Scots schoolboy’s jaw-dropping optical illusion Disney costume leaves Halloween fans baffled over ‘what one’s the kid?’
A HALLOWEEN-daft mum has left people stumped after creating incredible optical illusion costumes for her son – with people asking “what one’s the kid?”.
Lauren Mulvey, 31, devotes weeks to making nine-year-old Ollie’s fancy dress outfits from scratch.
She does as much as she can with cardboard before scouring charity shops for unique details and pulling out her glue gun.
The mum of one, from Glasgow, told Fabulous: “Every year he has me hand-make all his Halloween costumes.The amount of detail and hard work that goes into these costumes is unreal.
“There’s always like an illusion to them. I think that’s what gives it the special touch.
“But Ollie is the real star of the show. He allows me to make them and he models them after all. “
The DIY costumes began when Lauren struggled to get a Stay Puft outfit for Ollie when he was obsessed with Ghostbusters in nursery.
Since then, the creative mum has challenged herself to go “bigger and more extreme” every year – leading to incredible results with Aladdin’s genie, Beetlejuice and the Mad Hatter.
But Lauren – a final year photography student at the Glasgow School of Art – admits that Pinocchio, complete with Geppetto ‘prop’, has been her favourite costume so far because it left people so stumped.
After sharing pictures of the costume on social media last year, Lauren was flooded with comments from baffled Halloween fans.
“Actually took me a few minuets to figure out what one Ollie was”, admitted one,
A second echoed: “I honestly can’t tell [what one Ollie is]. I’m zooming in like mad.”
A third wrote: “This doesn’t even look real. I can’t even figure out where the wean is. Baffled but amazed.”
A fourth chimed in: “Oh my god!!! I thought Ollie was Geppetto at first then realised he’s Pinocchio!!!!! Unbelievable again.”
A fifth exclaimed: “Where’s the wain? This is incredible, so much so I can’t tell if Pinocchio is a puppet or Ollie lol.
“You have well and truly blown it out the park I don’t think anything will beat this. Outstanding effort.
“I swear I went back to look still can’t see him. This has got to be the best costume I’ve ever seen. You can usually tell straight away where the kid is, this one messed with my head it’s that amazing.”
Meanwhile, a sixth agreed: “I can’t even tell what one your little boy is, absolutely brilliant.”
Lauren told us: “Everyone was confused thinking my wee boy was actually Geppetto but his body was Pinocchio and then Geppetto’s legs. So it’s like an illusion.
“Some people are like ‘I don’t believe that you’ve made that’. And then when they see my pictures, they’re like, ‘oh my God, this is unreal’.”
Lauren painstakingly created a lifelike face for Geppetto complete with wax-moulded features, glass eyes and eyelashes, before adding a wig and stuffed body.
She then painted her little boy’s face to look like wooden toy Pinocchio to ‘sit’ on Geppetto’s lap.
And while the costume was a huge hit for Halloween, part of it has since been dumped because it started to freak Ollie out too much.
Lauren said: “We had to get rid of Geppetto because Ollie was scared of him. He’s like ‘mummy, I don’t want that in my room’.
“He’s got a big cupboard in his room, so we usually store the costumes in there. And he knew he was in there, so he’s like, ‘can you take him out now?’
“So we put him in the hall cupboard and he’s like, ‘no, I still don’t want him in there’. So we had to just like discard Geppetto completely.”
She added: “Remember when you were younger and you’d look at a picture and every time you moved you thought the eyes were following you? That’s what it was like with Geppetto.
“It’s dead weird because the eyes are obviously realistic, they’re like glazed over.”
Lauren keeps Ollie’s costumes “top secret” every year – not even telling her parents what she has planned.
She is inundated with messages from people as far away as America every year begging to know what she has planned and even asking her to make a bespoke costume for their own child.
For now, however, she will continue to save her skills just for Ollie.
The talented mum has no formal training in SFX makeup or costume design but has always been creative.
And she manages to create her little boy’s incredible costumes on a budget – with no costume costing more than £80.
She said: “I don’t cut corners, I’m a total perfectionist.
“I know I need to find the best stuff to create the costume, but I’m doing it on a budget. Because let’s be honest, I’m not going to spend a fortune on a costume for one year.
“I know they’re brilliant, but I keep it in a budget as well. So it’s not as if I’m going beyond my means and spending hundreds of pounds to make these costumes. I mean, you’re talking about less than £80.
“They’ve all been under £80. I like to source pieces from the charity shops, I’m always looking for bits.”
Sadly, Lauren doesn’t have enough room in her flat to store the costumes in all their glory and dismantles them as soon as Halloween is over.
She said: “I have to break them all down and they’re all in my cupboards, everywhere all over the house.
“I’ve nowhere to store them. So what I do with them is I’ll keep the parts that took the longest to make.
“If I had all the storage in the world then I would keep them all but I live in a flat so trying to keep it, like store it all, it’s just a nightmare.”
And this year could be her last year producing the impressive costumes, much to the disappointment of fans.
But even if Lauren and Ollie do take a break for 2025, they are set to be back with a bang for an ‘extra ‘special’ effort the following year.
Lauren said: “Everybody keeps saying please don’t say this in the last year. But I don’t know how Ollie’s going to be next year.
“He’s getting older now. So he’s getting to that stage where he’s like, I don’t really want to dress up next year, Mummy. And I’m like, well, we’ll see what next year brings.
” Halloween actually falls on a Saturday in two years though. I’ve got six nieces and nephews, so I want to do a big massive one with all of the kids including Ollie.
“I’ll probably need to start before summer if I’m going to do it.”