Halloween Prep: Peregrine Falcon

Halloween is a-comin' and we're getting ready over here!

Henry's costume is easy: he saw the dinosaur costume that my mom had made for Ben 3 years ago and latched on to it like a lifeboat. He's been telling everyone he will be a "dino" and practicing his roar. Works for me!

Ben never fails to surprise me with his ideas and vision. Remember the Rainbow Lizard, last year? This year, he decided he wants to be a falcon for Halloween. Not just any falcon, oh no. A Peregrine Falcon. All right. So we started doing a little research this past weekend, determining colors and structure of the falcon's body and how that would translate to a costume.

Do you know the website Arkive? It is incredible! In their own words: "Explore 15,000 of the world’s endangered species. With over 100,000 photos and videos, discover what these animals, plants and fungi look like, what makes them special and why we should protect them." The peregrine falcon page provided a wealth of information.






Photos borrowed from Arkive.org

Then Ben and I got to work on sketching the costume.




Here's his final sketch (try not to laugh -- or be shocked -- at the falcon's tail, visible from the front in a rather unfortunate placement... He he...):




As always, Ben has a very complex back-story for his character(s) and costume. Here's a picture of a scene involving the falcon swooping from a building and killing a pigeon. Gory.






Here are my sketches inspired by his vision, as well as our research.






We went to the craft store and stocked up on eco-felt (currently $2.99/yard at Joann's!) and fabric paint.


The plan is to paint spots on the main body, to represent the spotted down/feathers. The front of the body and inside of the wings and tail will be white and light grey. The back will be black and dark grey. The hat/helmet will be black and feature yellow beak and spots around the eyes. I will make yellow claw booties to fit over his shoes. And I think that's about it.

My main challenge will be to make sturdy wings that he can flap (and show off to his friends). While the wings on my sketch look "scalloped", I plan on making the layers of felt look more like feathers. Anyone have a good pattern or instructions for costume wings?

I am really excited about this costume and can't wait to share the progress! It's such a fun process to work on this with Ben. What costumes are you and your kiddos working on this year?

Speaking of Halloween, did you see our review and GIVEAWAY of the book Artful Halloween plus assorted goodies? Go check it out and enter here.