Where can I cut a large circle out of cardboard? (Halloween special)

I want to make a Pacman costume for my son, and I need 2 circles about 1 meter in diameter. I was at Taiyuan St in Taipei the other day shopping for material - EVA foam and other types of foam - and I asked the shops if they could help me cut out circles from the foam. No dice.

I recently ordered some large items from China, so I have plenty of cardboard from the shipment. I figure, I could cut out 2 circles from the cardboard and check if they might be too heavy to wear for my kid. If they seem to be, I could use one of the circles as a template to cut out from styrofoam.

I haven’t found many useful suggestions online via Google or YouTube on how to easily cut large circles. The best I have is to use a tack and string, which seems very imprecise to me.

I haven’t checked the home improvement stores yet, but I’m not optimistic about that. Can anyone suggest a crafting or workshop that might be able to help or will allow me to use some tools to do it myself? Maybe a school or art school in Taipei?

https://youtu.be/XWH3ysrfrjM

Where can I make a pivot tool like this?

Perhaps @Taiwan_Luthiers can help you.

Get a cheap plastic 50 cm ruler (or just a stick). Bang a nail through one end. Tape a marker on the other end. Then center the nail on your sheet of cardboard, and turn it around to mark the circle. Cut out using scissors. don’t fret over the accuracy: how accurate does a 5-year-old’s Halloween costume need to be anyway?

And don’t forget to take the cap off the marker pen first.

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Cutting styrofoam is a lot harder than cardboard. best is to use a hot wire, but at 1 m circle that’s going to be impossible to find.

you can get OK results using a wire saw, or just a sharp long knife with great care…

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My version of this is to tape the pen/scalpel to the end of the table and rotate the card

Hot wire cutting

You just need much lager base to rotate the styrofoam

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That takes me back 15 years had to cut display letters by hand for exhibitions, thank god for lasers :grinning:

I think cardboard is the way to go. Styrofoam runs the risk of falling apart. Do you intend to design it like a sandwich board, so that the two circles are hanging by straps over junior’s shoulders?

My other suggestion is to go to any stationery store that sells large sheets of paper and get some of those big plastic boards they sell to make the circles. You can buy it in yellow. It’s light and it’ll hold up well. Waterproof, too, in case it drizzles.

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And will you be dressed as Pinky, Blinky, Inky, or Clyde?

Doubtful that a shop is going to have a process more precise than this or something similar.

Really, Dad should be PacMan and the gaggle of kids should be the little monsters.

I made my pacman costume using two hula hoops with a quarter cut out. Then some plastic piping with corner joins to make the mouth.

Cover with yellow felt and hot glue it all on :blush:

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I recommend paper unless it needs to be waterproof. As for cutting holes find a piece of plywood and drill a hole on one end, and the other end somehow jam a razor in it. Pivot the hole around a peg and you get perfect circles

This is the video I was going to follow

  • I like that they used yellow tape

I will need to design it so my son’s head sticks out the top because his school apparently has a rule that costumes cannot fully cover the head

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Try to find one of those wooden wire spools. You’ll have two 1m circles and just need to drill some holes for the arms.

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Are you talking about those big ones for big distribution wires? Those thing weights 100 lbs.

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Oh… Guess you shouldn’t trust a clown when it comes to manufacturing ideas.

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Thank you again to everyone who contributed to this thread

I followed what @urodacus suggested using an extra metal bar from an Ikea shelf that had holes for screws already bored in and I was able to use it to draw a decent enough circle without any trouble, really. Then I roughly followed the YouTube video I posted to make a smaller version out of cardboard.

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Happy Halloween, folks!

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Looks fantastic. Great job!

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