Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Monster Flowers and Recycled Vases

 
My inspiration came from these Monster Mum Topiaries,
but I didn't like that they used Styrofoam balls.  
 
 I really hate buying Styrofoam, it makes me feel dirty, but not in a good way.
Yes, along the blurred edges of my morality, that’s where I choose to draw the line.
 
For my version you only need three flowers, something with a lot of little petals,
so it looks "furry", wire, floral tape, and two googly eyes.  
 
Clip two flowers leaving at least two inches of stem and tightly wire them to the third. 
Wrap the stems with floral tape to hide the wire.  Then glue on the googly eyes.
 






The vase is made from a Method laundry detergent bottle.


Unscrew the top and remove the red tube.  Pop off the top of the cap. 
Give the post sticking down from the cap ring a little snap and it will pop out.
 



Screw the ring back onto the bottle and paint. Find something creative to do with the spare parts. Coolest thing I’ve seen so far is gluing poker chips on the ends of the springs and then adding googly eyes to the poker chips for some crazy looking eye stalks. 

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Igor and Frankie



Meet little Igor and his sister Frankie, the latest additions to our Smith family.

My daughter suggested that I make a little baby monster, so I did one better and made a big sister too. Igor actually made his first appearance on the sixth day of Creepmas

Igor’s older sister Frankie, was named after Dr. Frankenstein who created their parents. She has the same basic body as the mummy, but the paper roll is trimmed an inch shorter since she’s just started hitting her growth spurt. 

Her hair is made from one of my daughter’s old leg warmers, and bits of sweater. I didn’t like the way the ends of the leg warmer looked so I made a few cuts and unraveled the yarn until I got to the pretty cable knit. I folded and glued thin strips of the sweater into the grooves between the cable knit. The leg warmer wasn’t as stiff as the fake fur so I stuffed some paper towel into the center. I glued the curly unraveled bits that I had cut off around to make bangs and also on top to fill in the center and hide the paper towel.

Frankie just got her neck bolts this past month, which are covered in black glitter glue with rhinestones on the ends. All her friends have had theirs forever, retro bolts are so in right now, but her horribly old fashioned parents, who seem to have been created for the sole purpose of embarrassing her, made her wait until her 13th birthday.

She also has her mother’s fun fur eyelashes.


Igor was named after the obstetrician Igorina, who delivered him. Igorina’s are fabulous in the delivery room, it doesn’t matter if the baby is born with the prerequisite number of fingers and toes or not, she’s quite handy with spare parts, needle and thread. He’s a half size paper roll with a rounded paper towel ball top and bottom. I wanted him to be able to stand on his own without any feet, so I taped a decorative flat marble (pictured) to his bottom. Once I gave him hair, that wasn’t enough to keep him stable, but a bottle cap (not pictured) taped over the marble was and didn’t add a lot of bulk.


And here is the happy family altogether.