I am a Girl Scout Troop Leader. It’s so against my character. I’m introverted and it’s a challenge for me to engage a dozen nine year olds. I’m not organized, at all, so it’s a challenge to keep track of when meetings are, what activities should be done and who needs to be contacted. But, I love it. I like being yanked out of my shell and being forced to have at least one area of my life under control. And I love the girls and I hate to let them down, so I usually rise to the occasion and have some sort of fun event well planned for them. This month’s meeting was a Valentine’s Day craft. The girls loved it and I think it’s just adorable. It’s also super easy.
The first step to creating this fluffy little guy is to collect your materials. You’ll need some yarn, googly eyes, a pipe cleaner, glue and scissors.
To get started, you’re going to take your yarn and wrap it around your fingers about 100 times. This takes a little longer and little more yarn than you expect. Or at least more than I expected. Maybe you have excellent yarn estimation skills. For a small puff ball, wrap the yarn around one finger, slightly bigger, two fingers and even a little bigger, three fingers. I did these with three fingers. Special tip, don’t wrap too tight. Try to keep your fingers separated a little to avoid cutting off circulation. Also, take off your rings.
Next, cut the end of the yarn and remove the yarn from your fingers so that you have a little ring of yarn. Cut a piece of yarn (from the skein, not from the ring of yarn you just created) about 10-12 inches long. Tightly tie that piece around the center of your yarn ring. Repeat if you really don’t want your fluff ball to fall apart.
Now, you’re going to snip the loops that were created when you tied that string around your yarn loop. Fluff out the cut loops and trim any long pieces so that you have a nice symmetrical fluff ball.
To finish it off, add your googly eyes with glue. I used Elmer’s Craft Glue, but you could use a glue gun if you felt like hauling out the power tools. Then the antenna. I folded a pipe cleaner in half and twisted the bottom a little, then formed squigglies with my fingers for one monster and heart shaped antenna for the other. I add some glue to the end of the pipe cleaner and then shoved it in the middle of the monster (sorry, monster for shoving a pipe cleaner into your brain). And that’s it! It took me about 10 minutes including the time it took me to take pics of the process. With the 9 year old Girl Scouts, they needed some guidance on the first one, but in our hour long meeting, they each banged out 2-3 of them in between eating Valentine’s cookies.
Have fun!
PS! I have bunch more to say about Valentine’s Day! Check out all of my posts here: Valentine’s Day Ideas!
If You Liked It Then You Shoulda Put A Pin In It!
