wants candy. So he wants to make it a little gory, so even folks who don’t know Firefly will know he’s in a costume.
How do I make a large “wooden” stake through his chest that won’t flop around and look dumb? I’m thinking maybe an empty soup can, painted to look like wood, but how do I attach it? Any better ideas?
Thanks in advance.
(By the way, the baby is indeed being a pirate. I’m going to be either Software or Movies, depending on which seems funnier to me at the moment. Right now, I’m leaning towards Movies, with a bucket of popcorn for a hat.)
You could mount the stake on a wire coathanger-type thingy that would wrap around his chest and come through a hole in his shirt. Kinda like the Steve Martin arrow through the head, but it would fit around his chest. Maybe put some straps on it so it will hang from his shoulders.
Hmmm…I’m thinking that you attach each half of the “stake” to a flat piece of cardboard, plastic or the like, and then Ace-banndage the thing to the kid’s chest. Then put on the rest of the costume, with the stake sticking through pre-cut holes in the shirts. Go Hawaiian on the shirt. It can be worn unbuttoned, so you only have to stake the t-shirt underneath. If you can find a Blue Sun t-shirt, that would make it perfect.
As for what to make it out of, I seem to recall seeing large hard carvable foam things used for arts and crafts purposes. Maybe you can find some thick enough to serve as the prerequisite spike, so you’ll have something that is both big enough and not too heavy?
Make a stake out of two pieces of balsa wood. (Large pieces - the thing that took out Wash was a sizeable beam, IIRC.) Paint the balsa to look like Wash’s death stake (you can’t paint most foam, although the foam suggestion above was otherwise a good idea.)
Glue the two pieces of painted balsa together wih a long, stiff wire in between them. The wire should extend out of the end of the stake by two to three feet. Poke the wire through the front of the shirt and pass the wire all the way around your son’s chest under the shirt, then fasten it to itself in the front under the shirt. He should wear an undershirt under the wire to prevent him getting his skin scratched.
Daub on some fake blood and voila - you’ve got dead Wash. Don’t forget to add a drool of blood coming down his chin.