Halloween time again! My favorite! I asked the kids what they want to be this year way back in July/August and of course I got like 10 different answers over the course of a couple months. They finally settled on Mine Craft. I'm thinking: great! that's easy, box costumes, people, simple. Nope. Kaiden didn't want to be a person. He wanted to be the pig. The pig. Why? Of all things?

But, that's what he wants to be, alright then, a pig it is. So the easiest way to do this would be to make the costume an illusion one that looks like he is riding a pig. I passed it by him. Showed him pictures of costumes others have made just like that. Nope. He want to BE the pig.

I explained to him that I could not make him the pig on all fours cause he would have to crawl and so his legs from knees to feet would stick out, and not to mention, you don't want to crawl to trick or treat. AND movement would be super hard with straight legs and arms. He didn't much care, he was set on being the pig on all fours. So I had to figure out how to make that happen.

I was watching AGT and they had an episode where they had a performance from a circus like group. In that performance, they had people dressed as elephants and they were on all fours. Looking closely you can see how they achieve this. The front legs a much longer than the back and have some kind of stilt inside so that the actor can just bend over and lean on the stilt. This way it has all 4 legs but the actor doesn't have to crawl. Yay! Solution!

For this costume you will need:

cardboard

duck tape

scissors

exacto knife

pencil

nylon straps

many different shades of pink paint, white and black paint

4 tennis balls

2 thick dowel rods

staple gun

white spray paint

hot glue

black paint pens

Step 1: Legs

I apologize the lack of photos in this project. I was slacking in the documentation department.

To make the back legs simple cut and fold cardboard to make a rectanglular tube that fits your child from just below the groin to the top of the feet. When making the tube, make sure to include a thin flap along one on the long sides to use to glue the tube together.

Hold the tube together with tape at first to test the fit. When happy, hot glue the tube using the tab you made.

For the front legs, the idea is the same, but they are longer and have a section cut out for the armpits and easier movement. First you need to make the stilts to see how long you need the legs to be.

To make the stilts, we used 12 inch long dowel rods and put a tennis ball on each end. I used an exacto to make the hole in the tennis ball, insert the rod, and hot glue in place.

Make the leg length the size needed to reach from the child's shoulder to the ground when leaning on the stilts.

Cut out a section of the cardboard to give room for the armpit and movement.

Step 2: Attach Stilts

We want the stilts to attach at the front corner opposite the armpit hole at an angle so the top of the stilt hovers at about center inside the leg.

To attach, I first used a staple gun to get as good a hold as I could.

Then cut a strip of cardboard that will run along both sides of the ball and over it to make a brace.

Hot glue the brace in place.

Add hot glue all around the ball where it meets the cardboard to help hold.

Step 3: The Body

Again, sorry for lack of photos.

I happened to get lucky and found the perfect piece of card board for the body. It was one of those divider sheets that they use on pallets at Sam's.

I laid my kid centered on the cardboard and marked on each side at his arms. Fold the cardboard long ways on the marks to make the side flaps.

Also mark at the bottom of your child's butt. Fold across short ways to make the butt flap.

At the top mark the bottom of the face/ start of the neck. Cut out a section to that mark between to the 2 side flaps.

Make a short slit on each side about an inch or so from the side flaps. Fold the section back. (see photo) This is where we attach the head.

Now get some nylon straps. Use tape to attach the straps to the cardboard. Try the body on the child. Adjust the straps until you get them right.

Carefully remove the tape and hot glue the straps down.

Cut strips of cardboard and hot glue them over the straps for added hold.

Step 4: The Head and Nose

Once again, I got super lucky. I happened to find a box the perfect size for the head. Saved me lots of work. The box needs to fit across the flap we made at the top of the body piece. It needs to overlap the flap a little on each side but not so big as to take the length of the width of the body.

Now that we had the perfect head, we needed to add a nose for the pig.

I grabbed a piece of cardboard and drew out a rectangle in the center of the piece the size that I wanted the nose to be. Make sure the extra cardboard all around the rectangle is the same width.

Draw a line from the corners of the rectangle to the edge of the cardboard. Cut off the corners.

Fold on the lines to make an open box

Glue the box sides to hold.

Trace the nose onto the head centered lengthwise at the bottom of the head.

Cut out the section you just drew.

Glue the nose into the hole.

Step 5: Attach Head

Align the head with the body up against the flap we made. Hot glue in place.

Step 6: The Tedious Squares

Take all your parts and spray paint them all white. This is much easier to paint pink on than the cardboard itself.

Then use a ruler to mark out a grid of 2 in x 2 in squares completely covering all the parts. On the legs make sure that the grid is at least 3 squares across the short side in order to have the "toes" and on the face, you have to plan more to make sure the eyes are equally spaced. Some squares on the face are smaller than the 2 by 2 to make this happen. Use reference photos of the pig to help with marking out the face.

When looking closely at pictures of the pig, you begin to notice just how very many different shades of pink there are! It is honestly overwhelming to try to get all of them. I started out mixing my own shades of pink. I decided on 4 shades: white pink, light pink, pink, and dark pink. I painted all the legs this way. It was a pain! You never get quite the same color when you have to remix a shade after running out. For this project is doesn't really matter since the idea is to have many shades, but still, a pain. Also, the body has many more shades that the legs in the photos as far as I could tell. I decided to just go the craft store and buy several shades of pink. They were only like 80 cent a bottle. I think I ended up with about 7 shades.

Anyways, I looked at reference pictures and tried to match shades as best I could and made up the rest. I marked each square with letters for each color. L for light pink, W for white pink, P for pink and so on. Don't forget to mark the 2 black squares on each leg for the "toes" and the black for the nose and eyes. Then just paint, paint, paint. For hours and hours, paint. Seriously, there are A LOT of squares.

Step 7: Still Painting

See!? Lots of squares. Paint til they are all covered.

When you are finally done painting, Get out those black paint pens and trace over all the lines.

This is optional of course. The actual pig doesn't have dividing lines between the squares but the costume does look MUCH nicer with the black lines. It helps to cover up any accidents where you went over the lines while painting, which, let's be honest, happened LOTS.

Also optional, Spray a few coats of clear coat to help protect it from water or rain.