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Tips for building clown props:

Props can be made out of almost any material. They can be as simple as a hammer, or as complex as a running clown car rigged with flashpots and various effects.  Most of them are somewhere in-between.  There are obstacles to be overcome in strapping a teapot to the top of your head.

Many oversized props can be made of foam rubber.

Such as an oversized hammer, a rubber broom, a giant telephone or cell-phone, a bouffant hairdo,  a huge apple, puppets (both hand & giant) huge hands, feet, heads, etc…

Foam Rubber
Great for making false body parts either to go into a costume, or with more care, it can be the finished head, hands, or other exposed surface. Can be shaped using ordinary scissors. An electric knife is can work wonders on foam, and is many foam-sculptors best friend.  It works very well for quickly cutting and shaping  larger pieces, and carefully used can even do a nice job at some finishing work. For fine finishing, foam can be soaked, and frozen, then sanded or rasped. Easier is attaching a simple home made u-shaped wire guide to one side of a Dremmel type tool so that the spinning tip of the tool only extends a tiny bit past on the inside of the ‘U’ . Then very fine sanding can be done with less danger of ripping into the foam by mistake, allowing for very controlled sanding.

Do you want thicker foam than you have? Glue two or more layers together.

Foam can be glued quite securely using contact cement (not paper cement!), or spray adhesive.  Always work with a good mask, and good ventilation when sanding or gluing.

Make a mistake, and cut away too much foam during the shaping process?

Glue some more foam onto it and try again!

 

Paper Mache

can be used to construct large lightweight props inexpensively. I like to use wallpaper paste made from powder, available at hardware stores.  Plain flour paste works fine too.  Build a inner framing (chicken wire, or balled up paper, taped into the right shape, Balloons for smooth ovals, or be creative about materials you use for building the understructure.) then tear strips of newspaper, wet them in the paper mache mix, and smooth them onto your framing.  Get it smooth, rather than wrinkled  for a nicer finished product. If you are having trouble getting it on smoothly, try smaller pieces of newspaper (all the way down to really small pieces for the most difficult areas) 

It's usually advisable to have at least two coats of paper mache.  Some people will use white paper for their second coat so that they can easily see where they have already covered, and it also can help depending on how you are painting your finished product.

Chicken Wire works great as a lightweight fairly cheap under framing material that can be bent into desired shapes and then covered with  paper-mache or foam.

Stage Blood can be created by mixing corn syrup with red food coloring. Adjust the color to be more bloodlike by adding blue or green to darken it.  Add a splash of dishwashing liquid to help it wash out of clothing easier.

Noses
Materials: Liquid latex, coloring agent, Vaseline, 2 small containers, plaster-of-paris powder, water, stirring stick, scissors, modeling clay.

Custom latex noses can be made fairly easily for unique shapes and completely original noses:
To make a plaster cast of your own nose put a bit of Vaseline on your nose.  Mix plaster of Paris (from an art supply store) with water in cut off  Dixie cup, or appropriately size small container (big enough to accommodate your nose). Put your nose in and wait for it to harden. (a minute or 2... IMPORTANT: during this breathe through your mouth).  Remove your nose. Let it dry a few more minutes. Push in modeling clay into plaster to create a positive.  Remove from plaster, and build clay onto the positive to create the desired clown nose shape. Leaving a bit of your natural nose at the top of your clown nose design will make it easy to create a half circle shaped flap of rubber at the top of your finished product. That rubber flap can then be used to attached the clown nose to your real nose with spirit gum (theatrical make up supplies). Put Vaseline onto the model, and make a plaster mold of that.  Remove modeling clay. Put a light coat of Vaseline SMOOTHLY covering the inside of the mold.  Mix coloring agent into liquid latex. Pour a couple of tablespoons into the mold and rotate the mold around to evenly coat the mold. Pour the rest back, and secure the lid.  Let that layer dry (30 minutes). Pour more into the mold, rotate to evenly coat, and pour out again.  Let dry.  Repeat for a total of 5 or 6 layers (or to desired thickness). Remove and trim off excess (leaving a small half circle shaped flap at the top edge of the nose for gluing your clown nose onto your real nose).  Tada!

Simple and quick: 1/2 ping pong balls painted red and a thread, or fine elastic to go around the back of the head creates a cheap quick pug-nose type clown nose.

Costume shops also carry a variety of noses. Foam rubber balls with a slit in them to make them into clown noses that will clip themselves gently onto most noses are available for sale in magic, novelty and costume shops. These are the easiest to get strangers to wear, but don't stay on with any vigorous activity. (and don't work well with extra wide noses)

Rubber noses are generally held on with spirit gum (make-up glue). More firm plastic noses are usually held on with thread or fine elastic. 

Shoes can be made, but are most often bought by specialty shoe manufacturer. There are some cheaper ones available through costume shops that fit over a normal shoe.  Not nearly as nice as a good custom shoe, but they do look like clown shoes.

Clown Clothing

Brightly colored clothing.
Oversized coats 

Costumes with hoop middles or hoop skirts can be held open with loops of flat nylon stiffening available through sewing supply stores, or craft/hobby sores. Or with Strapping metal, used for holding together crates etc...  for more heavy duty costumes.

Be aware when creating props that will be carried for long periods of time about the weight.  Good handles can also make a huge difference.

Backpack frames make for a great way to carry a giant puppet or a larger prop that will be attached to a person. Especially ones with waist bands, and adjustments.

Stilts

Stilt Designs can be very simple to extremely complex.
Stilts can be bought through...

A 2 1/2 foot stilt is a good beginning height while getting used to being on stilts.  Padding can make a fall much less of a catastrophe.
Always practice practice practice, and be aware of your surroundings at all times.

For higher stilts, it's much more dangerous, so extreme care must be taken, especially around people.  Consider having an assistant on the ground to help protect you.
Also highly recommended for walking in and around crowds is a walking stick as a third point of balance. Try to fit it in with your costume theme.

Link to drawing of simple stilt design.

Plastic shower rod covers (wound up sideways very small they can spring open)
Tape measures spring metal has some fun qualities.
 

Sylvester the Jester
10 foot pole.

Tall bicycles & unicycles

Tall Bike Design link 1

Tall Bike Design link 2

Simple 4' unicycle from Bicycle Design link 3

Tall bicycles can be made by welding  2 frames together, or long seat post and fork extensions, onto an upside down frame.

Tall unicycles (about 4') may be make our of a bicycle frame. Bottom bracket (pedal section of frame) and back wheel 'forks' are left in place. The seat post is moved to the opposite side from the back wheel.  A bicycle seat may be extended front and back, and padded out to create a nice comfortable unicycle seat.
On the wheel you should match up the biggest back sprocket with the smallest front sprocket (ideally 1x1 ratio, but others will work).  Weld the sprocket securely onto the wheel so that the sprocket cannot freewheel, but will always move with the hub.  Take care not to weld the axle, which must of course be able to spin.

Some people have even created unicycles by just padding out the fork enclosure on a bicycle frame to create the 'seat' for the unicycle. Remove the front wheel and the  forks and handlebars.  The sprockets must still be welded, or fixed onto the hub in a secure fashion.  In the past many people have tried to use a racing hub, with a tightening lock ring that fixes the sprocket to the hub as is used in racing bikes, but this design is flawed because a unicycle is pedaled differently than a racing bicycle, requiring pedaling backwards, or putting pressure backwards on the pedals (as for balancing). This pressure pushes to loosen the lock-ring, and eventually it often slips, meaning loss of control for the rider. This can be very dangerous, and it is not a good design for a unicycle hub.
 

Sample Prop List:

A list of props to get you thinking about what you may want to play with, build or buy:

�         A large drill for use by a clown dentist

�         A small teeterboard to launch another prop into the air

�         A wind up record player

�         A fishbowl strapped to your head

�         Hobby horses

�         Cowboy hats

�         Bubbles

�         Ball and chain

�         Prison outfit

�         Giant alarm clock

�         Giant hammer

�         Binoculars

�         Periscopes

�         Juggling props

�         Unicycle

�         Stilts

�         A huge foam rubber bomb

�         A giant clothespin

�         Huge safety pin

�         Seltzer bottles

�         Silly string

�         Whipped cream

�         Giant pliers

�         An oversized saw

�         An artists paint pallet

�         An instrument

�         A space helmet

�         A spaceship

�         Giant lips

�         Fish-head hats

�         Fake dog on a leash

�         A rubber chicken

�         A Magic 8 Ball

�         A ventriloquist doll

�         A giant fake syringe

Of course almost anything can be a clown prop given the right situation.

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