So here are a few of the most popular in the last 30 days (counting down the top 8- if I have time tomorrow I’ll do some more–I should be working on my Dalek cake right now, but I’m procrastinating…)

How to Make a Paper Graduation Cap

This one makes total sense, since it’s June and we’ve just had Graduation season going on.  This is a quick and easy cardboard ‘mortar board’ perfect for kids graduation ceremonies.

Tumblr as a Portfolio Platform (How to)

I believe this tutorial may be slightly out of date, but it remains quite popular.  I’ve moved on to WordPress myself!

The Homemade (#6 Plastic recycled) faux Shrinky Dinks project 

This was a four part series of experiments around making, coloring, and sealing items made out of #6 Plastic.  Remains quite popular (for some reason, page 4 shows up in the top 10, but I’m linking to the start of the series here, for ease of reading).  There are several other faux-shrinky projects around here too, including: HAPPY FOURTH! (SHRINKIE GLASS MARKERS & HOLIDAY LINK ROUNDUP) and HOW TO MAKE A LOVELY ECO-FRIENDLY DISC BRACELET

Fusing Plastic: Make disposal grocery bags into a cool crafting material

This was a great tutorial by the very talented Brooke, of So She Sews.  Dabbled has had some AWESOME guest bloggers. She take the ubiquitous thin tan plastic grocery bags and turns them into an interesting material that can be used to make all kinds of cool items.

Perry the Platypus Cake

This tutorial for The Boy’s birthday cake, two years ago, remains one of the most popular items on the site– and it’s one of my favorite cakes I’ve ever done.  And yep, right now I should be working on his Dalek Cake which is needed for this weekend’s party.  That’s coming soon, but I’m having some ‘fails’ with my prototyping!

How to make an Awesome Flower Pinata

This was another great guest post- by Joanne of Ready, Set, Craft!-, and since this pinata is perfect for Cinco de Mayo, that might have been why it was popular last month.   But really, it would be great for any summer party, or a little girl birthday.

The Phineas & Ferb Perry Cake, but made from Twinkies!

After I published my Perry Cake (above) several readers tried their hand at it… And this reader (Janelle) decided to modify it, to make it from storebought Twinkie snack cakes.  Inspired!

Just those minor adjustments really add a lot to the costume!

How to Make a Perry the Platypus Costume:

See Part 1 (the previous tutorial) for the making of the tail, the suit, the bill, and the feet.

New for 2010: The Eyes…

You’ll need:
2 pingpong balls
black sharpie (permanent) marker
2 large safety pins

I decided that the eyes needed to be removable, since The Boy likes to wear his platypus tailed sweatshirt around the house a lot. Alternately, you could stitch these on for a more permanent solution.

Try the hoodie on your child, and guesstimate where you should put the eyes.  Depending on the size of your child’s head, and the size of his Perry hat, this could vary, but mine are probably 4-5 inches from the center top.  They are less than an inch from the edge.  But use your best judgment as hoods will vary.

If your pingpong ball has writing on it, you’ll want to hide it, but if you pin through the writing, it will show as the balls sag a bit when pinned.  So you’ll want to pin through the ball a little ABOVE the writing.   (Try a test ping pong ball first!)  [Or just spray paint them white, I suppose, to avoid the hassle!]

Make the holes in the ball by pinning through the ball (as close together as you can get them (maybe 1/3 inch?).  Then remove the pin, and pin on to hoodie.

Place hoodie back on child, and mark where you want the pupils to go with a pencil.  Remember you want it to look good from both the front and the side.  Mine came out a little wall eyed… I would have liked them looking more forward, but The Boy likes it as is.

Using your sharpie marker, draw a large circle for the pupil, then a smaller circle inside it for the reflection dot.  Color the large circle in black, leaving the smaller one white.

And that’s all there is to it!

I think adding the eyes are well worth the effort…

And if you make a Perry costume, I want to see it!  Leave a comment or email me a pic..

Ready to make your Perry Cake?  Really, you CAN do this!

Yesterday we covered all The Prep Work required to make your platypus cake. Now it’s a day or so before you need the cake, and we’re going to put it all together.

You should have:

• 1 frosted flat cake.
• 1 unfrosted loaf cake
• extra cake (cupcakes)
• 1 batch marshmallow fondant
• the rest of your cream cheese icing
• The Supplies from yesterday’s list.

Clear yourself off a good work area, get your fondant out of the fridge, and let’s get to assembly!

1. The Base

You have your sheet cake, iced with your cream cheese icing.  You really don’t HAVE to do anything else, but I’ve found that working on the platypus tends to mess up your icing, so I added jelly beans to hide my sins, and also for additional color.  Any addons to the base can either be done prior to body placement (Step 4) or after.  I did mine after, but if i was doing this over, I would probably have done it immediately before the body placement, after Step 3.

Some ideas

• If you have plenty of extra fondant, use a flower cookie cutter to cut out fondant flowers.  Place them overlapping all around the cake (skipping the very middle that will be covered with a platypus, of course.  (In retrospect, I would have done this.  Fondant circles in various colors and sizes would also have been very cool.
• Cover the entire top with lime green tinted coconut, to simulate grass
• What I actually did:  Cover the ground around Perry with multicolored jelly belly candies (I was thinking they could be platypus eggs!)
• If you have enough extra, roll out a large sheet of colored fondant (any color but yellow or green) and cover the entire top of the cake with it, for an extra smooth look.

2. Molding the bill and the feet:

Marshmallow fondant doesn’t hold shapes as well as regular fondant, so last year when I did the dragon cake, i decided to use something a little stronger as a ‘skeleton’–molded tootsie rolls.  These can also be done ahead of time.  They also will not be seen on the final cake, but should be a light enough color that they don’t show through the yellow fondant that will cover them.

Get out your tootsie rolls.  Break one large roll into several smaller pieces, and microwave for JUST A FEW SECONDS to soften.  You can now knead this in your hands until it’s soft and moldable like playdough.

You’ll be making 2 foot shapes, a top bill shape, and a bottom bill shape.

The foot shape is simple.  Just make a flat 1/2 in thick triangle shape.  Then squeeze it with your fingers toward 1 point to elongate.  Then use your fingers to make ‘toes’ on the opposite flat end.  That’s hard to explain in words, but just look at the picture!

The bottom bill is simply a half circle shape (like a “D”), and the top bill is a larger half circle, with the flat side thicker, coming to a triangular point.  See diagram.  (I don’t have any shots of the bill uncovered, but you can see the shapes in the photos of covering the bill, later on in this tutorial)

Use your loaf cake to help judge the size to make these.  Remember, you’ll be covering them with fondant, so they’ll be bigger later, so make them a little smaller than needed in the final cake.  Set these aside.

3. Fondant:

First, you’ll need an idea of how much to color for each part–this can be trial and error the first time, so here’s a trick.  I’d suggest breaking off a workable size ball of white, and rolling it out to about 1/8 in thick.  You’ll need to knead it a little first to get it workable after the night in the fridge.  See how big it is.  Take your loaf pan (that you used to bake the body!) and use it as a model.  Hold your pan in the air, bottom side up.  Gently drape your test fondant over it, and see how big a sheet you’re going to need.  This is also good practice for how to work with the fondant, before you try it on the real thing!  I found Peggy Weaver’s tutorial on working with the fondant very helpful – go read it!

Once you have an idea how much fondant is needed for your body, make a ball that size, and set aside.  Make another ball that size and set aside for the tail.  Then make 2 smaller balls : 1 for the bill/feet, 1 for the legs.  Finally, you’ll 2 even smaller balls (like a large marble) which will be the black eyeballs and hair, and the white eyeballs.  And you should still have a good bit of left over white–which is good, because if you screw up, you may need it!

• Green:  Take one large ball, and one medium ball and knead together with green (and maybe a touch of blue) foodcoloring, until you get the desired Perry body color.
• Yellow:  Take one Medium ball, and knead together with yellow food coloring, with a few drops of red, until you get the desired yellow-gold color for Perry’s bill.
• Black:  Knead one small ball with black food coloring, for Perry’s hair and irises.  (You may not even need that much, so start small)
• White:  leave white, duh! for the eyes.
• Brown (or Chocolate):  If you have brown food coloring, you can use that.  I didn’t, so I kneaded in melted dark chocolate.  This changes the consistency of the fondant, so if you’re doing that, wait until we get to that step, below!

4. Perry’s Body

Roll out enough of your green fondant to cover the loaf cake (remember, we figured out how much we needed in the prior step!  Save some of the green for the legs.)

The body of Perry is basically just the loaf shaped cake, turned upside down. Round off his body by carving off the  4 top edges with a sharp knife.  Also round off the corners.  Place the cake on top of your upside down loaf pan, to use as a pedestal while decorating.

Cover the top and sides of the cake with a thin layer of icing.  Neatness doesn’t count here, you’re just providing glue and padding for the fondant.

Now, the fun part.  Carefully center the fondant over the cake, like we practiced, and drape over the cake and the loaf pan.  The fondant does stretch, so if you’ve screwed up and your not quite reaching the bottom somewhere, don’t fret.  let gravity do it’s work.  Let sit for several minutes for the fondant to stretch.  (Again, this tutorial is helpful.)

Smooth and stretch the fondant as necessary, trim off excess, leaving about 1 inch or so, which you can then tuck under the bottom of the loaf. A Perfectly Packaged Perry body!

You can now place him on his base.  Remember, you still have to add the bill to the front, so don’t center the body on the cake, leave several inches to add his bill.  The tail drapes off the cake, so no need to leave much room for that.

Covering & Placing the Bill and Feet

Roll out your yellow fondant, and wrap pieces around each of the feet, and the top and bottom bill.  Since the mouth is mostly closed, you don’t have to wrap the whole bill.  For the top bill, just turn the rounded end up a bit to achieve a slightly open mouth. You can go ahead and place the bill on the cake. See photos:

5. Make the Eyes and Hair:

In his platypus state (as opposed to Agent P) Perry eyes a little goofy, with no lids, and look in slightly different directions.

Use a little of your extra cake (the leftover cupcakes) to make a cake ball mixture.  Combine crumbled cake with leftover icing and mix with your fingers until the cake sticks together in a ball.  Make a ball the size of a large marble, and cover with white fondant.  Now make another!  (Note: if you don’t want to do cake balls, you can just use a ball of extra fondant in place of the cake)

Then take a little ball of black, and press flat.  Dampen one side, and press on to your white eyeball.

They are a little to round now, so use a knife to slice off the back 1/3 of the eyeball, so you have a flat side to stick to the cake.  You may want to embed a toothpick in the cake, and slide the eyeball on to that to make sure it stays put.

(I placed mine a little high on his head, I think, so you may want to place a little lower on the front of the face.)

6. The Legs

The legs are similar to the eyes.  Use your cake ball mixture to make the basic shape, then wrap in fondant.  Hide your fondant seam by putting it against the cake body.  Moisten with water or extra icing to stick to cake.  Note, I did his back legs too far forward, the thigh should have been closer to the rear of the platypus.  Place your yellow feet in the appropriate place, as shown.

….

7. The Tail

I didn’t have any good foodcoloring for the brown for Perry’s tail, so I figured why not mix it with some chocolate!  I melted a bar of Hershey’s Special Dark and kneaded it into the fondant the same as you would with food coloring, until I reach a good brown.  This worked, but it also caused the fondant to lose pliability, so it’s a little harder to work with.  Roll out a large piece of your chocolate fondant (either double the normal thickness, or stack two sheets).  cut out your tail shape, then use a chopstick to press a diamond quilted pattern into the tail.  I waited to attach the tail (since it falls off the cake) until i set up the cake for the party.  Just adhere the end to your platy-posterior with some leftover icing (see above photo in the legs section)!

Your Completed Cake

You’re ready to go now… store the cake in some sort of box, not in the refrigerator, but protected from ants and other lovelies.  Place in a cool room out of reach of children and pets.  The fondant will soften overnight, so be much more careful touching it the next day.  And even if it doesn’t come out perfectly (mine had a few flaws!) your Phineas and Ferb loving child with think you are the greatest!

(See all Phineas & Ferb Meet the Clone Wars Party Posts!)

Updated!!– New photos and instructions here for making it even better with EYES!!

Tutorial: How to make the Perry the Platypus Costume

Here are some basic instructions, pictures follow.

Body:
At it’s simplest, you can do this with a green hoodie and sweatpants. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t find a green hoodie, so I made a simple one out of fleece, by tracing around a current sweatshirt. (see pics below) I added a few pieces of ‘hair’ with black embroidery floss.
(In the updated 2010 version I add a drawstring around the front of the hoodie, by sewing a simple hem, and running a lace through it. This provides a better shape to the head)

Bill:
The Duckbill was very easy! 2 pieces of craftfoam, cut into a bill shape. The bottom piece is slightly smaller than the top piece. I used a hole punch to make breathing holes on the bottom, and to make the holes for the elastic cording. Just tie the pieces together, and they go nicely over the nose, or even over the nose and chin (which is how The Boy liked to wear his).

Feet:
Very simple. A webbed foot cut from craft foam. Then I slid a scrap piece of foam through the shoe lace on his shoe. I placed duct tape behind it (see pics) and pressed the foot shape on top!

Tail:
The tail totally made the outfit. I cut the tail shape out of brown fleece, and sewed it together, leaving an opening at the top. I then stuff it VERY lightly with a little fiber fill. Then use pins to mark the tail into equal sections, several inches apart (see pics). Then sew in a zigzag down the tail. At the end, repeat the process in reverse, making the quilted x’s. Attach the tail to the bottom of the hoodie.

Hat:
Um, is a fedora.

Eyes (New for 2010!): Updated!!– New photos and instructions here for making it even better with EYES!!

Here are some other pictures, and some shots of “the making of Agent P”! Click to see big/slideshow.

I’ll have a few pics of the halloween party and other Halloween links as a final wrap up of Halloween 2009 tomorrow!

Now, off to continue the Halloween party preparations! I’ll be making lots of stuff… and Tweeting along the way if you’d like to follow along: http://twitter.com/DotatDabbled