Prepare for the most squee-inducing IKEA hack ever. When her daughter wanted an elephant costume, Belgian blogger Riet dismantled an IKEA Kapplar elephant and came up with something way cuter than anything you could find in a store.
The elephant's arms and legs were removed and used for arm warmers and leg warmers, and his little gray tail attached to the back of a grey track suit. (It sounds gory, but try not to imagine real elephants on the savanna. Concentrate on the cute pictures and we'll get through the alterations just fine.)
Possibly the best part (for me, because I don't have kids) is that this costume isn't necessarily just for toddlers. Riet says it even fits an adult (presumably with a different size track suit), so if you can deal with a few weird looks you can have this much fun, too.
Kapplar the cuddle elephant seems to be discontinued, but a few still roam the Internet, and this technique seems like it could work for any stuffed animal of suitably elephantine size. I'm never going to look at a large-size stuffed animal the same way again.
Check out the English instructions on IKEA Hackers and all the pictures on Leven met Liv.
(Images via Leven met Liv)
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Wow, what an imagination...nicely done.
Why is the head cut off? Its the most important part and I hate not being able to see the whole thing!AAHHH
Oh my goodness! What creativity. Absolutely cute!
I think she should have cut off the eyes --- it looks strange that the elephant's face is split in half by the kid's face but would be less noticable without the eyes.
Adorable anyway!
LOL @ It sounds gory, but try not to imagine real elephants on the Savannah.
Very cute hack.
I don't know.. the elephant's eyeballs on the sides of the kids' face is sorta creeping me out.
when i was little my mom did this with a big old carnival bunny rabbit, we cut the head off and took out the stuffing, put a lining and some ties on it and made a bunny head hat for a school play.
click on the links?
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2013/02/cuddle-elephant-to-costume.html
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
this is cute.
Completely DARLING!!!
good concept but the execution with the eyes on the side are iffy, and you have to be great at sewing to do the elastic cuffs and edging on the mask. Still, great inspiration for the excellent seamstresses! Cute kid, too :)
Absolutely THE best ikea hack ever & the model is adorable, to boot. A win-win. Both are precious. Makes me hesistate to say, I kinda agree that the eyes need to go. Not that they creep me out...just think they detract from that adorable face.
It's adorable, that's for sure, but I'd be concerned about it not being fire retardant; kid costumes are usually held to a high standard in the U.S.
While I think it is very cute idea I feel bad for the poor elephant.
Meh, is all I can say about the fire-retardant worries. I think a lot of kids wear homemade costumes (I'm not all that old and I don't think I ever wore a store-made costume), so.... How's this different? This costume is dang cute!
My kids have always had homemade costumes and I have to admit they weren't flame retardant. But I do always cringe a bit when they walk a little too close to a lit jack-o-lantern.
Cute idea - and I have to agree about the eyes.
The fact that the costume is not drenched in horrid-for-your-health fire retardants is a plus. Great hack!
This is the scariest thing I've ever seen done to a toy.
I must learn to sew.