Van Halen: A whole new level of crazy!

I swear this boy is reincarnated from the 80s!  My 7 year old son, Nolan started playing Guitar Hero over the summer.  He then wanted to find out more about the songs they used in the game.  In this version of the video game it was a lot of 80's rock.  Thanks to Google and Youtube, he become entranced by Van Halen, to be specific Eddie Van Halen.  I crack up because this was the music from my generation, some of it was even from the late 70s.

And so the Eddie Van Halen costume for Halloween started to take shape.  I really got into it and realized I am just as crazy as him.  I also realized I used to do the exact same thing to my mother--the poor woman made me a Michael Jackson glove for my 7th grade dance, spending countless hours sewing individual silver sequence on a white glove, see the whole family is crazy!  (yup I wore a sequenced Michael Jackson glove to a 7th grade dance, I also dressed up like Cyndi Lauper for a Halloween dance that same year-wish I had a picture of it!)

I also remember my mother making other kick-ass costumes for us when we were kids.  My brother's Kiss costume back in the early 80s.  He won best costume that year!  And my Red Riding hood wasn't to bad either.

Anyway back to little EVH.  Here is the look we were going for:

I love this, in Nolan's "research" we learned that when Eddie played in MJ's Beat It song, he did it for free, just for fun.

For the guitar:

I used an old toy guitar and some red, white and black duck tape.  I heart colorful duck tape!  It comes in sheets as well as rolls.  We used red sheets and then different sized black and white rolls.

I make Mommy do crazy things

Nolan found this picture and captured it on my iPhone for me to copy.

 I cut the duck tape using a paper cutting board.  First I covered the guitar with the red duck tape sheets

 Then starting adding the black and white

Then I took a break...

to keep the creative juices flowing

finished!

Then (not the same night!) I tried to make the shirt.  Nolan thought we would just find one at Marshall's...he looked, believe me.  I took a white t-shirt and made squares with duck tape and painted the middle of them with black craft paint.

I pulled the tape off when the paint was dry, to reveal little black squares that I made to look like dice by using little bits of cut up white duck tape.  

We used a red bandanna from the dollar store.  I let Nolan rip a pair of old jeans.  I got a $7 "rock star" wig from Target and these adorable Chuck Taylor's from Marshall's...

The end result:

Nolan trying to get Sean in on the act