Following on from yesterday’s post about how I planned for this party, I’ve got another project that I completed before the big event. I think it’s nice for the guests to take something home that reminds them of the party, if they want to. So I found a great Viking helmet idea on Bug, Boo and Bean, and mostly followed Emily’s instructions when I made them.
I started with making the template for the horns. Emily used corrugated cardboard for hers, I used whatever cardboard I could find in the recycling 😉 But I did adapt Emily’s technique for attaching the horns to the helmets, so I needed 2 pieces for each horn. This is also because my cardboard was printed on one side, which I didn’t want showing. When I was happy with the size and shape of my template I drew around it on my various pieces of cardboard. Since I also needed mirror images (for the two sides) I flipped my template over to do them. I marked the shapes with a 1 or a 2 so I could tell how many I had of each. I was making 13 helmets, so I needed 52 horn shapes altogether.
Then I glued two horns together, leaving the bottom bit open so they could be folded back giving me a way to attach them to the helmet. (This is why I needed the mirror image shapes.) I used clothes pegs to hold them together while they dried. Hopefully this will all make more sense in the photo a little further on.
To make the headband I allowed a head circumference of around 53cm. Some are a little larger, some a little smaller. By this stage I had resorted to asking a friend for cardboard (she’s building a house so lots of spare boxes 🙂 ) so I used corrugated cardboard for this. The strip that goes over the top of the head is 25cm long. I attached it about halfway up the headband strip, not aligning it with the bottom. All these pieces are about 4.5cm wide, matching the base of the horns.
Firstly I joined the two ends of the helmet together using silver duct tape. I didn’t overlap them, so here is where I could make them slightly different sizes by adjusting how much space I left between the ends when I taped them together. Then I added the strip across the top of the head. This covered the ends I had just joined, then over to the opposite side. Several pieces of duct tape horizontally and vertically kept this in place nicely. The horns were attached to the sides. I folded the headband in half to get the spots where I added the top strip and the horns.
Is it making a little more sense now? I hope so
When that was done I needed to cover the band with the tape. I left the horns uncovered as they were quite neat anyway. The first helmet I taped using a continuous strip. It was fiddly, took a long time, and used a heap of tape. It also looked a bit messy. But I was pretty proud of my creation, and uploaded this photo to Instagram 😉
After the first one I cut smaller strips of tape and wrapped them around the base and across the top.
This gave a much neater helmet, used less tape and was much quicker. It took me just under half an hour to make each one this way. Not including all the cutting out. That took a long time.
Top tip: don’t leave making these until the day before the party! I started more than a week before.
The birthday boy was very impressed when he saw what I had made, and wore one straight away. As I continued making them he gave most of them the ‘wear test’.
And the party guests seemed to like them too!
I even got a text the night of the party with a photo of one of the boys eating his dinner wearing his helmet. He wouldn’t take it off!
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Saw it, Pinned it, Did it! 
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