Leggi questo post in: Italiano
Today the movie Despicable Me 2 is coming out in the theaters in Italy. (Yes, considerably later than in the States.) My daughter and her cousin are besides themselves with joy. They’ve been waiting and waiting to see the Minions on the big screen. From what little I’ve seen of them, I honestly find them kind of annoying, but that’s not the point.
We have a big collection of the plastic capsules from Kinder eggs and other surprise eggs, mostly given us empty from other people. My daughter loves using them for crafting and one day asked me if we could make Minions out of them. Awesome idea, as their shape and color are perfect for Minions! Want to make some, too, with your little ones? Here’s what to do:
Gather your materials: plastic surprise eggs, ice pick or awl, scissors, permanent markers, pipe cleaners, yarn (not pictured). Optional materials are white craft glue, small paintbrushes and fabric scraps (not pictured).
First things first. Draw a Minion face on the egg with permanent markers. Our eggs didn’t open in the center, so we kept the smaller top part for the eyes and the bigger bottom part for the mouth and body. Then mark where you want to insert the arms and legs.
I love my ice pick and use it for loads of crafts. The tip got a little bent out of shape making tons of bottle cap dog tags, but it still works perfectly for making holes in plastic. This is done the same way I prepared my advent calendar eggs: heating up the tip in a flame and poking it through the plastic while still hot.
Quick and easy holes!
Get your pipe cleaners and chose the color you want for the arms and/or legs. Stick one end of the pipe cleaner inside the body from the outside. Bend the end over itself two or three times and pull the pipe cleaner back out so that just the bent end stays inside the egg.
Now twist the pipe cleaner around a few times outside of the egg while keeping it still inside with your finger to keep it from coming back out.
Trim the limb to the desired length…
…and you’ve got yourself a bald little Minion!
If you want a Minion like the one with flattened-down hair, you can just draw it on with your permanent markers. If you’d like some fun hair, heat up your ice pick again and make an even number of holes on the top of the head. Four is fine for a bit of hair sticking out from up top.
Pick out some yarn. I had some fun novelty yarns that were perfect for hair. Thread your yarn into a thick-eyed needle.
Insert it into one of the holes…
…and stick it back out through an adjacent hole. If you’re using yarn scraps, pull the hole thing through until just two or three inches are sticking out. If you’re using yarn from a ball or skein, pull through 25 inches or so and cut it.
To get thicker hair, you’ll want to thread it through the same holes at least another time, depending on your yarn size. You’re going to want to make loops. So while passing the needle and yarn through the original hole another time, pass the yarn over your finger at about the same length as the tail of the yarn to keep from pulling it all the way through. Push it back outside the egg again.
Now do the same again with the remaining holes. Don’t forget to always loop the yarn over your finger. Repeat as often as necessary to get relatively thick hair.
Tie a nice tight double knot around the base of the hair, where it comes out from the head, using the long end of your yarn. Help yourself with the needle if necessary. Then snip off the yarn end.
If you want long hair, just snip the loops of yarn. But you’ll probably want to give your Minion a hair cut. (The kids *loved* that part!)
Use your imagination with the hair. Try adding different colors of yarn, threading through one, and then the other. (Thread the thicker yarn first.)
Or make a long-haired Minion. This one actually had much longer hair which I first braided, but doing so made it looks much less full. Then one of our little Minion-creators decided to give her a trim.
Our original plan was also to cut up fabric scraps and glue them on for clothes. But alas, this was not a project for little brother Nicky and he was really acting up at this point because he wanted to be included, so these Minions stayed naked (and one without hair or legs).
Sofia loves making accessories for her toys. She found a smaller surprise egg that already had holes in it and decided to make a bag out of it. This particular novelty yarn wasn’t the best choice, but it was what she wanted, so that’s what we used.
First we snipped a piece of the yarn, leaving one puff in the center and snipping off the yarn threads right next to the adjacent puffs. I threaded the ends through the holes so that they were both on the inside, and knotted them off.
After trimming the ends off, we had a nice little bag. We then cut off those adjacent puffs from the yarn and those became telephones, which were carried in the bag.
We also used regular Kinder surprise eggs for suitcases. If you do this, make sure you make your handle holes far enough towards the sides of the egg, or else you might make one of them in a double layer, like I did, which makes the hole totally useless.
And there you have it! Your cute little DIY Minions with bags and suitcases for cellphones and other goodies they might need! Do you want to give this project a go? Post your pictures of this or any other Cucicucicoo-inspired project on the Cucicucicoo Creations Flickr pool, that way everyone can see them!
