This would be a great project to do with friends for your own craft night, or to make with kids.

Behold! The Flying Purple People Eater and the Fluffy-head –>

This tutorial is less ‘step by step’ than my usual ones, since the object is not to create what I created, but to make your own monster up!

So, what do you need?

• Sweaters, preferably already shrunken/felted. You’ll need a sleeve that is big enough to be the body of your puppet.
• Scrap felt/sweaters to make your embellishments.
• Eyes – either safety toy eyes, buttons, or you can make out of the felt scraps if you like. That’s of course assuming your monster has eyes! (I was lucky enough to have a few toy eyes that the lovely Colleen from Some Art Fabric had given me, and they worked great!)
• Embroidery thread.

First, pick your sleeve. You can use a solid color (we both did purple here) or stripes, or whatever works for your monster. Cut off the sleeve, trimming the part near the shoulder so it is even all around (like a giant sock).

Next, plan your head. We did a couple of different things here, but here are a few options:
1) Square – just turn inside out, and sew the cuff together in a straight line.
2) Curved – sleeve inside out, trim a curved line, and stitch together.
3) Rounded – See the example below. Although my ‘spikes’ should have been shorter. It was pretty messy, but that was ok, since I was adding a horn.
4) Fluffy – See the example below – with sleeve right side out, gather a few inches from the top. Weave thread back and forth, and pull tight. Afterwards, you can cut the cuff to resemble hair! (Note, in the pictures, this was done after creating the mouth. Either way works)
One thing we would do, in hindsight, would be to stitch in some scraps or padding in the inside of the top of the head. This would help the head stand up better on a small hand.

You’ll also need a mouth. Here’s a couple we did:
The Fluffyhead has a mouth with lips, created by turning the puppet inside out and stitching an oval of fabric on the inside.
The People Eater’s “scary” mouth was done by whipstitching on the mouth from the outside.

The rest is all embellishment and adding personality.

Arms: Since ours were for 3.5 year olds, we decided against arms, as they are hard for small kids to manipulate. If you like you could just stitch on non-functional arms.
Horn: For the people eater, I made the horn by cutting out a circle of sweater fabric, cutting a 2/3 “pie piece” out of it, and wrapping it into a cone. Very trial and error. I stuffed it with a few fabric scraps and stitched it on top of the head with a whip stitch.
Eyes: Sew on buttons, press on toy eyes, cut fabric circles for eyes… For the People eater I used a fabric circle cut out of felted sweater, made a hole in the center for the post of the toy eye, and pressed it through. Then I used a blanket stitch to attach the felted circle to the head.
Nose: Holly’s Fluffyhead had a couple of felt circles bunched and stitched on in the center. You could also do buttons, or whatever.
Other: I cut out wings out of sweater material and used a simple straight stitch (it was getting late!) to sew them to the sides of the People Eater Body. Holly attached a felt star to the belly of the Fluffy head. Use your imagination here!

The finished puppets!

Hope you enjoyed this and it gave you some ideas for a fun evening of puppet making!

Related:

• Octo-puppet – this one is more of a typical tutorial, making an octopus puppet out of old sweaters and buttons.
• Sweater snake
• Elephant Purse

“At Least Highly Improbable” –

c nancy dorsner 2009 , Watercolor on paper

I sketched this next on, after doing the original sketch for the Improbability above, and then did a very quick watercolor job on it. I like the looseness… it’s a good exercise I think. So, what do you like best?

“Boxed In”

c nancy dorsner 2009 , Watercolor on paper

PS – don’t forget to vote for my instructable, the Hot Wheels Car Launcher!
Vote here: it’s the 7th one in the list.

PPS –
I’ve decided to pick several cool IF’s for this week and link them here:

• Love these unusual(!) cupcakes by CakeSpy
• Alina fighting her computer made me giggle.
• Peter’s work is always lovely.. I especially like Tea Time, here.
• Honor Bowden’s beautiful watercolor women never disappoint.
• Chris Leavens lives in a world even weirder than my own!

Oh, and if you missed it:
-Earlier today I posted the Dabbled Interview with Jenifer Nakatsu Arntson – Really cool vinyl goods!
–Halloween Food Wrapup with how-to’s
–My Halloween Party costume pics!

Sorry, the shower is definitely NOT vacant!

And thanks to Diana for reminding me about Museumr
Here’s last week’s IF, framed in a gallery! Too Cool :)

By the way, a reader pointed out there are a lot of wreaths and a nice tutorial which I notice uses this quick hot glue method as well (I like her method of gluing the balls in from the back), on Craftster, so check those out for more inspirations!

I’ve also got a customized version of the Robot Party invites out there. You can just download the generic version here, for free, but doesn’t it look nicer customized… and you could be funding dot’s art supply habit? :)

And of course, if you want a truly customized one like I’m giving away for the auction, just email me.

Click through to flickr to see bigger or download.

Related: A Dabbled Halloween – All this month! and Halloween Contest
… and if you like tutorials like this, check out Henri the Octopuppet!

*note: I don’t remember where I got the idea from, but the idea of a monster wreath is not original with me, but I really like my version! Also thanks to Chica and Erika who did most of the creation of the original one, as I was trying to decorate for the party!

Updates: More, including a quick no-sew version. (On flickr)
-And thanks to the reader who pointed out the tutorial on craftster — That could have entirely been the inspiration, especially since it’s so similar to my no-sew version! I loves the crafty internets!

Oh, and I took last week’s IF (the Robots on Vacation) and entered it as a t-shirt on threadless! If I get enough high scores the shirt will be printed and sold from the site and I will win some prizes. Take a look at it and if you like it, sign up and give it a score. URL: http://www.threadless.com/submission/180823/All_Packed_Up
Thanks!
P.S. I’m sure Threadless would be happy if you bought a tee too!

Be sure to check out A Dabbled Halloween –all month long– while your here!

This is a quick coloring job of a concept sketch i did for a new project. The line work is rough, but I think they are cute anyway :). Check out the new Dabbled contest – summer doldrums!
These guys try very hard to be fierce!