A cuppycake-lovin' critter

Blog, as you well know we have a new resident at Magic House. Yesterday (aka Valentine's Day) I brought into the world this little green guy and the cupcake he dearly loves. My money is on him being able to nom that entire cuppycake in one bite, how about you?

This is my response to the February creativity prompt from our pals at the A Creative Dream blog: "Love." The little green guy loves his fudge-frosting-topped treat, and I love him, because I modeled him after the little blue guy in the AT&T HTC phone commercials, with whom I am obsessed.  In case you aren't getting that reference, here you go:



But before we address little green guy and his most remarkable feature, let us first discuss the plush cupcake he is about to nom. I based this on ideas in Warm Fuzzies, the book I referenced in my crazy hat post. You too can easily make a plush cuppycake of your own.

I just took a strip of dark brown fleece and folded it in half lengthwise. Then I rolled it up to create the effect of swirled frosting. I stuffed the end with the cut edges inside a cuff cut from a pink sock, which stands in, of course, for the paper cupcake cup. A circle of pink felt whipped stitched to the bottom completes the cup, but before you sew it on, trim the fleece inside and/or add stuffing to make it nice and flat on the bottom. Festoon your cupcake with toppings made of puff balls, beads, buttons, etc. You can trim it with ribbon or rickrack too.

And as for the cupcake-ophile creature, Blog, let me call your attention to the one tricky feature about him of which I am truly proud: his mouth. When creating the pattern for green guy, I recognized immediately the big challenge: his mouth needs to be concave, and when you stuff something, it's impossible to give it a concave feature like that.

I had a eureka moment, though, Blog. I made a shape out of aluminum foil in the size and shape of the indentation I needed for greenie's mouth. I covered this mold with a sheet of polymer clay, trimmed it, and baked it. I popped the baked clay off the mold, then covered it with black felt, using fabric glue. I discovered I heart fabric glue!!

I cut an opening for the mouth in the fleece of the head front. I folded the edges of this opening inward, and sewed the felt-covered mouth piece inside. I cannot deny that this was tricky, since I didn't want any stitches to show. The bonus of having the clay piece inside the body was that it supported two wire armatures for the arms and legs, which I mounted there with electrical tape.

I hand sewed the front and back body pieces together, stuffing with fiberfill as I went. Then I simply had to sew on two black beady eyes, and my green guy was ready for dessert!

And, of course, to be loved....