How to make a fake beard/ Mr Gum costume

[GratedCarrotandCheese]

DC wants to dress as Mr Gum. His main distinguishing feature is a big ginger beard.

I'd like to try making one rather than buying one.

What's the best sort of thing to use? Cotton wool? Felt?

And how do you stick it to DC's face?

All advice welcome!

I'm somewhat of an expert (look at my username 😂)

Orange and red strands of wool, stuck with a glue gun onto a facemask works well. With a mouth hole / slot cut out. Then the elastic holds it behind the ears.

Make sure to glue a few disgusting Mr Gum items in the beard... A chicken bone? Little pieces of rubbish? Fake dead flies? Etc.. So much fun!

The truth is a lemon meringue!

Thanks, attaching to a face mask is a great idea. Just need to get wool and a glue gun now!

Anyone have any ideas about making a black top/stovepipe hat or should I just buy one?

I have already vetoed getting hobnail boots as too much effort!

I'm looking at a photo from 2012 of DS, he's wearing battered grey school trousers, black welly boots, a knackered woolly jumper, one of DH's oldest blazers with rolled up sleeves - and an absolute abomination of a beard. It looks like I've made a vague beard shape out of an A4 sheet of orange felt and then glued a bunch of orange pom poms on it, and added some elastic behind his head. No hat at all.

That sounds brilliant!

Ignore the pajamas as we will have more Mr Gum appropriate clothes underneath for the real thing, but beard is done! DC was insistent that he had a photo of a shark in it at one point so we have that.

Oh and we found a black hat in a charity shop!

You could make a hat from a big sheet of black paper/thin card.