I LOVE The Lion King.
I saw it in theaters when I was 3 years old and it was my first big obsession. I had Lion King toys, clothes, a Lion King bedroom, even a bike. I have loved it ever since!
I even have a tattoo on the back of my neck of Simba (the drawing Rafiki does of Simba on the Tree of Life).
Naturally when the new live action Lion King came out I HAD to celebrate. I’m SO excited for the new movie, I wanted a week of celebrating! I’m blowing up my Instagram with Lion King EVERYTHING.
I’m partnering with Primary.Com to make some Lion King costumes for my kids! These will be great for Halloween or just some fun dress up. I might let Leopold wear one of them when I take him to see Lion King in theaters.
Disclaimer: Primary sent me these clothes for free for the purposes of this blog but any opinion of them that I share is completely honest and my own!
So without further ado, here is the Rafiki costume tutorial! It’s pretty simple. Like REALLY simple.
Here’s what you need:
This is the Zip Footie from Primary.com in slate blue (Leopold is wearing a size 3T).
I found this awesome faux fur for $1.99 at Hobby Lobby, and the felt was all 50% off. Win! For Rafiki you will need some tan for his feet, white for his belly, and light blue for the booty. Despite the fact that most baboons have red butts, Rafiki’s is in fact blue.
That’s really all you need! I honestly completely forgot his tail, so if you can find some felt similar in color to the slate blue sleeper, grab some of that too!
I only had to use one sheet of white felt to cut out his torso. I simply cut it in a curvy body style, because you can see from the photos of Rafiki, it starts out wide at the top and gets thinner at the bottom. I free handed the felt cut outs but you can definitely get more technical if you want a cleaner finish.
Of course, don’t forget to cut down the middle to make room for the zipper. I added the glue a little bit further back on one side of the panel so that the felt would overlap the zipper and be less noticeable but you can’t really tell that I did that…once it’s on him it gets stretched out so it didn’t make much difference.
For the fur, I simply cut it in half and using fabric glue, I made a kind of collar around the neck. Rafiki’s fur is up around his head but not necessarily right on top so I felt like this was an okay adjustment to make.
There are many kinds of fabric glue, I just made sure to grab one that said it worked well on felt. It also says it’s safe to wash and flexible. I’ve used hot glue for felt projects before and it is NOT flexible.
I need to get some face paint! For this look I just used the eye shadow I have on hand. A little blue under the eyes and some red down the nose.
There you have it…Rafiki! And your little one will be SO comfy in this costume because it’s pajamas!! Win win!
Make sure you check out all of my other Lion King costumes!! Click HERE for baby Simba!!
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