The movie “Boxtrolls” is the third film from the the animation studio, Laika. They use mainly stop motion to make their films. This means that they make little dolls with real clothes and move them slightly and blend those images together to make the dolls appear to move on their own. Right after the closing credits of this movie they show images of the animators doing this work. Laika’s fourth movie “Kubo and the Two Strings” is out now and I highly recommend it! These movies tend to be a little creepy at times, so they are all great candidates for movies to watch on Halloween.

The boxtrolls are little trolls that wear boxes that they can hide in if they see any people coming. They have all types of labels and they are named for whatever is on the box, like “Eggs” and “Fish.” I made these boxes from a 24 pack of soda. I used a square box as a guide and then traced the squares in the pattern below. Make sure you leave a little bit extra on the sides so you can tape the box together and keep the top flap closed. You can make any size box depending on what you want to use it for. You may want to use these for party favor boxes, for kids to take home cupcakes, or just for party decorations. I used pictures of the boxes as guides for the labels and hand drew them, but on my Laika Pinterest board there are several pins with links to printable labels if you would rather use pre-made labels.

Making Boxes

The boxtrolls eat bugs so I’ve made a few foods with “bugs” on them.

Vegetable pizza with pea worms and  tomato/black olive bugs.

Cheesecake with strawberry and blueberry “bugs”.

Cheese plays a major role in this movie, so I made cheesecake for a dessert, but if you have a Boxtrolls party you should also have a pile of cheese somewhere. You can have the bugs that the boxtrolls eat represented by the foods above, or you can have some gummie snakes/worms and jellybeans represent the bugs. I also included some eggs in honor of the main character in the movie, Eggs.

White Hats and Red Hats

The city exterminators wear red hats, but the cheese eating high society men wear white hats. You can make your own red or white hats with construction paper and a party hat. These hats are tall and thin and won’t really stay on your head unless you have an elastic string from a party hat. I took 2 sheets of construction paper and taped them together so they made a tube shape that is the same size as the bottom of the party hat. Use the hat as a guide to make a ring shape with the opening the same size as the bottom of the hat. Then just tape the tube and the ring to the party hat.

The white hats have some decoration on them so if you want to add that, make sure you draw them onto the white paper before forming the tube. The white hats have some little feathers on top of them which I made by cutting a strip of paper, rolling it up on a pencil, and folding one end in to make that part stand up straight. Then you can just tape that to the top of the hat.

For more Boxtrolls party ideas take a look at my Laika board on Pinterest.