The children's school are performing The Lion King this year for the school production and when the school asked if I could make and design some headdresses for the lions, I was overwhelmed but excited. One term later the school has their cardboard headdresses for a male and female lions and its cub plus templates for the children to make in class, as many lion headdresses they can print'n'cut out of papercard.
I was lucky enough to have some of the talented students from the school come and try on the costume headdresses and model them for me. As my boys are not too enthusiastic about getting up on stage for the production of The Lion King. I think they are a little young and overwhelmed. I know they will enjoy it, however I think we are going to take small steps to build up their confidence.
It's taken a whole school term to design the templates for the lion costumes but I'm really proud of them and so glad the school asked me to do it. I put a lot of thought into the designs so that they look effective however are really simple to put together and easy to replicate.
The templates give you the framework to make a Lion, Lioness and a Cub headdress out of cardboard. The headdresses fit a child or adult as the headbands are adjustable. There is also a bonus template that can be printed out onto thick card and be cut out with scissors, taped and glued together. It's a simiplified version, designed for a class of kids.
Lion Headdress: 45cm height 38cm width
Lioness Headdress: 34cm height 37cm width
Lion Cub Headdress: 28.5cm height 33.5cm width
Things you will need to make this costume:
~ The Lion Headdress Templates
~ Single walled cardboard?
(between 2-5 mm thick , you should be able to fit each set of templates onto a 70x80cm sheet of cardboard)
~ A3 printer
~ Craft blade https://amzn.to/3X4Zsvb
~ Polystyrene ball 4-5cm diameter https://amzn.to/47kFQbq
~ Scissors https://amzn.to/3ThKilj
~ Hot glue gun https://amzn.to/3MlT9i9
~ Hot glue sticks https://amzn.to/3Xfe8rE
~ Blu-tac (Sticky tac) https://amzn.to/3yMtqMJ
~ Masking Tape https://amzn.to/3yWT69j
~ Optional Kraft gummed tape https://amzn.to/3ZdBdO5
~ Brown/Kraft Paper https://amzn.to/4e4fDjA
~ Bulldog Clip https://amzn.to/3MwKUzF
~ Paper Shredder
The shredder needs to be able to reverse and do fine lone strips of paper, these are my two favourites:
Portable Manual Shredder https://amzn.to/3ZjkCbE
Small Hand Held Shredder (only does small amounts) https://amzn.to/3ThDwvI
The above affiliate links are to amazon products we currently use for making cardboard costumes. (they may differ from the video) but please use whatever is available, these are suggestions.
I so hope you like the costume lion templates and can't wait to see them in not only our school's production but many school productions all over the world. To get a better sense of how the templates work, as well as an aid in helping you make the best costume possible. Here is a fun instructional video I have put together.
by Zygote Brown Designs
