A Beautiful Ruckus: Homemade Captain America Shield

I married a comic book fan.

When we moved Sean's things to our new house a month before we got married, it consisted of a couch, a TV, some clothes, and at least 30 long boxes of comic books. It's actually quite impressive because they are filed by type, story line, and chronological order. He can look at one square inch of a comic book cover and tell me exactly who is in it, the story line, the year it was written, and who wrote it.

So when I say that Captain America is his favorite superhero...he has certainly done his research!

This year for Halloween, I wanted to dress the kids up as superheroes. Fun, right? So I called in our resident expert and asked him to pick out a superhero for each kid, and I would work on the costumes.

Of course, Captain America is one of the choices!

I try really hard not to pay retail prices for anything. It's just too expensive to do that. So I made my own Captain America Shield to go with Caleb's outfit! In case you have a kid who needs a shield (because Captain America just isn't Captain America without his shield!) maybe you will find this helpful too! It costs pennies to make, and odds are, you have most of the materials sitting around your house right now!

Materials:

-Blue Fleece

-White Fleece

-Red Fleece

-Four round items to use as templates (I used a table setting and a can of tomatoes)

-Cardboard

-Pen

-Scissors

-Star Template

-Glue

The Materials

Trace your biggest round item onto the cardboard as your shield base. I found that the dinner plate, salad plate, and bowl sets that we have are the perfect size for making a child's shield. They are all perfectly proportioned to each other. Here, I'm tracing the dinner plate.

Then, cut it out.

Take the same dinner plate and trace the same size circle onto your red fleece, and then cut it out.

Now take your 3rd largest object (I'm using a bowl), to trace and cut out another circle out of the red fleece.

So now you should have two red circles: one is the largest and the other is the 3rd largest.

Now take your second largest object (I'm using a salad plate) to trace another circle onto white fleece and cut it out. (I hate it when I download the photos later and realize I forgot to use the flash. Sorry!)

While you have the white fleece out, trace your star template, and cut that out. I just printed a star out from my computer and used that.

You should now have a white circle, a white star, and two red circles from earlier. Almost done!

Take your smallest round object and use it as a template on the blue fleece for the center of the shield.

Now you are ready to assemble all of your pieces!

Drizzle glue all over the cardboard circle. It's a good idea to get a little closer to the edge than I did in the photo below. I went back later and added a bit more glue so that little fingers have less material to pull on.

I chose to put the glue on the printed side of the cardboard to hide it. Carefully position your largest red circle over it, and smooth it out making sure no cardboard is visible from the front.

Next, take your white circle and drizzle glue on it. Attach it to the center of the red circle. I really like working with the fleece here because the glue doesn't show through like it would with other fabrics.

And do it again with the smaller red circle.

And now add your blue circle.

Your star should be big enough to touch the edges of the blue circle. As you glue the star to the shield, make sure that you have each star point touching the edge.

Awesome!

To add a handle to the shield, cut a strip of cardboard, bend to form a handle, and glue it to the back.

Weigh down the glued parts of the handle with something heavy...good thing that large cans of tomato sauce were on sale recently!

And now you have a great new shield for pennies! One word of caution though...wait until the shield is completely dry before posing your kid with it for a photo. It takes about a day for the glue to dry because of how thick the fleece is. :)