DIY Halloween Costume: Ramen Bowl

 Every year, I let my kids choose whatever Halloween costume they want and I make it for them (unless it can be easily purchased). This year, my oldest decided she wanted to be one of her favorite foods: a bowl of ramen.

All my research pointed to making a bowl out of paper mâché. Despite my love of crafting, I've never done paper mâché before and was dreading it (rightfully so, it turns out). After getting a stack of newspapers from my neighbor, I dove into the project. I based my costume on this ramen bowl tutorial by Aww Sam.

The instructions were short and sounded easy but I quickly found out how difficult some steps were. First, the huge 36" balloon was really hard to tie off once inflated. Second, attempting to paper mâché a balloon was extremely tricky. I tried to secure the balloon in an old wicker basket but as soon as I put the first strip of newspaper on, the balloon started to spin and roll off the basket. I'm still not sure how I managed to get the first paper mâché layer on, but my basement was a mess after that first night!

I decided to do 4 layers of newspaper which took a lot longer than I expected. I used flour and water for my paste and the original 1:1 ratio was too thick and hard to manage, so I settled on 1.25 cups water to 1 cup flour.

I could only work at night after the kids were in bed. About 6 nights later, the bowl was finally done and dry. I don't want to paper mâché anything ever again 😆.

After popping the balloon and cutting down the bowl, I painted the bowl with black acrylic paint and hot glued a red ribbon on top. The ramen was made the following way:

- Soup base: felt in Copper Canyon
- Noodles: 2 skeins of Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick And Quick Yarn in Fisherman

- Eggs: white and yellow felt based on this avocado pattern. I adjusted the shape to be more egg-like

- Seaweed: green felt with stiff interfacing inside (Pellon 926) so it would stay upright

- Tofu: white felt wrapped over 1" green upholstery foam (I stacked some foam pieces to make it taller)

- Scallions: green craft foam cut into small rectangles and hot glued

For the straps, I used 1" black polypropylene webbing and buckles. This worked great because I could easily adjust the length of the straps to fit my daughter and the costume can be re-adjusted for someone else to use in the future.

The total time to make this costume was around 10-12 hours. My daughter loves it which makes all the hard work worth it. 💗