Caddy Monster!!!

As I transition more and more over to the Children’s Library, I’m slowly making my desk my own.  I still will, on occasion, share it with my boss – but it’ll be my desk more often than not. (tee-hee!)

For my sanity I like to keep things organized (plus the public can clearly see back into our office, and sometimes the kiddos will wander back there), and I also like to personalize my space. So as I wandered through a store the other day, I swung by their small organization section and found a plain black-wire supply caddy.  In my mind I thought of some cool things I saw online with people treating these sorts of mesh items as a canvas for cross-stitching or embroidery.  I do neither, but thought that it would be fun to try.  So I picked up the cheap (if not boring) caddy.

After I arrived home I set the caddy by the door to remind me to take it to work the next day.  Several hours later I had a SHAZAM moment when I realized what I wanted to do with my caddy: make a caddy monster!  It had a fun monster-head shape and a “monster mouth” already built-in!  I also still have plenty of leftover fake fur from other various projects.  And googly eyes too.  And a hot glue gun.  And scissors.

To succinctly go over the supplies needed again:

<ul>

<li>A boring supply caddy</li>

<li>Googly eyes</li>

<li>Scissors</li>

</ul>

And that’s all!  I trimmed the fur to fit along the bottom of the caddy, and then I left about half an inch of extra fur over the top to fold the fur over and give it a better-looking, easier-to-do finish.  I used three separate pieces of fur: one for the largest portion of the head, one for the “upper lip” and one for the “mouth.”  I glued the fur around the solid borders of the caddy.  Then I sliced tabs into the fur at the top to make it go smoothly around the curved lines, and glued those down.

I then trimmed the fur down where I wanted the eyes and hot glued them on.  I had some leftover red fur and I trimmed that down into a tongue-shape and glued that on too in the little notch in the mouth.  So he looked like this:

Within minutes of completing this super-simple/fast craft (my favorite kind), I decided that I hated the tongue.  It looked rather bizarre.  So I ripped it off.  I may eventually try a different mouth set-up using card stock for teeth or red felt for a tongue, but for one reason or the other I did not like the look of the tongue I’d created.

I still wasn’t completely happy with it, but couldn’t put my finger on why.  It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning that I had a flash realization: I didn’t like how low the eyeballs sat – they’re too tough to see!  So I got back out my hot glue gun and my bag of googly eyes and made one more addition:

MUCH better!

So I took Mr. Caddy Monster (I shall call him George) to work today and had the best time rearranging items on my desk and bringing some items out of drawers and within reach of my seat.  My teammates squeed and enjoyed how soft he is.  Then my boss came over from the Main Library and we were chatting when she suddenly stopped mid-sentence and said “what the heck is that?”

”That’s my George!”

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