Welcome back to Virtual Room 13! Continuing on with The Lion King Experience- session 4, ‘Embodying the character of Simba’. Try out this fabulous head dress of grown up Simba!

What you’ll need: cereal box cardboard (preferably brown on the inside) pencil, paper, black felt tip, oil pastels, scissors, cardboard/ brown paper/ loo rolls etc. red and yellow paper, black cardboard, hot/ cold glue, masking/ sellotape

Carefully draw out this sketch on paper- make sure the size would fit the top of your head! 👑

Now cut it out.

Next, draw around your shape on to your cereal box card.

Your shape should look something like this.

Take your pencil and scribble on the back of your paper cut out.

Next, place your paper cutout on top of your already drawn outline. Now the magic trick! Take a blunt pencil and push firmly as you draw over all your lines!

This should have left an imprint to guide you. Draw over it with your pencil and then over that with the black felt tip pen!

Blacken these parts.

Now take a red oil pastel 🖍 and give some tone like this.

Next, add some yellow like this!

Now, add some white- this will give more of a 3D look! Also add a little black for further tone.

Include some orange and the face is ready!

Take some brown paper/ cardboard or whatever you can find similar to this.

Now, take your brown paper and make cuts along a strip like this.

Cut this in to smaller sections!

Wrap up each section at the end like this.

Next, take your red paper and cut in to small pieces like this. Make sure they are the correct size to wrap around the tips of your cardboard flares! Secure with sellotape.

They should look like this.

Next, cut your yellow paper in to smaller pieces like this.

Now add them to the tips of the red details. Secure with tape again.

Cut out your face piece.

Take your black cardboard (I’ve used an old shoe box).

Now overlap the face piece with the underside of the black cardboard. Draw out a semi circle and leave a margin like this.

Make a mirrored version of this shape and then cut both out!

Glue on these pieces like this. I used hot glue but if you don’t have any then just use cold glue! But remember to weight the pieces overnight so they will bond.

Take some more cardboard flares (slightly slimmer this time) and wrap up as before.

Make sure not to use any masking tape to secure them as we want to keep the brown tone. I actually glued these tips to bond. You could use sellotape.

Meanwhile- take some more brown cereal box card and cut in to long strips like this.

Tape them together.

Now, measure this to fit around your head.

Glue on the brown flares and create the crown of the Simba’s mane. Place one red/ yellow tipped flare as a centre point

Next add all the remaining flares on to the black card like this. Spray them out and the mane will take shape! Attach the head ring to the back and hey presto! Your character headdress is complete! As ever, please do share your creative achievements with us! I’d love to see how you get on! Keep creating- Mr Briginshaw 🎨