Paper Owl Costumes

On Monday, Paper Source Facebook fans got a peak inside the Halloween festivities that took place at our Corporate Office. We were not surprised when comments poured in over the wily owl costumes created by our Custom Print & Invitations team – everything from the colorful paper to the unique details of each winged character left everyone in awe.

To let you savor the magic we experienced in person we snapped photographs of the parliament and asked Betsy Campbell, manager of Custom Print & Invitations, to tell us how they came up with this idea.

Here is the story…

When the Paper Source Halloween Costume Contest was announced in mid-October, our Custom Print Team decided – This year, we will NOT be beat! Each person was asked to come up with a group idea (If we dress as a group, then we had a better shot at winning!) and a prize was determined (free pizza, of course!). After a week of thinking, we all got together and tossed ideas around:

Zombie Wedding: Too cliché and had nothing to do with what we do, except for wedding invitations of course!

Paper Source Colorscope: Each of us dress as a Paper Source color from head to toe; unfortunately, we did not have enough people to create our whole color palette!

Paper Gnomes: Turns out the Machine Room staff was already dressing as our Holiday Gnomes (BUMMER!)

Paper Elves: But, come on, elves are so Christmas. This is Halloween!

And then it hit us when I flipped to the calendar spread in our fall catalog – OWLS! We could totally dress as owls! How fun would that be?! Everyone seemed in agreement – though we had a few people who were a little wishy-washy at first, within an hour it was coming together!

DIY Owl Mask

Someone created mask templates on her computer, printed out basic designs, and I asked our machine room about scrap material. Jose, manager of the department, certainly delivered – a ton of scrap paper in all of our colors! After that, everything else seemed easy. We made wing templates out of chipboard and everyone got to work.

Paper Source Owl

Paper Source Owls

Some of our characters pay homage to the owls found in our Calendars and holiday cards, while others go their own route. The only parameter was: It had to use Paper Source paper!

Owl Costume

We only had about 10 days left before Halloween, so everyone used their break times and lunches (and home time too!) to work on their own components. The only thing supplied was scrap paper and the templates! As you can see, some of us were really inspired, creating full body suits, full heads, tails… even feet!

Knit Owl

Baby Owl

About 17 of us participated and each Owl showed its full glory! I enjoyed seeing the colors and how everyone got into the project in their own way – from intricately cut wings to masks with FLARE and Art Deco elements to hand-knit eyes, our Custom Print Team got creative! Even our mommy-to-be got into it, making a separate “baby owl” to go around her little belly!

DIY Owl Wings

It was great fun and, once again, I was proud of my team for creating something spectacular. I have a feeling these costumes will be used again. Then again, the bar has been raised, so we need to work even harder to beat ourselves next year!

Thanks to everyone who participated, our colleagues for their enthusiasm, our fans for your interest and our Design Team for providing owl inspiration that helped us do something creative this Halloween.

Hoot! Hoot! Hooray!

–Betsy
PS colors: ALL OF THEM!
Latest fave: Paper Source Wall Art Calendar and Owl products

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6 Responses

  1. Tiffany Heater says:

    Amazing! I want to be an owl for Halloween now! Rewind!

  2. Flaky Pastry says:

    Heck, I want to WORK there! What an awesome time it looks like everyone had!

  3. Pene says:

    Those costumes are great and everyone looks like their having fun too. Thanks for sharing.

  4. Joanne P says:

    Wow! amazing. i wanted to be an owl too but not to the same caliber. I’m definitely not flaking next year, thanks for the inspiration.

  5. Blue Bergitt says:

    Brilliant! I, for one, am totally inspired.

  6. RoLaBe says:

    I was totally inspired and made my very own paper owl costume this year. Thank you!

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