A Tale of 2 Bellies, a Halloween Costume for the Extremely Pregnant

Sit right down and read a tale, a tale of a fateful... oops wait.. Never mind... As many of you know, we do a big haunted house each year, this year 2 of my main helpers (daughters) are pregnant, one is due in november. She had seen a prosthetic she liked of a baby bursting out of the belly but it was expensive for a one time use so we decided to see what we could come up with. The 1st attempt while not a total failure didn't work as well as we hoped, the 2nd version, using different materials is much better and lighter. The following 2 tales will take you thru the construction of both belly busters.. after all I had taken the pics to share on here so why waste them....

Step 1: Belly 1, the Beginning

We originally wanted to do a baby head and hands but they were to heavy and cumbersome, you'll also see tubes of acrylic latex bathroom calk (you never know what yoru going to find tucked away) and a beachball type pool toy wrapped in kitchen wrap. We decided on using a partial skull I made a number of years ago out of tissue and glue

Step 2: Attaching

First thing we did was smear caulk over the skull, a little water helped it spread easier, then we smeared caulk over the balls surface and stuck the skull on

Step 3: Enlarge It

Now we just started spreading the caulk over the ball

Step 4: Painting With Caulk

The surface of the caulk was still rough so we made a slurry of caulk and water and used a brush to put the "paint" on and hopefully smooth out the surface

Step 5: OH NO !

It RIPPED.. it was really to heavy to support itself, hoping to save it I broke out the duct tape, added a border and covered it with caulk

Step 6: Making It Wearable

oh this thing is HEAVY and as a side note, caulk over plastic doesn't dry very well ! We used a tanktop as a backing and some gorilla glue to attach the 2 pieces. After all that we realized a beachball really isnt shaped like a pregnant belly !!  !So.. it's heavy, fragile and doesnt really fit.. time for phase 2

Step 7: Belly Buster Part 2

For this one we went back to a tried and true method that actually came from Instructable. My daughter put on another shirt and we ran duck tape over her belly to get the proper shape and then applied a papier mache layer

Step 8: The Skull

We picked up a plastic bucky skull for a couple of dollars, I ran a piece of tape as a cut line and used a soldering gun to cut off the parts we wanted. WARNING, noxious and dangerous fumes arise from heating plastic,, I did it outside in front of a fan and chased the preggo one in the house

Step 9: Attach the Skull

Time for some hotglue... position the 2 pieces until they suit you and hotglue in place

Step 10: Making the "paste"

We mad a mix of white school glue, white acrylic paint and water as the paste

Step 11: Papier Mache'

We figured that using newspaper on the skull would lose to much detail so we went with toiletpaper (there's 2 layers of newspaper and a layer of ducttape underneath it remember) there's not really much to explain that the pictures cant do a better job of

Step 12: Finished for Now...

This is were we've stopped for now, once dry the mix is hard and almost plastic it's also very light. A couple of coats of acrylic paint will finish it off. Be sure to look for the finished piece in my upcoming Haunted House "ible" coming the 1st week of Nov 2010