Fortune Cookies and Take Out Box Costume

This costume began as solo Fortune Cookie, but I added Take Out Box to accompany it.
So it became the pair of Mother (me) and Son (2-year-old) costumes.

I wanted to pick a daily life object, which everyone in my town and across the nation would recognize. From visiting my favorite Chinese restaurant every month, I became interested in the shape of Fortune Cookies.

So I learned how to make real fortune cookies on video, and tried to do the same with material of ½” foam. This started with one big circle, and it was folded twice. I added outer layers of yellow fleece material for comfort.

After creating the base shape, I had my son wear it and made two holes inside so that he can put his arms through (the arms have places to sit, but not to stick out).
I added snap buttons at the front joint, so that front stay closed.

The paper with text of fortune was represented with white felt material.
I carefully chosen the text and printed it on inkjet-iron-on sheet. Then ironed the text on the felt, which was sewed at the back of it inside the cookie.

At the very end, I decided to add eyeballs on the back of the fortune cookie, so that it looks cute from the backside.


For Take Out Box, I used ½” foam core to create stiff square base to site around my neck.
From the base, I attached Foam sheet for flaps and white felt for body of the box and yellow fleece at the top.

I collected several take out boxes from different Chinese restaurants and chose the pattern to be used on my costume. I scanned the images and stretched them accordingly to the proportion of my costume on my computer, and modified the text to “HAUNTED” for the front image. The backside image and text are not modified—it said, “CAUTION: Contents may be HOT”.

I printed the images on inkjet-iron-on sheets and I ironed them on the front and back of the costume.

For my hairstyle, I decided to use real chopsticks to decorate my hair.

Total cost for both costumes are about $100.