Chelsea's DIY: My Neighbor Totoro Leaf Umbrella

So, after all my posts about Princess Mononoke cosplay and all that, I decided for Halloween I wanted to go as something a little more... cozy. Last Christmas, I got a Totoro kigurumi for a present. If you don't know what a kigurumi is, it's basically Japanese onesies (pajamas). Of course, me loving Totoro, that's the character that I got. This is what it basically looks like:

So, I decided to go as this for Halloween. But, I felt like it wasn't really complete. So, I thought about what I could do to enhance the costume. First I was thinking about making a plushie of a totoro to go with it, but, today is the day before Halloween, and I had school tomorrow so it's not like I had all day to finish it. Anyway, I ended up thinking about totoro's leaf umbrella! I thought, "Why wouldn't that be an amazing addition to the costume?". So off I went looking for tutorials on how to make it. This is where I ran into some problems.

First, there are no tutorials on the web or on YouTube about how to make a leaf umbrella for totoro. I found many tutorials on other things, but not what I was really looking for. So, it came a time to make my own. I rummaged through my garage until I fell upon some materials that I found suiting to use to make the actual leaf and handle. So, here are the materials I used:

Cardboard (I used a cut up box)
A large, thick wooden dowel
Green fleece
Green felt
Black acrylic paint
Hot glue
Paintbrush
Pencil

Luckily, I already had all these materials, so I didn't have to worry about running out and buying stuff last minute.

So, let's get started.

First, I got my stuff.

I just used a cardboard box that was used to mail shoes to me. For the dowel, I already had it in my garage, since it was from my dad, so I'm not sure where you could find the same. Try hardware stores like Home Depot or Lowe's.

Next, I started drawing out the design and shape of my leaf on the cardboard. In the picture, It's kind of hard to see the design though.

Here you can sort of see the pattern I went for, but here is the cut out design (you can see it better)

So, you can also see I cut out a small piece of cardboard for the small little stem part of the leaf on the top, but now it's time to cover with fleece! I cut out a square of dark green fleece and placed my leaf on top.

Now I started to cover the leaf, by overlapping and folding over the excess pieces of the fleece around the edges and gluing them down with the hot glue gun.

These are the finished covered leaf!

Then I basically repeated the overlapping technique for the little stem chunk and then glued that down onto the top of the leaf.

I actually bent the leaf in the middle a little bit just to add some dimension and make it look more realistic. If you didn't bend it, it makes it look too flat and silly.

Next, you want to cover the dowel in the matching color fleece! Start by gluing the dowel onto the edge of the strip of fleece. Then, apply more glue to the rest of the fleece and roll the dowel up in the fabric.

You should get a completely covered stick that looks something like this:

Then I decided to add the detailing on the leaf before I glued the two pieces together. I first tried drawing the patterns on with a Sharpie marker, but that didn't really work, so I ran and got my black acrylic paint.

I basically just started drawing some leafy looking patterns on the top of the leaf with my paint, until I was satisfied with this:

I touched the paint before it was dried and practically freaked out since I thought I totally ruined my leaf (luckily I didn't smudge anything).

Next came attaching the two pieces together. I applied hot glue to the top of the dowel and underneath the leaf, then stuck them together and held it until it dried.

Then, I ran into a slight problem. By itself, the cardboard was a little too heavy for the dowel, so it drooped like this: