Human Gumball Machine Costume

M.E. and I have been making her costumes together since she was 5 years old. M.E. is now 15, but that hasn't changed her enthusiasm for finding a unique idea for her annual Halloween costume. She always chooses an inanimate object and typically gets her inspiration from something in her immediate environment. This year she chose to be a gumball machine, just like the one that sits tall on her kitchen counter.

This year we realized that others have made the gumball machine costume before us, so we decided to take her costume a step further... we decided to make a gumball machine costume that worked!

We used two large punch bowls for the gumball container, drilled a hole at the top and holes in the bowls for air. We sealed the bowls with a silicone tape.

The bottom punch bowl rests on a somewhat flexible Captain America shield. We cut a slit down one side of the shield and a hole big enough to create a tight fit around her neck. We then cut a hole on the shield for the gumball to drop through and down plastic hosing that we wrapped around M.E. We then used plastic wrap to both keep the hosing around and also to represent the clear plastic cynlinder of the gumball machine. We used red fabric for the skirt - or base of the machine.