In Part One, I shared how I made the signature Scrap Mechanic hammer out of cardboard. It quickly became one of my favorite parts of the costume—and since this was a mommy-and-me costume, we decided to make my costume part of the fun, too! So, my we came up with the idea of building a wearable cardboard house that could transform from a cute little cottage into a spooky haunted house every time it was hit with Thor’s hammer.

And yes—it actually transforms!

In this post, I’m sharing how I built the house, how the transformation works, and how our two costumes came together to create one very fun and unique—mommy-and-me Halloween costume.

Here’s how it all went down!

Step 1: Building the House

Early on, I decided that I wasn’t going to add arm holes.  Instead, the only opening would be a small eye hole.  

For the main part of the house, I started with a medium cardboard box.  The first thing I needed to figure out was how much room I would need inside.  So, naturally, I literally climbed into the box and used myself as the measurement!

Once I had the main box figured out, it was time to make the roof.

To create the roof shape, I cut open the bottom of the box and started forming the cardboard into a triangle.  From there, I added additional pieces of cardboard as needed, building up the sides until I reached the height and shape I wanted.

As for the eye hole, I put the house on and figured out where my eye naturally lined up with the roof.  I marked the spot and carefully cut a small opening in the cardboard, making it just large enough for me to see through.  

Step 2: Bringing Scrap Mechanic Into the House

Now that I had the basic house built, I had to figure out the most important part: how was I going to make this cardboard house actually feel like a Scrap Mechanic costume?

Before I could start adding any of the details, though, I needed to give the entire house its base color. I painted the whole house orange first, which gave me the foundation I needed for the Scrap Mechanic look and helped everything I added afterward stand out.

Once the orange paint was finished, I started thinking about how I wanted to incorporate the Scrap Mechanic style into the design.

My first idea was to cut out windows and doors and have little ghosts or bats pop out of them.  In my head, it sounded perfect.  Unfortunately, I just couldn’t quite figure out a way to make that idea work the way I wanted.

Eventually, I decided to keep things simple and make the house itself part of the character.  So, I drew a cute little cottage directly onto the cardboard, complete with sunshine, flowers, and an overall warm and welcoming feel.

Step 3: Creating the Haunted House

At this point, it was time to figure out how to turn my cute little cottage into a haunted house.  The goal was to make it look like the exact same house had somehow been transformed into its haunted version.  The good news was that I didn’t need a completely different method. I used the same basic idea I had used for the cute house.  The only difference was that instead of sunshine and flowers, I drew broken windows, cracked doors, and a giant spider crawling across the house.  I also added cracks throughout the house structure to make it look old and damaged.

Step 4: Outlining and Painting

Once I was happy with both sides of the house, it was time to make all of those pencil drawings stand out.  I went over everything with a black permanent marker, tracing the windows, doors, flowers, cracks, ghosts, spider, and all of the other little details I had drawn.  The black outlines really helped define the designs and made everything much easier to see.

After everything was traced, it was time to paint!

I painted one side of the house first and then moved on to the other side.  I used two coats of paint on each side.

Step 5: Putting It All Together

Now that the house was complete, it was time to put the whole costume together!

For the clothing underneath, I kept it simple and wore all black.  Since the house covered most of me, there wasn’t really a need for anything fancy underneath.

To turn my cute little cottage into a spooky haunted house, my son would hit the house with his Scrap Mechanic hammer and as soon as he hit me with the hammer, I would jump and turn around, revealing the haunted house side.

It was such a simple transformation, but it made the whole costume feel like a little bit of Halloween magic.

What I Would Do Differently

Looking back now, there are definitely a few things I wish I had thought about before building the costume.

The biggest one? I would have separated the roof from the house and added arm holes.

At the time, I made the roof and the house as one complete piece. But if I were making it again, I would make the roof a separate piece. That way, I could have painted my face to match the house and made the whole costume feel more continuous. It also would have made it easier for people to see me instead of having me completely hidden inside the cardboard house. So, if you’re making your own version, that’s definitely one thing I would recommend thinking about before you start cutting that first piece of cardboard!