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I had to decide if I wanted to rent a van or if I wanted to start over with a less rigid design. I avoided the decision by concentrating on another part of the project, the logo stencil.

To make a stencil like this, I printed the logo on my home printer, spray-glued it to heavy paper, and cut through both layers of paper. I could only laugh as I carefully copied the oversized ® symbol.

The easiest way I've found to support a large costume is to screw long pvc pipes to a regular backpack frame. This simple, lightweight setup is very easy to make, and is indispensable when marching around all night with anything tall or heavy.

Costumes such as stalactite, shower curtain, dark cloud, volcano, discotheque and world trade center are all possible with this simple rig.

The fine backpacking frame was $15 at a thrift store and pvc pipe was $4 more.

With only two more nights before Halloween, I decided to start over with a new, transportable design. I taped together a few flats of cardboard into two large square tubes. Each were 4 feet tall and two feet wide, but could be flattened into 4x4' squares that would fit into my hatchback.

My father's birthday is just a few days before Halloween, and while celebrating with him, he suggested that I use thin wood veneer instead of cardboard. It would cost about $40 for two sheets of 1/8th inch (3mm) plywood, but it would look much better than cardboard with a faux-wood paint job.

I bought the sheets and cut out a bunch of long slats.  I sprayed the Jenga name onto them and hot-glued them to the cardboard. 

When my hand was sore from cutting, I gave up and just drew lines across whole sheets to indicate the breaks between blocks.

Some windows cut out of the top half of Jenga.

On the night before Halloween, the costume came together. The top section would hang from the PVC pipe frame and the second section would hang from the first, all held together with 25 plastic zip-ties. Unfortunately, I only had enough zip ties for the final assembly, so I couldn't give the outfit a dry run. 

please read part 3 of the Jenga Costume
back to part 1