How to Make a Cowardly Lion Costume

Video Transcript

"The Cowardly Lion, the many ways to put together the Cowardly Lion. This is your typical buy it from the fabric store pattern so if you were to go there and buy the licensed Wizard of Oz Lion you would pretty much receive your, you would pretty much put together this ensemble and it would give you directions on how to follow. I do want to point out that when you are working with long fur that you want to make sure to always cut small pieces on the inside that has never been cut or you are going to end up with funny looking hair that looks more like a hair cut than a great long mane shag. So always keep that in mind when working with fur. It doesn't always say that in the instructions. There are a few things that you could do to this to heighten it for yourself at home. You could add a nose to it very easily with an eye pencil. You could also add whiskers if that was something that you wanted to detail out on it as well. There are also packages that you can buy of latex pieces that glue on to the mouth to give you that lion mouth so it is just depending on how dedicated you are to your Cowardly Lion, there are different options all of which you can get from wenchesandwarriors.com, just simply contact them and they will be able to set you up with all your other costume needs. There are a few other lions that you can create on your own. They're a little bit simpler and easy to do if you are a nonsewer. One of the great looks is good old spray paint. Spray painting fabric works very well. As you can see with these gloves, let me have you put one on if you don't mind. They've been spray painted. These were just basic beige gloves that were orange spray paint was taken to them. You want to be sure to hold it a good distance away. You don't ever want to puddle up or over saturate an area while spray painting the fabric. Keep a good distance and yes you can machine wash them after you spray paint them so you could do a whole jumpsuit if you were looking for a whole ensemble just completely spray paint the whole jumpsuit creating perhaps a hood and spray painting that as well. The fingernails on this are made by fimo clay as well and you can just simply make those up, cut off the fingers and glue them in as such. Put that one on and give us a good Cowardly Lion scratch. Now a good quick and easy way to accomplish a mane is just by simple ribbon twisting. This mane here is just a simple hooded piece that we have folded together over numerous pieces to create a coward like mane. This is a very simple project, no sew, hot glue all the way. It's a wired ribbon so your wire is already in it. You can simply cut them at will and curl them up and glue them in where needed giving yourself a very fun Cowardly Lion. This would be something really good if you were doing something a little bit more retro or edgy depending on what your party event is. Just another detail is the lion's tail. I just wanted to point out that typically they are with nothing inside them. Very often we find that people like that wonderful cowardly lion tail that follows them around in the upright position. If you would like a more upright tail I suggest on getting a coat hanger and inserting it inside and making yourself a nice bracing situation perhaps tacking it to a belt of some sort on the waist something to give you some securedness so that the tail will stay in the upright position in the back. If all else fails wire it and then give yourself a little bit of a fishing wire through the back of the jacket always leaving you a great tail to follow you around. And I think that that would pretty much finish up our cowardly lion choices."