Wagon Costumes in Wonderland

Here we are, Halloween 2018! Our 4th year creating a wagon costume!

I could hardly wait to debut this year’s wagon costume. This year we made not one, but two wagon costumes to go with our Alice in Wonderland family costume theme.

Where did we come up with our theme? It just so happens that we have our very own Alice! For real, her name is Alice! Naturally, we couldnt pass up this opportunity to dress up as the characters from one of my favorite stories to honor our girl!

The Costumes

I sourced the Queen of Hearts, White Rabbit, and Mad Hatter costumes from halloweencostumes.com. Alice’s costume however was a custom handmade piece from Alessandra’s Little Bowtique. Truly, if you are looking for something special for your little girl, Alessandra’s Little Bowtique has created the most beautiful and special outfits for us over the past year. She has created many custom pieces for my Alice and the quality of her work is just amazing. She actually made many of the pieces Alice wore in her most recent pageant. I highly recommend her shop. I really cannot say enough nice things about Alessandra’s Little Bowtique!

The Wagons

If our “Rabbit Hole” looks familiar, that’s because you’ve seen it before! We have actually repourposed our Circus Wagon from last year and reworked it into a magical Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole. With just a little spray paint, new felt, glue, cards and some decor we were able to transform our Circus Wagon into a magical portal to wonderland. What can I say? Momma is getting tired!

Here is the frame of our once Circus Wagon costume before we spray painted the bars brown.

Once we sprayed the frame of our wagon costume we placed it into the wagon and added a black glitter felt to create our “hole” that Alice Falls into. I used adhesive velcro to attach the felt to the bars. It worked perfectly.

Once the wagon was covered with felt I added the decor. I used floral pieces I found at the dollar tree and tied them to the wagon with a clear thread. I then glued cards to the bars and hung some of the from the top of the wagon. I also hung “drink me” bottles, keys, and small cake domes that contained macaroons from the frame. Many of these items were left over from Alice’s first birthday party.

The Tea Cup Wagon

Alice’s teacup wagon was a little more tricky. We were able to repourpose the frame from our hot air ballon costume but the rest had to be created from scratch.

Materials:

• Fabric
• Foam Board
• Felt
• Laundry Basket
• Ribbon
• Hot Glue
• EVA Cosplay Foam

My first step here was to create a frame for our design. But even before that we needed to decide how we were going to make a teacup for her to ride in. I experimented with a few different options but finally decided on a laundry basket. I cut the bottom of the basket off and cut a section of the basket out so that it would fit over our steering wheel on a tilted angle.

I then placed the frame from our hot air balloon wagon costume over the car and added our teacup laundry basket and also a cardboard piece I had cut out to be the saucer.

Next, I created a table top for our teacup basket with foam board I purchased from the dollar tree. I left an opening in the center for the saucer of our teacup.

To get a smoother look on the teacup, I covered the basket with EVA cosplay foam.

To give the saucer a more sound structure I cut and added a layer of foam board.

I used foam EVA foam dowels for the handle of the teacup and attached them with hot glue to complete the structure.

Finally, it was time to bring it all together. I first covered the foam board with a striped fabric “table cloth” and then covered our teacup with blue felt and pink felt hearts. To add some extra detail I decorated the table with some more of our cake domes.

And there you have it! A quick tutorial on how we put these costumes together!

Do you follow a family theme for your Halloween costumes? If so, leave me a comment and let me know!