Hand Made Monster High Wig

My daughter is in love with monster high  right now.  I think it's mostly because the older girls like monster high, but whatever the case may be, she does enjoy playing with these dolls!  So of course when I asked her what she wanted to be for Halloween this year, her answer was "Frankie!" - a monster high character for those of you who don't already know ;)

 

Now I don't know about you, but I personally do not like those wigs that you can buy at the costume shops.  They are full of static and after you wear them once they are practically destroyed! So I asked a friend of mine who is also very crafty, if she had any ideas! She sent me the following link: http://blog.booturtle.com/2011/11/jasmine-yarn-wig.html - I was amazed at how real this wig looked! So I set out to make one for my daughters costume!

 

She was so happy with how the wig that she requested that I make a bunch of them for her fashion show that she will be having at her birthday party (in April!!!!)

 

I did a little step by step on how I made this wig - but for a full instructional step by step please visit the above link! I found it very helpful!

 

First step was to take a pair of tights and use them for the wig foundation! True you can go and buy a brand new pair of tights from Walmart for about $5-$6 - but since my daughter only wears dresses (yes that is correct, only dresses - it's actually a good thing sometimes.... if she is acting up, I can say things like "Hey if you don't do..... I will take all your dresses away and you will have to wear pants today!!!" The reaction that gets is priceless!!!)

 

So anyways, she has an entire drawer full of old tights, or tights that I feel are too scuzzy to wear to school or in public, so she is only allowed to wear them in the backyard to play! And as it so happens, these tights are perfect for mommy to use in the creation of these monster high wigs!

 

I took the tights and put them on her head first.  Then I tied a knot in the les right at the crown of her head.  Next I sewed the tights just above the knot.  Once that was done, I cut the legs off. (don't throw those away though - they will come in handy in a little bit!!

 

 

Next I tried to figure out how long to make the wig.... once I made a guess as to how long it needed to be, I set out to find something in the house that I could use to wrap the yarn around that was the same length that I was looking for! Ding, ding, ding - the winner was my kids lego table! I started at one side and wrapped the yarn over and under and over and under until I was happy with how much yarn I had.  Now the yarn I was using was actually free from a friend of mine, but for colours for the upcoming wigs (I will post those pictures once I make them) that I did not currently have, I actually went to the Dollar tree and found a number of colours there!

 

Once I was finished rolling everything, I cut along the one end of the table.....

 

 

.......and I was left with a bunch of really long strands.

Take those strands and make a number of piles, each with approximately 10-12 strands of yarn in each pile.

 

Fold them each in half and you are ready to begin sewing them together! Don't forget, for Frankie you also need to cut black yarn for her highlights ;)

 

 

Now it's time to sew! At first I followed the way that I read about from the Jasmine wig and used the sewing machine to sew the strands directly onto the tights.... I found that it was too difficult for me and finished the wig (especially with the alternating colours) by hand.  I took my strands, folded them in half and ran them through the sewing machine.  Then while I was watching tv, I sewed them into place by hand! Tried it on my daughter a few times to get the right fall of the "hair" and it worked out just great for me!

 

 

The bangs: I went back and used the leg portion of her tights for this! Worked great for adding that extra height to the wig too!

 

First, I rolled the tights up.....

 

 

Then I hand stitched the openings together until I had two little "pillows"

 

Sew them onto the wig base (by hand)



 

 Add the yarn and poof!!! You have bangs! I also used a little bit of hot glue to secure the bang strands in place and I found that it was very helpful!

 

ALOT of black and white groupings later, and she has a fantastic wig to go with her Frankie costume! And yes, mommy will of course make more for the birthday party in April ;)

 

Miss Frankie Stein is ready to trick or treat!

 

 

The shoes were a great find from value village and I just used duct tape to make the white stripes! There is another way to make these shoes though if you are not looking to ruin your daughters black heels - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ESWxLV9Mw - you will also find some great makeup tutorials from this little girl! My daughter loves to watch Emma transform herself into the monsters! 

 

 

Monster High Doll House

 

This year for Christmas my daughter asked for a Monster high doll house..... now she was asking me for the monster high doll houses that you can purchase in the stores like this one

Did you know they want $100 for this little piece of plastic?! It got me to thinking - what other options are out there? A lot of people take Barbie houses and paint them and they look great! I was all set to o that route when I came across this amazing blog page: http://lolasminihomes.blogspot.ca/

This woman makes the most amazing doll houses out of cardboard boxes!!! AND she makes full instructional videos on how she makes  everything! It's a great blog and I highly recommend that you take a look!

 

I have taken a few photo's of my doll house to show the process as well as the final product - but for anyone thinking about taking on this HUGE project please visit the above blog site, it is SO worth it! I was able to get all of my cardboard boxes from a department store - the only things I paid for were the glue, paints and accessories! It didn't cost a lot of money to make - but it was a HUGE undertaking and I literally spent months working on this project!

 

Cardboard is all glued and assembled - next step is paper mache!

 



 

Finally have this monster sized doll house covered and it's ready for the paint!

 

 

All set up for a Monster Make Over!

 

My friend found this bath tub for me at Walmart! Works perfect for the bathroom!

All of the rooms were hand painted and I just added some bling from stickers that I found at the dollar store! The pictures on the walls were little frames I found at Micheal's and I just painted them silver and printed out photos to go inside!

 



 

The beds were really easy to make - sponges from the dollar store, and left over cardboard! All covered in fabric! Jewels from the dollar store (the dollar stores were great for helping me to add embellishments to this creation!)

 

After working on this doll house for so many months, I was tired, and Christmas was fast approaching - something had to give and it was this room :( I made sure to paint it up real nice because I knew there was no way I would have time to make furniture for it! It actually worked out ok though - my daughter got draculaura's car for Christmas and she has taken to parking it in this room!! LOL!! So I guess it is a fancy garage? Hahahahaha!

 

 

The end result? My baby girl loves her new doll house and has lot's of new monster high dolls to put inside! She even got the 13 wishes oasis for Christmas and it fits perfectly on the balcony! Sometimes things just work out I guess!

 

Never again will I take on a huge project like this though - it took so long (especially since I could only work on it when she was in school). I LOVE how it all came together and I am so proud that I made this amazing doll house!

 

 

 

 

Monster High Party!

 

My little sister's birthday was all about Monster High! She had no idea what her mom and I had planned for the party - we did everything while she was in school and because I did a lot of the work, she never saw anything until the day of her party!!  It was fun trying to create this party all in secret! Even my daughter didn't realize that it was for Mia's birthday party!

 

First we started with the invitations! Mia loves Draculaura so we decided to go with that!  I have a great program that I bought for my digital scrapbooking - it's from Creative Memories and has made such a difference in all of my photo's and how I can edit them!  

After the images were all printed and the skulls were cut out, I took the ribbon and taped it in the center of the card, wrapped it around the whole card and had it trail out the bottom of the invitation.  After that I glued the card on top of the ribbon making sure to leave the bottom of the card free of glue so that the skull portion would still pull down!  Once everything was done I tucked the skull up inside the card and the invitations were all finished!

 

 

For the goody bags we thought it would be cute to give all of the little girls their very own purses! So after doing a quick google search, I found a pattern for cutting out your own paper purses!  I drew up my own pattern and then was able to put together these great purses! Everything is made from Bristol board except for the skulls - those were made with foam, and I stuck Velcro dots on the backs so that the girls could close their purses!

 

 

I even made these little Monster High tags to hang off the sides of the purses - we used a silver pen to write each girls name on their goody bag!

 

The boys couldn't very well be going home with pink purses but we wanted to keep with the same theme, so we went with the Monster High skull, changed the position of the bow as well as the colour! Huge hit with the boys!  These bags were made out of the same foam as the Super Mario goody bags that I made for my daughters party!

 

 

This party was a pool party but we still wanted to have some fun activities for the kids to do in between swimming!  So I thought it would be a lot of fun for the kids if they could pretend to be the Monster High characters! I used foam core and painted the images of four of the characters onto the boards.  In all honesty I was not impressed with how they turned out - don't get me wrong, I love how they looked and the kids had a blast playing with them, but I found that the paint caused the paper on the foam core to peel away from the boards! It was frustrating, but at least I have ideas for the next time now! I plan on trying something a little different next time I make these for a party!

 

 

Frankie

 

Draculaura

 

Clawdeen Wolf

 

 

Even the boys had fun with these!!!

Cleo

 

The girls had a sleepover at my house the night before the party - so I got them both ready to go! The night before I dyed their hair (you really can't see it in the brown hair unless you catch her under certain light :( - but the blonde turned out great!) How did I dye their hair!? Well that would be with bingo dabbers from the $1 store!!  All you do is put on some gloves, then take a section of hair, place a paper towel in between the hair and your glove and dab/grad that bingo dabber through the hair! Colour looks great in the blonde hair - and it washes out within a day or so! The colour comes out very easily and even washes out of pillow cases (my daughter had a fever one night while she had the dye in her hair and sweat all over her pillow case - stuck it in the washer the next day and it came out clean! I was so happy!!)

 

The girls had lots of makeup on too for the party and I was even able to paint little fangs on their lips!! lol!! Ohhhhh, so scary right!

 

 

Now for the cake!!  We thought we would go with something a little different this year - so we bought push pops from Micheals (don't forget your coupons!) - these little treats are a lot of fun and the kids love them! Perfect portion sizes for the little munchkins! And they are re-useable - just make sure everyone knows not to throw them out! 

 

The push pops were perfect, I was able to incorporate all of the main characters into the cake with these! And the kids all got to take home their characters! The cake was an 8" cake to feed the grown ups and the rest was Styrofoam! You don't always need a ton of cake to get a big effect!

 

The Monsters are print outs that have been glued onto foam core and then cut out!  I then just added a little hot glue and attached them to their colour coded cake pops! The kids LOVED them and they actually ate all of their cake!

 

 

Draculaura is a piece of foam core that was covered in fondant and then painted with food colouring! The birthday girl kept this topper!

 

 

I also made cookies for the party! High heel shoes, skulls, Frankie hearts, and Draculaura lips! The kids loved them - one of the little boys came up to me and said "these are the best cookies that I have ever had" - LOVE that little boy! He made my day!

 

 

This is how we put everything together on the food table! I used a great technique that I found on pinterest for the table cloth! We draped the table with the black table cloth (you can find black at Walmart!) and then took two sided tape to run around the table.  The I took the purple table cloth and started to loosely pleat the cloth around sticking it to the tape!  It worked perfectly and I am in love with this technique!  So much nicer then just a flat table cloth, and so easy to do! 

 

The goody bags were used in the decoration of the table and I also took a couple of table cloths and used them to decorate the window behind the table! The purple ball in the middle of the window is actually from my daughters princess party a few years ago.... it was a little mushed, but once we hung it up and fluffed it up - it didn't look too bad! These balls were made with the help of a you tube video - tissue paper balls - you can also buy them in the stores - but they are so easy to make!

 

 Overall the party was a hit and the birthday girl loved everything! Happy birthday Mia Bean!