How to Make a Mary Poppins Costume

Cut off the string from the umbrella. Take a handful of air-dry clay and use it to cover the handle completely with a thin layer. Smooth the clay out with your fingers.

Roll a small ball of clay and use your fingers to shape it into a pointy beak. When you're happy with the shape, use a little bit of water to stick the beak firmly onto the covered handle. Use your fingers to blend the edges so they are concealed.

Take a slab of clay and wrap it around the base of the umbrella to form the parrot's neck, then smooth all the clay together with a little water. Leave to dry.

The hat can be created by either painting a Cream Boater Hat with black paint, or out of paper plates! To make out of paper plates, take one of the plates, cut the rim off and set aside. Make snips all the way around the rim of another plate, then bend the tabs up.

Cut 6cm wide strips from the length of a piece of white card from a (you will need 2 or 3). Wrap a strip around the tabs on the plate and secure in place using masking tape or glue. Go all the way around and secure the ends together.

Mark in pencil about 1.5cm up the side of the rim of the hat. Cut tabs all the way around it and bend them out.

Take the paper plate rim you cut out earlier and place it over the tabs on the hat. As the rim probably won't fit all the way around, cut a section of rim from another plate to fill the gap. Stick the tabs to the rim all along the bottom.

Paint the inside and outside of the hat black.

The flowers on Mary's hat can either be premade Felt Daisy Bonnet Embellishments, or they can be made out of white card and the small yellow pom poms. To make the daisies out of card, cut two simple flower shapes from white card and glue them together. Add a yellow pom pom to the centre, then repeat to make four.

Glue the daisies onto the hat and attach red pom poms on to resemble berries.

To make sure the hat stays on Mary's head, you can thread a thin piece of elastic onto either side of the hat behind two of the daisies. Check the fit before tying to secure.

Once the clay has dried, mark the parrot's facial feature onto it in pencil. Paint the head with white eye sockets and add a black beak and eyes.

Use a pen to add feather details to the neck of the parrot and an outline around the eyes. Finally, paint yellow irises into the eyes and add a white line to define the beak.

To make the bow, take 20cm of red velvet ribbon and glue each end into the middle. Wrap a smaller piece around the middle and glue in place. Glue a large paperclip onto the back so you can attach the bow onto Mary's top safely.