How to Make a Mr Tickle World Book Day Costume

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World Book Day is just around the corner and this year my child decided to really test my crafting skills. Would he go as the train driver from one of his favourite books? Oh no. How about the park ranger from another? No way! Could he go in something we had lying around the house? Nope. He HAD to be Mr Tickle no question about it. After a bit of Googling I realised that this was one World Book Day costume that would require a full make and here is how I brought Mr Tickle to life…

What You Will Need:

• Orange card

• Black card

• Blue card or foam sheet (this is what I used)

• Marker pen

• Scissors

• Glue or glue gun

• Orange ribbon

• Pencil

• Cardboard

• Elastic

Making The Mr Tickle Costume

Step One: Mr Tickle’s Body

You want to start with creating Mr Tickle’s body using the orange card. I bought 2 large sheets of card from hobbycraft (you can get this in other stores or online) which was enough for his body and hands – my child is 6 so if you have a larger child you may need to purchase more sheets.

Take your card and hold this up to your child to get a rough idea of how big Mr Tickle will need to be. I aimed for his body to come to just below his knees and up to his chin to begin with. I then sketched a rough oval/circle shape and cut this out.

I double-checked the sizing, trimmed and tidied up the edges where required then used this as my template for cutting out the second circle – this is a sandwich board design costume.

Once you are happy with the sizes and shapes you will need to attach these two pieces together to create your sandwich board. I used wide ribbon which I glued on using a glue gun.

Make sure you get somebody to help you to hold up the card to your child whilst you gauge the best place for this to be stuck to – look for where it will sit comfortably on their shoulders and align so that it won’t slip down. Once you have glued your ribbon to the front half, very carefully glue the back on whilst your child stands in position. If you go wrong you can carefully pull the ribbon away, remove the hardened glue and start again.

Now you’ll need to test that you can in fact lift the sandwich board up and over your child’s head safely and easily. If you struggle you may want to reposition your ribbon. I found that getting him to look straight ahead and lifting the card, not the ribbon, gently worked.

Step Two: Mr Tickle’s Hat

Mr Tickle wears a small blue hat to the side of his head. You can make this simply out of card or a foam sheet. The important part is making sure that you get the proportion right. I did this by getting my child to wear the body and carefully sketching the hat onto the card taking into consideration his body positioning – I didn’t want it hitting him in the chin or shoulder – as well as the size of the Mr Tickle body.

You will notice from the books that his hat is only blue in the central area so I didn’t cut out a trim to it. I simply cut the semi circle shape, glued it onto the body and then drew the trim using a marker pen. I then ran this around the edges of the blue hat which gave it a really good effect.

Step Three: The Face

Mr Tickle’s face is very simple, he has black eyes and smile. For his eyes I cut out two oval shapes in black card and again, asked my child to wear the body to get the placement right.

Now you can either carefully draw on a smile using a black marker pen (if you’re brave enough to) or if you wanna be safe like me, cut it out using the black card you have left. Glue this on and draw the ends of his smile on with your pen.

Step Four: Arms and Hands

Mr Tickle’s arms had me stumped for a bit. I considered using scarves, fabric, tights, crepe paper (although this would probably rip easily) and searched around Hobbycraft for any other ideas but in the end I decided to opt to use the rest of the ribbon and I think it worked perfectly. I cut what we had left in half and felt it was the ideal length. I glued this on to the centre of Mr Tickle’s body using a glue gun and then gave them a quick twist to make them look more wibbly wobbly – this ribbon has wire inside making it easy to twist and bend into shape.

Using the orange card you can either free hand some wobbly hands or use your child’s hands or gloves as a template then adapt your drawing to look more like it does in the book afterwards. Cut these out – make sure you get your left and rights looking correct – then glue the ends of your ribbon arms to the back of your hands.

Now, to get those arms up off the floor. Using any cardboard you have, cut two strips that can be glued onto the top of the ribbon on the back of the hands, bend the card at the wrist and voila, your child has handles to hold his hands up with.

Step Five: Hand Rests

A child isn’t going to want to hold hands all day and we don’t want these dragging along the ground becoming dirty and damaged so we need a place for these to “rest”. Taking some elastic, cut a small amount to the size of the cardboard handles. Glue this to create a hoop. Next, place these behind the front part of the body just above where Mr Tickle’s arms are coming from and glue them down at an angle. Your handles should easily slot through the elastic holders keeping the hands upright.

Step Six: Orange Clothing

To finish the look dress your child in orange trousers and a top/jumper – we managed to get both from Vinted very easily – and your Mr Tickle World Book Day Costume is complete.

Doesn’t he look brilliant?!

If you liked this you may also like our Diary of a Wimpy Kid costume or our Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs costume.

*This post contains affiliate links which will not affect your shopping experience but does mean I will earn a small commission if you buy via them. For more information please refer to my disclosure page.

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