A Bizarre Mutation for our Craft Challenge Entry

My daughter and I wanted participate in the Craftster's "Back to Basics" Challenge together. The challenge was to make something using one or more of the following supplies:

• Can tabs
• Pipe Cleaner (Chenille Stems)
• Pom Poms
• Popsicle Sticks

For the challenge we're now dubbing our creation a "A Fan-tailed Spider-fish Dragon". However, the daughter is referring to it as a "Spagon" now. I'm really surprised how few entries there are this round. (Not that we still have any hope of winning.) Some of the submissions are pretty neat ideas. Come check out the entries and vote!

You may, or may not, be wondering how we came up with such a strange creature. Well, daughter wanted to make a pop tab spider. And, since I already work with the tabs, I wanted to try my hand at make folding paper fans with popsicle sticks. So, we compromised. I helped her with the spider...



...and made my fans on the side by myself. ;)



My daughter was very particular about the spider project. I told her that we had to work with the supplies we already had, which it just so happened we had all four of. :) Though, I told her it wasn't necessary, she actually wanted to use all the supplies listed. (However, we couldn't think how to use the popsicle sticks in this one (until we added the fan fins and tail). ;) She made a sketch of her plan.



Isn't the drawing great?! She wanted us to deviate from the drawing as little as possible. I did manage to talk her into making it a container that opens on top. It was going to be a yarn ball holder. You'd put your ball in it so you don't have to chase it around while you knit, etc...

We wove can tabs together with the "shuneal" stem and attached the legs. She had to chose between orange and brown for the body. That was all I had enough of. It turned out resembling a small pumpkin before we added the legs and pom pom eyes. :)



After we finished the spider, I started to work on the fans the very same day. I can't remember making any fans since grade school. I had a lot of trouble with the first one:



I used some faux parchment paper experiments that I had leftover from another project. It was regular bond paper stained with coffee and tea. I stained the popsicle sticks with brown shoe polish and hammered a small piece of brass tubing into a rivet to hold the stick together.



For the last of the three fans, I used brown paper sack covered in black tissue paper. One side is brown and the other is black. I used some gold Rub n' Buff lightly over the black side. A gold keyring is holding the popsicle sticks together.

Since we were only allowed one entry in the challenge, we wanted to come up with a way to show off both projects. So, we decided to do one of two options. Either the spider-fish dragon or a spider-shaped fan holder. :)



We unanimously agreed the spider-fish dragon was much cooler. Wish us luck!

Don't forget to vote for your favorite!