This wearable rose costume is ready for you to rent and wow your mom. Make this a Mother’s Day she’ll never forget. There’s more if you and your siblings want to make a whole bouquet.

Mother's Day Rose

Flowers for Mother’s Day

Impress the heck out of your mom. Bring her flowers for Mother’s Day and dress as a rose to deliver them. You could arrive as a pair or a single, lovely rose.

Costume rental rose

This Mother’s Day flower will top any she’s ever gotten.

Like our mascots, the costume are designed and built in our studio. They are designed

Mother's day rose w/ daughter

with whimsy, color and glitz.

Cost per day $175.00/flower

AvantGarb at 800/636-9562. Ask for Anne

…or email: anne@avantgarb.com

This Mother’s Day will become one of those days that goes down in family lore —-and makes appearances for years in family blogs and scrapbooks!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Alpha Xi Delta's BetXi Bear

Bringing BetXi to Life – The Alpha Xi Delta mascot

BetXi Bear is one of AvantGarb’s most newest mascot creations. She’s certainly one of the most stylish mascots we’ve ever made. Her belt matches her shoes – and her shoes are yellow, patent-leather Mary Janes! BetXi’s big blue w/ yellow polka dots bow on top of her hear matches her dress. BetXi is ready for any occasion. BetXi is the new, updated  Alpha Xi Delta mascot. It was a pleasure working with the women of Alpha Xi Delta.

Getting the details right is what AvantGarb does best.

Making BetXi's dress

We matched the blue fabric and yellow polkadots with Alpha Xi Delta’s colors. We cut out the polka dots and stitched them onto the blue fabric. We cut out the light blue trim at the bottom of the dress and made that giant bow!

Lauren Fisher, wrote an article about making BetXi Bear, Bringing BetXi to Life. The article appears in the current Quill, the quarterly magazine published by Alpha Xi Delta

BetXi’s first appearance was at the Autism Speaks Walk in Indianapolis.

BetXi is stylish and she has a big, big heart.

BetXi Bear

Sean got in touch with AvantGarb. We made the Griff new feet. Sean was very happy with the feet.

More than most performers, professional mascot performers rely on having all of the parts of the mascot costume work for them. The feet are especially important. Athletic mascot performers run up and down the stands in big feet (sometimes w/ big claws). The performer needs to have their foot firmly secured into the mascot shoe.

At our mascot studio, we have spent hours fine-tuning the inner structure of the mascot foot. Next to sculpting and building the head, making feet/shoe/boots for a mascot is the most complex and time consuming. The small details take time and—-well, engineering.There are buckles and straps and foam and leather and soles that have to be cut and there are doohickies and various types of elastic and webbing and something called “cloud”,

Soon we were building the whole Griff mascot from the wispy head feathers down to the soles of the feet.

The Griffin is a mythological character. He is part eagle, part lion. This means we got to make wonderful silver wings put hints of feathers on the Griff’s head and give the guy really furry leg and feet. The Griff is the King of the Beast and the King of the birds, so we muscled him up a bit too.

For us, muscles are foam, foam, foam, foam. All of that foam is covered in athletic mesh. We use a foam that is designed to have water flow through it —-so its washable and it tough.

The Griffins were our first introduction to the world of hockey. We’re big fans!

The people who work here are very talented, really attractive and downright hilarious artists and fashion people. They have all the skills, passion, vision, dedication and, of course, humor needed to create a dynamite mascot. The people who work here make AvantGarb – a pretty cool biz.

Bulked-up Laura

All of the mascot makers here have an intense lives outside of AvantGarb as artists, fashion designers and musicians. Some are members of a performance art collective, Know No Stranger. They’re kinda rock stars amongst the art cognoscenti.

Anne & Matt sewing "muppet fleece" under the beach umbrella

….and their friends are all smart, funny, talented and full of ideas and curiosity.They are everything you could want in a visitor. However, we have our limits. After 5 or 10 minutes we just have to say good-bye. Mascots must be made! So, we’ve written a a short, short script. It goes something like this:

“Oh my, I’m delighted you stopped by. Here, have a pair of googlie-eyed magnets to put on your refrigerator. I have to get back to the serious business of making mascots. See you later. Bye.” It’s part of our visitor policy – come, visit, chat – then leave with some googlie eyes in your pocket.

Each day, we are busy falling in love with the character we are bringing to life —the gleam in the eyes, the size of the belly, the boing of the tail, the tilt of the ears, the size of the shoe.

We make real objects in the real world. We sculpt foam, make patterns, and sew it all together. We make it possible for the mascot to walk, wiggle and move through the world. It is consuming work – it requires vision, concentration and some sounds from Grooveshark.

We are involved in an intense creative collaboration. The casual, unexpected visitors spice up the day. They make us laugh and expand our world.

Love the visitors, but the mascot alway gets our full attention.

Wally Wabash at AvantGarb

Rex, Ty & Ally

Children beg their parents to go to the Rex Parade at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis. The kids know its fun to follow Rex, the rainbow-bellied mascot for the Children’s Museum.The hop and skip and wave flags down the 4 story ramp that spirals down to the first floor, through the entryway (or exitway) and out the door.

Here’s the video: End of Day Parade w/ Rex mascot

The parade is an exuberant blast of fun. It is also a way to close down the museum for the night. The Rex mascot parade is a daily event – yes. It is also a fun, efficient and kind way to close down the museum.

When a mascot leads the parade, kids know they’re gonna have fun!

Rex Rules!

We’re finishing a mascot – a bean – Bennie the Bean for the Indiana Soybean Alliance. The curve of the smile on the Bean has been perfected.  The big, big hat is finished. Here’s a photo of Annie in the hat:

Annie in a Bennie the Bean's hat.

The Bean’s shoes are finished and they are the most stylish shoes ever seen on a Soy Bean!

Bennie's shoes

We make patterns for every single part of a mascot in our studio. The pattern for Bennie’s shoes is one of the most interesting patterns I’ve ever seen – it’s one piece and it works because of the curves and darts – only 2 darts! Matt is our mascot shoe guy – he’s also one of the mascot miliners (hat-makers).

Rob and Gabe, of Alley Woodworks in Texas, have sent the eyes and they need to be painted – the eyelid needs to be secured and stitched.

Bennie the Bean & Matt

The Bean is almost ready to make his debut!

When designing and producing a new mascot, we gather together to ponder a seam, contemplate a collar, engineer and re-imagine the interior structure. We are mascoteer engineers. It’s called, Mascotology.

Making a big belly requires a some foam that is covered in athletic mesh and stabilized with hoops – they look like hula-hoops, but are custom made to match the contours of the belly.

Mascot Milliner

The mascoteers at AvantGarb work together on all aspects of the mascot. The body needs to work with the  head. The legs need to fit into the shoes….and don’t even get me started on the hats! We’re big on Big Millinery!

….and then there are the tails. Gravity has great pull—yet some mascot tails defy gravity. We’re successful at the illusion of defying gravity. The secrets of defying gravity are all in the interior structures – in the engineering.

The engineering involved in the creation of a mascot tail is NASA-worthy.

We are, after all, great character builders – Mascoteer Engineers.

We ship big mascots and we use UPS a lot. We use UPS so much, as a matter of fact AvantGarb made it into the UPS blog – Small Business makes Big Mascots. With big, custom mascots, good, reliable shipping is crucial. The mascot has to be at the game or at the product promotion or at the play-offs or cheering the runners at a marathon. We play a very tight game with logistics. I have faith in our shipping sources. So, when UPS called, I answered. I am, after all, a wee bit of a shipping nerd or possibly a shipping obsessive.

Being featured in the UPS blog is an example of the power of accidental marketing. This is how it happened.

I tweeted @UPS to complain about a minor billing issue – the UPS people took the complaint seriously & they made my billing smoother – 1 bill a month rather than many. I tweeted something nice about shipping & UPS’s PR people gave us a call.

UPS is a classy company. Not only do they get mascots where they need to be when they need to be there, they respond calmly and efficiently to a complaint.

Turns out we’re mascot mavens &  shipping savants here at AvantGarb.

JJ Jumper

When we’re in the presence of a mascot, that’s where!

Where mascots are, a community emerges. People gather.

Roche Diagnostics - Accu-Chek Peforma insulin meter at diabetes camp in Venezuela

It doesn’t take great talent, superior intellect or an educated eye to joke, to have fun and to pass the time of day in the presence of a mascot. When a mascot is around we have a reason to connect.

A mascot is the perfect, goofy and generous host.

While we may think a mascot is merely a marketing tool, really, a mascot is a hand extended in community.
Any organization that puts in the long hours of imaginative, strategic planning, design collaboration and dollars into a mascot program is really holding out their hand in joy, trust and community.