DIY Juice Box Halloween Costume

Our family recently went as Junk Food for Halloween, and as promised, here's your step-by-step photo tutorial for how to make a DIY juice box Halloween costume. 

Now, if you're reading this post, I assume that someone in your life has decided that they will DIE if they aren't a juice box for Halloween. Considering the amount of effort that any homemade costume entails, make sure that this person is serious about it before you embark on the endeavor. 

This tutorial will teach you how to make a costume like this (although any juice box graphics can be replicated as noted in the graphics portion of the tutorial below):

First you will need to gather some supplies:

SUPPLIES NEEDED:

• Cardboard Box - large enough to fit around the person wearing the costume - NO COST
• Yellow Felt - enough to cover the cardboard box (the amount will vary with the size of the box, we bought 2 yards) - $5.98
• Scissors (to cut paper and felt) - NO COST
• Duct Tape (we used what we already had - this does not show) - NO COST
• 1, 12 X 18 Craft Foam Sheet for each of following colors: red, black, blue, orange, yellow, white, light green, medium green - $7.92
• 1 1/2" X 2' PVC Pipe - $2.83
• 1 1/2" 45 Degree PVC Pipe Elbow - $0.88
• Saw - NO COST
• Air Conditioner Side Insulation Panels - $12.96
• 3 Tiled Printouts of front design of an actual juice box (directions to follow) - NO COST
• Pencil - NO COST
• Hot Glue Gun and Hot Glue (not pictured) - NO COST
• 2 Bottles School Glue (not pictured) - $1.98
• Old Paint Brush (not pictured) - NO COST
• Black and Brown Permanent Markers (not pictured) - NO COST
• Aluminum Foil (not pictured) - NO COST

TOTAL PROJECT COST: $32.55

COVERING THE BOX

After gathering your materials, remove all stickers from the box, and use a marker to draw a head hole and two arm holes. Make sure that the arm holes are evenly spaced. Cut out the holes with scissors.

Once you've cut out the holes and before you move on, make sure to take time to "test-drive" the costume to make sure that it fits. If for any reason the box does not fit properly, adjust the holes now or find another box. Also, make sure that the box gives enough clearance in the knee area so that walking from house to house trick-or-treating will not be an issue. If you need to trim the bottom of the box to make enough knee room, do it now.

Testing - 1 - 2 - 3

Once everything is fitting properly, on to the easiest part of the process! Lay the yellow felt out flat on the floor. Cut the felt so that it will fit the box with approximately 1 1/2 inch overlap in the back and on top. Leave 5 inches of felt to wrap inside the bottom of the box. 

Wrap the box in felt as if you are wrapping a present in wrapping paper. To ensure that the felt sticks to the box, pour school glue directly on the box and spread it with an old paint brush. Then, carefully position the felt over the glued surface and work your way around the box leaving a seam down the back center. Hot glue the overlapping 1 1/2 inch of fabric to stabilize. 

Also leave a seam on the top center of the box, which should leave neat triangles for the shoulders. 

As you wrap the box, wrap right over the holes that you cut (we will tend to those momentarily). When you get to the bottom of the box, wrap the remaining fabric into the box and tape it down with duct tape. I used two layers of duct tape to ensure that all pieces were adhered well. 

Since this will not show, feel free to use whatever type of schmancy duct tape you may have on hand. I used Angry Birds.

Now, use scissors to carefully poke a small hole into the center of the felt that covers one of the holes. Then, cut a starburst of lines to the edge of the hole until you have something that looks like the following photo. Repeat for each hole.

Trim the excess felt off of each triangle until you are left with short, 1 1/2 inch tabs that looks like the following photo. Repeat for each hole.

Fold each tab to the underside of the costume and hot glue in place until your finished hole looks like the following photo. Repeat for each hole.

From the top of the box, roughly measure the "shoulder" area of the box and cut the air conditioner insulation to fit.

Hot glue the air conditioner insulation to the underside of the box in the shoulder area. This will add some cushioning and make the costume more comfortable.

Set aside the box to dry while you move on to the graphics. 

GRAPHICS

In order to replicate the graphics for the front of the juice box, you will need to do some computer work. Download an image of a juice box with simple graphics. We chose this one, but any juice box with simple graphics will work.

Open the image in Photoshop. Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, draw an outline around only the front side of the juice box image. Select Edit>Cut from the top menu. Open a new Photoshop document. Select Edit>Paste from the top menu. Select Image>Image Size from the top menu. 

Resize the image width to the same dimensions as your box and click OK. Select Image>Image Size again to see what Height has been assigned to your new image. (This should be equal to or smaller than the height of your box. If it is not, reduce the height measurement accordingly until you have an image size that is roughly the size of your box.) Save this document as a jpg file.

Open the jpg file in Illustrator. Select File>Print from the top menu. Under General, type in the number of copies of the image you will need for the project (choose at least 3). Under Artboards, check Ignore Artboards. Under Media Size, choose the largest paper size that your printer is capable of printing. Under Options>Scaling, choose Tile Imageable Areas. Click Print.

You should end up with multiple copies of your image printed on multiple pieces of paper to accommodate the large size of the image.

Note that the image looks pixelated because you have printed it at such a large size. That is perfectly OK because you will just be using these printouts as templates to cut the foam that you purchased, and not on the actual costume itself.

The first step will be to tape your templates together and then start cutting each section of the template starting with the largest parts. 

For example, for the purpose of the costume, the Mott's logo is composed of a green oval, yellow oval, white lettering, black lettering, and a leaf. Cut the green oval out of your paper template first. Use a pencil to trace the shape from the paper template onto your light green foam and use scissors to cut out. Then, cut the yellow oval from the same template and trace that onto the yellow foam and cut out. Continue cutting and tracing from largest to smallest until all pieces have been cut out of foam.

Note, you will have to prepare two templates to accommodate for overlapping graphic parts. For example, when you cut out the Mott's portion of the logo the first time, you will be cutting through the "for Tots" portion of the logo. So, you will use the second template to cut out the "for Tots." I used the first template to cut out the "Mott's" and the apple and the second template to cut out the "for Tots" and the green swooshes.

Using your last (intact) template as a guide for placement of the foam, hot glue each piece of foam to the box, layering the pieces to create the look shown. (Keep in mind that your box may not the replicate the exact dimensions of your chosen juice box, so make sure to place your images according to the size of your box. You will see that the logo and apple are spread further apart on our box than on the original, but this enables the graphics to use the full length of the box.)

Note, because the the largest area that the black is used in is the shadow behind the apple, I cut the shadow piece first. The red only overlaps that piece by a small amount (the 12 X 18 sheet would not accommodate a full apple shadow, so that is pieced together and the smaller pieces - lettering and eyes - were cut from the middle section).

There were two very small components of the graphics that I didn't not construct in the same way as the others. Instead of buying brown foam for the stem, I cut that piece from white foam and colored it with brown and black markers because it was the only part of the graphics that wasn't a solid color.

And instead of attempting to cut out the very small letters needed for the word "for" in the logo, I chose to write that onto the white foam with a black permanent marker. Use your template as a guide to replicate the font.

THE STRAW

The finishing touches for a juice box costume, of course, will be the straw. Tear off a small piece of aluminum foil and use a coffee cup to trace a circle. Cut out the circle and hot glue to the top right side of the box to represent the straw hole. Note: Aluminum foil will only conduct the heat of hot glue, so use extra precautions while doing this.

To create the straw, saw approximately 6 inches off the end of the PVC pipe.

Attach the two cut sides with the 45 degree PVC Pipe Elbow. This was actually pretty secure without any other adhesive, but I think hot glue would also work well to secure this.

We chose not to then secure the straw to the box because Aidyn was having too much fun wielding it as a weapon. (Must be what juice boxes want to do to us - what with us stabbing them all the time!) But, our plan was to affix it to the back of the box by drilling holes in the back of the straw and the back of the box and then wiring or tying the straw through the holes in the pipe and matching holes in the box. And, of course, I would have applied another liberal dose of hot glue for good measure.

Here are the finished results - hope this tutorial inspires you to make one!

Linking to The Mom Creative Annual Halloween Costume Link-Up.