DIY Cardboard Airplane Costume (FREE Tutorial)

We love making cardboard costumes not only because they are so cheap and light but also because we can really customize them for the occasion. This cardboard airplane took my sons aviator Halloween costume to a whole other level.

Need:

Two Large Cardboard Boxes

Glue Gun and Glue Sticks

Scissors And Cutting Knifes

Black Spray Paint

Silve Spray Paint

Craft Paint (For Details)

Masking Tape

We tried to keep our airplane design as simple as possible with just a few added details. The wings are kept simple as a rectangle shape with just the edges rounded using good strong scissors. Cut a whole in the middle of the wing for a person to fit through.

TIP: We used one wing as a template for the second bottom wing.

The body of the plane is simply used with four sides of cardboard glued together. You could also just use a smaller box for this portion of the project.

Once you have the wings glued to the body you can add a few needed details like a circle for the propellers to mount onto or cardboard rods to attach to the end of the wings to give it more authenticity.

Tip: Remember that the costume has to fit through doors and cars so you want to make everything as small as possible.

There is no such thing as too much hot glue for this cardboard plane. The more hot glue the better.

Add a tail to your airplane but remember to make it as short as possible. A great way to attach the tail is with Masking tape so that the tail is bendable. You want it bendable because it will likely run into things because it is sticking out so far and it will need to bend or else it will get too damaged and fall off. You could also just skip putting a tail on.

We forgot to spray paint our propellers silver before we glued them on and it made it just a tad more difficult to paint around but not too bad. Also you are going to need shoulder straps to hold the airplane us so you don’t have to carry it with your hands the whole time. We just used some old belts for the straps and hot glued them on the inside of the plane.

I designed a custom Aviator logo for my son. But you can find tons of aviator logos on the internet to print off and ad to your plane design if you want.