This week is our first Real Me Monday, and I get to share an oops turned into somewhat success. I at least finished the project and Ninja Boy likes it, so I guess that’s success enough! The process though was not as smooth as I was expecting.

My son has been playing a Spider-Man game on his daddy’s ipad lately. So now he is very into Spider-Man everything, and wants to pretend to be him often. He mentioned a few times wanting a mask, and I wasn’t too sure about getting one from the store because most kids costumes are polyester, and I didn’t want it rubbing on his face due to his allergy. He informed me that they have plastic ones at the store, but I told him that maybe mommy could make him one. He seemed ok with that idea, at least he would give me a chance.

Since Easter was coming up the very next day, I figured I should get started on his homemade gift for the Easter basket (Last year I started my own tradition that at least one thing in the kids’ baskets would be homemade from me).

I looked through our fabric stash, and the only red I had was this:

Ninja Boy informed me when he saw it that the fabric wasn’t right for Spider-Man. I told him it’s fine, and mommy will make it look really cool, trust me!

I got started on my project being a good little blogger and taking pictures along the way in case I wanted to make a tutorial because of course it was going to turn out AMAZING!

I started off with a piece of fabric, a hoodie, and a what I thought was a good plan…

See, you do this…then this…then this…

 Then you try to figure out the eye holes and you completely mess it up! and throw in the towel AKA Spider-Man mask you spent the last 30 minutes working on. I was very close to giving up completely, but mom encouraged me that I could figure it out.

So I found an old red t-shirt, and used the old mask as a template for the new one. The t-shirt material fit a lot better over his face and zig-zag stitching around the eye holes worked a lot better than trying to put bias-tape around them (thanks mom for finishing the second eye hole for me!). I used a black fabric marker to draw the webs, sewed on a couple ties in the back to keep it on his face and there it was!

So my super easy, going to be amazing, Spider-Man mask tutorial has turned into a lesson that sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you hoped, but if you persevere you can make something that functions as it should and still makes your kid happy. I would make the new version of the mask into a tutorial, but trust me, as good as I did it, you could probably figure out an easier way on your own! Or if your kid likes the masks that just go round the eyes, check out this tutorial from Cutesy Crafts.

After he got the mask in his Easter basket, he then informed me he needed the rest of the costume. One thing at a time, Ninja Boy, one thing at a time.

Ninja Boy as Spider-Man

Have you ever made something for your kids that didn’t turn out like you had hoped?