CARING FOR YOUR NEW MONSTER PAL
Misadventures
A bored monster will be more likely to develop
night terrors and bad skin. Be sure to provide
a lot of open-ended and creative activities for you
and monster to do together. Examples: Take your
monster bowling; rent him shoes and buy him a
Personality Traits beer. Pretend to have loud arguments with your
Assigning your monster a few odd quirks can paint monster while riding on the bus. Make your monster
a clear picture of who he is on the inside. Examples: a MySpace page. Hold a highly publicized staring
Suspicious of flan. Makes audible tsk-tsks, but will contest with the odds in Vegas coming in at 40: 1
not mind if you use the last of the toothpaste. Solely in favor of the monster.
dedicated to the “forgotten art” of cornhusking.
Name
If you don’t give your monster a name, he will not be
able to make reservations at his favorite restaurant.
Good names are often ones you’d never be able to
name a child. Examples: Chauncey, Smudge, Burrito.
VARIATIONS ON A MONSTER
Monster Skin
You’ve got felt, towels you swiped from a motel, or
sheets you don’t sleep on anymore. I find the best
and cheapest place for crazy monster skin to be the
children’s clothing section of my local thrift store.
For a couple of bucks, you can take home a bright
pink fun-fur jacket or a pair of bright blue corduroy
pants. Cut the clothes up, making sure to maximize
the usable flat parts of the fabric.
WARNING: While children’s clothing at the
thrift store comes in an unlimited number of
colors and textures, it too often comes fully
equipped with the undesirable smells of sour
milk and feet. Wash your monster skin treasures
first, so your monster starts life fresh and clean.
Body Image
Get started with our simple designs for body
shapes, limbs, and eyes and teeth (shown here),
all downloadable as PDFs from
craftzine.com/06/
monsters. Then mix and match, cut and paste, and
generally throw together the different pieces to
create an endless variety of monsters.
TIP: Bodies, eyes, and teeth can be used at
any angle. Try making a long, horizontal monster,
or a monster with a tiny head and huge bottom.
Hairiness
Using your yarn of choice, vary the length of the
loops to create different hairdos. Examples: Short
loops in the front with longer loops in the back gets
you a monster mullet. Short loops in a row around
the back from temple to temple will make a semibald monster — add a bit of velcro and faux fur
and you’ve got a monster toupée. How about yarn
bundles under each arm for some armpit fluff?
