Being Creative

One of the things that I really wanted at my sons party where the life size character’s from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. You see these all over the internet for about $40 a piece. I decided that I wanted Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto but could not spend $160 plus shipping on them so I made them myself. I searched Google images until I found images that would expand in size without becoming distorted. I copied that image to software like Microsoft publisher, made my canvas the size I wanted the character to be and then stretched the image to fit the canvas size. I choose 36 inches high for Mickey, Donald, and Pluto and a little taller for Goofy and then played with the width until the image looked good to me. Then a bought myself a good printer and printed the image out across multiple pages using normal letter sized paper, which gives you a puzzle to assemble. I laid out the pieces of the image and decide which pieces I would trim the white space from and which ones I would leave. I then taped the pieces together, putting double sided tape on the white space I left and then laying the other half of the image on top of the tape. I used double sided tape so that you would not see tape lines on the image. Once I had the entire picture assembled I cut out the image and then traced it onto the green insulated foam board that I got from Lowes. One sheet did all four characters. My husband then used a saw to carve out the image. I then glued the image to the foam and there you have it, life sized characters for the party at a fraction of the cost. I hung these on my son’s playroom wall to keep them safe until the party.