How to Make Easy Duck Costume

When it comes to dressing up your child for a pageant, school play or Halloween, a duck costume is quite possibly the least expensive and easiest way to go. The odds are that you already have a lot of the items you need in your home and your child’s dress up box, and with just a few simple tools and a little know-how, you can quickly and cheaply make a great looking easy duck costume that is durable, cute, and will be the talk of the party. Best of all: no sewing required!

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Your Child’s Shoes That Will Be Worn at the Event
• Orange and Yellow Felt (about 2 ft of each color)
• Scissors
• Black Sharpie or Other Permanent Marker
• Double Sided Tape
• Yellow or White Baseball Cap
• Glue Gun and Glue Sticks
• 2 Wiggle Eyes (should be 1.5 or 2 inches in diameter each) or 2 White Pompoms
• Yellow, Orange, or Red Pajama Bottoms or Leggings
• Yellow, Orange, or Red Pajama Top or Long Sleeved Shirt
• Old Feather Pillow or Feather Boa

Making the Feet for Your Easy Duck Costume

1. Take the shoes your child will be wearing and place them on top of the orange felt.
2. Trace around the shoes leaving 1.5 inches extra all the way around.
3. Cut out the traced feet, but instead of exactly following the rounded front, go ahead and cut three peaks to mimic webbed duck feet.
4. Place the duck feet over your child’s shoes and mark on each with a sharpie where the child’s foot will go into the shoe.
5. Fold the duck foot in half and with the sharpie mark being the center, make a narrow cross cut. This provides an opening big enough to allow your child’s foot to pass through.
6. As your child dresses, you will secure the duck feet to the top of the shoes with the help of double sided tape.

Making the Head for Your Easy Duck Costume

7. Take the baseball cap and use the sharpie pen to trace a duck bill shape onto the brim. Usually this means simply either slightly narrowing the brim or—if it is overly pointed—trimming it back a little.
8. Use some of the leftover orange felt and cut it to fit the new shape of the brim.
9. Hot-glue the orange felt to the top and the bottom of the brim.
10. After the glue has dried, gently cut off any excess felt that might stick out over the brim’s edge.
11. Locate the middle of the newly fashioned duck’s bill and with the sharpie draw two dark circles (one next to the other) onto the orange felt glued to the top of the brim. The best location is the spot where the felted brim meets the cap portion. These are nostrils.
12. Take the wiggle eyes or pompoms and glue them to the cap above the brim, spaced equally to the left and right of the nostrils. If you choose pompoms, use the sharpie to draw a dark pupil onto the front of each pompom after gluing it onto the cap.

Making the Body for Your Easy Duck Costume

13. Dress your child in the pajama bottoms or leggings she is going to wear. With the sharpie mark the spots where you want to glue some feathers.
14. Let your child put on the pajama top or long sleeved shirt that will be worn with the costume. Once again use the sharpie to mark the perfect spots for some feathers.
15. Also mark on the sleeves the general area where the top of the wrist will be located.
16. Remove the feathers from the pillow or cut them from the feather boa.
17. Ask your child to take off the costume pants and top. Take the costume and with the hot glue gun place glue on the spots you marked on the outfit and then apply the feathers to them.

Making the Wings for Your Easy Duck Costume

18. Place your child’s hands with the fingers spread wide on the yellow felt and gently trace around them with your sharpie, adding an additional 1 to 2 inches around the shapes.
19. Cut out the hand prints with your scissors, taking care to cutting the fingers of the shape in sharp edges rather than rounded. They will look like five feathers.
20. Once your child is wearing the costume, you will affix the wings with double sided tape to the spot you marked earlier in the wrist area.

Tips & Warnings

• Cheap feather boas may be found a second hand stores, and sometimes after Halloween at major retailers.
• If the baseball cap is too big, place some leftover felt inside around the circumference to make it padded and glue the felt in place. This quickly makes the cap fit snug on your child’s head.
• Do not attach the duck wings too low. You don’t want them to cover your child’s hands.
• Refrain from gluing feathers too close to the neckline of the shirt, since this might make things a bit itchy.
• Additionally, do not glue the feathers too close to any zippers or button holes, since this makes putting on and taking off the costume too hard.