Mark is a Duck

It was my company's 5th birthday. We had a party. The bosses had this idea for every team to nominate at least one member to wear a costume and the best costume would win their team some vouchers. My friend Mark wanted to go dressed as a duck - a Mallard.

First I had to make a white collar for the band around the neck. Simples.

Then I made a simple dress. Just cut two slits for arm holes in a sheet of fabric so it would fasten at the back. They have a brown shape on their belly, so for this I cut out a shape from a dark brown fabric and glued it on to the front.

I darted it at the top to fit the collar and then folded the collar over the top.

Then I made a tail. A sort of tutu thing, but just at the back so his tail would stick out. And I glued another panel of fabric onto the dress at the back to make the tail.

I put an elastic hem on the main panel of the 'dress' - puff dress style, to give it more of a duck body shape.

Then I painted it, because Mallards have a lot of grey colouring as well as browns.

Then I had to make some wings. I cut out a load of feather shapes from spare scraps of fabric. I sacrificed these fairy wings:

And I cut them up and bent them and glues them onto the fabric like this:

Then I waited for the glue to dry a bit and I cut them out and glued the 'feathers' to them so it looked like this:

When I got to Marks, I pinned two pieces of elastic to each wing so they would fit around his arms - one just below the shoulder and the other just above the elbow.

Nina had given him some foam for his feet and he cut out the shapes. We cut a cross shape into it so he could get his feet through and the 'feet' sat on top of his shoes.

Jack painted Mark's face green and Louis made the beak for him. It's made from those foam sheets you get in kid's craft stuff, and he's drawn on it with felt pens.

So this is our duck: