DIY Mike Wazowski Costume

This year I decided to finally create this Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc I’ve had in my head for years. I was always doodling what I imagined it’d look like and made prototypes to make sure it was made to scale. It is made entirely by hand. It is essentially a nursing pillow with foam pipe insulation as a skeleton, all wrapped in fabric of course. I taught myself how to sew using a machine (via Youtube and blogs) just because I wanted this idea to come to life so badly this year!

The eyeball is half a Styrofoam ball with the iris printed and glued on. I also hot-glued some fabric to the eyeball to give it an eyelid. For the ridge of his brow I bent a coat hanger, wrapped it in foam pipe insulation and glued it to the nursing pillow before covering it in fabric.

The shoes were just Dollar Store slippers I carefully hot-glued the fabric to. The mouth and claws are made out of thin sheets of coloured foam glued onto the body, while his horns are halves of Silly Putty eggs painted and hot-glued to the head.

All of the limbs have Velcro tabs that attach to the body for easy storage and adjustment. In order to get the perfect bending at the joints I had to cut a measured chunk out of the pipe insulation so it only bends exactly where I need it to. For all the materials it only cost me just under $50! A great deal if you ask me.

I had a ton of fun making it this year and it was a huge success at the party I went to. The theme was “Fancy”, hence the feather boa. Complete strangers wanted to take pictures with me and watch me dance in it. No one could believe I made it (not to mention the fact that I made it myself)! Frankly, I couldn’t either. I thought the sewing machine would be an insurmountable problem. It was very challenging and frustrating to be capable of doing even basic shapes and definitely took some practice (as evidenced by the difference in quality between the gloves I made here). Overall, it was an incredible and exciting accomplishment for me to see something put down on paper come to life so to speak.

I’ve even posted a video of me dancing in the costume for the full effect. Basically the more I wore it, the more I made myself laugh.

DIY Mike Wazowski Costume