How to make a Frodo costume, including Frodo’s sword and magic ring. A toddler hobbit Halloween costume from The Lord of the Rings.
Our family all dressed as characters from the movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings. You can see how to make all of our costumes in my Lord of the Rings Costumes post. My son’s size as a toddler made him perfect to be a hobbit and the main character of the movies, Frodo.
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Frodo Costume
The most important part of the Frodo costume is his cloak. I made a cloak with a hood out of olive green fleece fabric. It took about a yard of fabric. I don’t have a pattern to share, but there are many cloak patterns available.
Instead of a clasp at the neck of the cloak, I happened to have a beautiful leaf pin that was perfect for the hobbit costume.
He also wore a white, button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a dressy vest we found at a thrift store. The vest was a couple of sizes too big, so it worked perfectly.
I hemmed his pants up a couple of inches to look more like short hobbit pants, but it didn’t really seem to look much different than long pants. Maybe long shorts would have been better.
Instead of making fury hobbit feet, my son just wore sandals. I didn’t want him to trip or have any problems walking around in the dark on Halloween, so I figured sandals were good enough.
The Ring of Power
My husband made the ring from a 2-inch wood dowel. He cut off a 1-inch section, then drilled a 1 1/2-inch hole in the center. I think we could have just used a wooden napkin ring from a thrift store, but we already had the dowel and it wasn’t too hard to make.
My husband finished the ring by sanding down the edge to make it rounded a like a ring then painting it gold with gold spray metallic paint metallic gold spray paint. It took a lot of sanding, but the shape turned out perfectly.
It would have been awesome if we had somehow written elvish words inside of the ring, but we ran out of time.
Making Sting: The Sword
Frodo’s sword, named “Sting,” glows blue when goblins are nearby, so we started the sword by using a blue glow stick sword. We found ours at the dollar store (and bought 2), but Amazon also sells a blue glow stick sword. You can just use the glow stick sword as it is, but we decided to make a few modifications.
We painted the handle silver with metallic silver spray paint. Then we wrapped the handle with leather. My husband researched how to wrap a sword handle in leather, we found that using electrical tape works the best.
First, you wrap the handle in electrical tape with the sticky side out. The tape overlaps and sticks to itself, holding the tape to the handle.
Then wrap a thin strip of leather over the electrical tape. The tape will hold the leather on securely. Just tuck in the end of the leather strip to finish it.
We also added some elven writing on the sword with a Sharpie permanent marker since Sting was actually made by elves.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the sword glowing—Halloween night tends to be pretty busy. After trick-or-treating, we painted the glow stick with blue spray paint so that it would always “glow” blue and my little hobbit could fight as many goblins as his imagination desired.
Lord of the Rings Movie Reenactments
When we took pictures of our family Halloween costumes, we acted out a few of the scenes too, just for fun. Here’a few of the scenes from The Lord of the Ring movies that we recreated.
Arwen saves Frodo from the Nazgul when he’s poisoned by a sword wound. She rides on a horse holding Frodo in front of her. After she crosses a river, she threatens the Nazgul with the classic line, “If you want him, come and claim him!”
The Nazgul, or Ringwraiths, track Frodo down and try to take the ring from him. To escape, Frodo slips the ring on his finger and disappears.
Frodo offers to give the ring of power to Galadriel, the elf queen. She is tempted to take it and use its power, but she realized that it would only lead to evil, so she refuses it.
You can see more photos of our Lord of the Ring costumes here, plus there’s a post on how to make those amazing Nazgul gauntlets out of foam and another post on how to make Galadriel’s crown.
