Centaur Warrior Princess Costume

I always hand create my children's costumes and this years centaur sure was an attention getter!!! Pictures do not do this costume justice. Its seeing it in action that made it a hit at this years Halloween events. The back legs were attached to wheels so as she walked, the back hoofs actually moved up and down in a galloping like motion!

I was looking for creative inspiration on pinterest and stumbled across a pin talking about how to create home made hoofs for a faun costume......my brain ran with that into creating a centaur. Now we love Disney's Fantasia and I toyed with the idea of recreating a pretty, colorful, flower covered centaur......but I wanted to bring in my own element for this creation and thought about mixing the look with a little bit of a woodland elf and more of a native warrior princess. I had my hubby create a simple PVC frame that was basically a backbone that then connected vertically, at the back hips, to the wheels. Then he made makeshift hips that the moving pieces of PVC would connect to for the legs. We used screws and bolts drilled through PVC to make the joints moveable as the wheels turned. Then I packed around the backbone with newspaper and masking tape (like you would if you were starting a paper mache project) and formed it to that of a horse body. I used foam to hold the needed shape of the legs. I attached the fur with spray adhesive at first and then hot glue as I cut needed shapes. The start of the backbone had a PVC T piece that I strung a belt through to attach to my daughter. I took a pair of her old jeans (the jeans came in handy for running the belt from horse for a better hold up of body) hot glued fur to them to be a separate piece so she could unattach from the horse body easily without wardrobe change. I used the same fur to create a crop vest and got some used belts from goodwill to accent. I made her arm cuffs out of cardboard and glued fake leather material to them and accented with leather string and cut up pieces from one of the belts. This costume cost approximately $100 to create with half of the cost being a $25 wig I bought for the horses tail and $25 nude body suit for warmth in our midwest trick or treating temps. I'd say the whole creating process took about 18 hours.

My daughter is a shy one but she adored the attention!!! It was so fun to follow behind her and just watch the faces of passersby!! People were going nuts watching the mechanics, kids were pointing and tugging on thier parent's arms and moms everywhere were trying to Google where I bought it from, lol.