With Halloween just around the corner, this seemed perfect for my first crafting post. This particular craft came about, because of an animal cracker container. I don’t know about everyone else, but when my family finishes a container of snacks, it tends to sit on our counter for a good week before we decide to throw it away or use it for something. My daughter wants to have a Halloween party this year, so we decided to make a cookie jar out of this container that we could display at the party. We threw around ideas such as a robot, Frankenstein, or minion. Well we landed on the idea of a minion, but my daughter took it further. She wanted it to be a minion who went out on Halloween dressed up as a bunny. Later that night it got bit and turned into a zombie. This is the best part about crafting with your kids. They have the best ideas!

Our Week

Before I start explaining how we created this character, I want to share how our week went. This week hasn’t been filled with school like it normally would be. Both of the children came down with these horrible colds. After about the third day of doing school work, my daughter was losing more and more focus the sicker she got. Wednesday was a very long day of trying to get school done, so I decided the rest of the week would be school free. Instead of just sitting around watching shows on Thursday, we decided to do this craft. It was great, because it didn’t take too much focus on her part. We spent the whole day on this one craft. The next day, she was watching a show on Prime Video called “Creative Galaxy”, which is full of all sorts of fun crafting ideas. It showed how to make an idea bag out of a box. The other empty container on our counter this week was for goldfish, so that one got used too. This craft was all her doing! She just needed help when adding the handle to the top.

This was a very fun week of crafting minus the kids being sick. Praying that they will feel mostly better by tomorrow. My daughter missed out on dance class, STEAM class, and soccer this week. She is so ready to feel better. Hopefully this next week we can get back to our normal schedule of school work and extra activities. Let’s go ahead and get started on this fun little minion craft!

Supplies You May Need

• Hot Glue Gun (for an adult to use)
• One Animal Cracker Container
• 2 Gerber Baby Puffs Containers
• A few smaller rocks
• Yellow and Black Paint
• Felt fabric in pink, dark pink, black, and blue
• 2 canning lids
• Brown ribbon
• Pipe Cleaners
• Googly Eyes
• Craft Pom Poms
• White Paper
• Styrofoam Ball
• Markers

All of these supplies are things we already had at home on hand. Don’t go shopping for supplies unless you absolutely have to. You can definitely change these supplies out for things that will work for you and what you have at home. You may even want to turn it into a completely different character. Just have fun with it, and let your kids take the lead!

Step 1:

To start off, there was this label wrapped around the animal cracker container, so I soaked it in hot water for a while. This helped to peel off the label, but all the stickiness was still there. One fun tip that I learned from a friend and coworker a while back is that peanut butter will take off the sticky residue. Just apply peanut butter all over the label remnants, and let it soak in hot water. When you come back to it, it will just need a light scrubbing. Wash the container and dry it and it is ready to use!

While the container is soaking, you can get the feet and bunny ears ready to go. These are made from the Gerber Baby Puffs containers. I just used a box knife along one of the ridges to cut the short ends off. These are the feet of our minion. Keep the lids on the feet, so you can put rocks in them for weight later on. On the longer half of the container, cut out a bunny ear. Then trace that ear onto another section, and cut that one out to match. You are now ready for painting!

Step 2:

This is the step that my daughter really got involved in and enjoyed. If we are crafting, she almost always asks to have paint out. She painted the entire outside of the animal cracker container yellow. We painted the lid as well, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It was not necessary, since we covered it completely. Plus the hot glue gun did not like the paint on the lid. I painted the feet black while she was painting the body. She decided it didn’t need a second coat of paint, because it is a zombie. You may decide that your project needs more than one coat. This took a while to dry, so we watched “Despicable Me 3” while we waited.

Step 3:

Once the paint was dry, I glued the feet together, and glued them to the bottom of the animal cracker container. Everything that is glued onto this minion, was done with a hot glue gun by me. This is when I went ahead and added rocks inside the feet, so that it is weighted down and won’t fall over easily. I then cut the blue felt into two identical overall shapes and two overall straps. When you cut these out, make sure they are a little too long. You can cut them down once they are on the minion. If your child does well with sharper fabric scissors, go ahead and hand the overalls to them. My daughter really had fun cutting rips and tears into the overalls.

When she was done, I went ahead and glued them on to the body. Start by gluing the top of the overalls on first. Center one piece on the front of the body and one piece on the back. Once they are glued onto the animal cracker container, apply some glue where the feet come together, and attach the middle of the felt there. Do the same on the other side of the body. Trim the felt to the length that looks the best for pants, and cut a few rips into it. This does not need to be perfect, because it is a zombie. Once the pants are all trimmed, glue the seams together, and glue them to the side of the feet.

Step 4:

Now we want to attach the arms. We had these yellow coil like pipe cleaners we used, but regular pipe cleaners will work too. I took a thumbtack and poked a hole on each side of the body just above the overalls. Then I thread the pipe cleaner through the hole, and bent the end over on the inside of the container. For the hands, we cut out four identical 3 fingered gloves out of black felt. Glue two gloves together around the end of the pipe cleaner on each arm. Now that the arms are finished, you can now glue the blue felt straps onto the overalls. Just position them right over the arms where they are attached and glue the ends to each corner of the overalls. Trim the length as needed. Then you can pick out some black pom poms to glue to the front as buttons.

Step 5:

It is now time to do the eyes! Take the brown ribbon and glue it around the top of the container as the strap for the goggles. Find a glass or bottle close to the size of the inside circle of the jar lids, and trace around it on white paper. Cut out and glue those white circles to the center of the jar lids. Then go ahead and glue large googly eyes in the center of the white circles. Once both eyes are finished, you can then glue them on, centering them on the front of the body and on the the ribbon. My daughter then cut and bent a smile from a red pipe cleaner that I glued on. She also cut out and bent scars for me to glue on all over. This was done with pink felt and red pipe cleaners. The body is now finished!

Step 6:

Lets focus on the lid now! Cut the Styrofoam ball in half and glue it to the center of the lid. Hot glue tends to melt Styrofoam, so it may not attach very well. This is fine, because it will be covered with felt. It is just there to add height and shape for the brain. Screw the lid onto the body and mark where the center of it is on the front of the body and the back. Then remove the lid, so you can start applying the pink felt. I glued on the the pink felt by lining up the edge of it with the center marks on each side of the lid. Glue the rest of the felt around the edge of the lid, folding it over as needed. Trim the felt around the edge of the lid. Repeat on the other half of the brain.

Step 7:

To get that brain look, cut out long skinny strips of the darker pink. Attach them to each side of the brain in a squiggly brain-like pattern. While I was doing this, my daughter was coloring the bunny ears we cut out at the start. She used a black and pink marker to make them look like bunny ears. She then handed them over to me with a black pipe cleaner to use as the headband. Glue the head band on first, and then glued the ears onto the pipe cleaner placing them evenly on top of the brain. She added one more detail that she absolutely thought her minion needed. She made some antennae and had me glue them to the front center of the brain and add googly eyes to the ends. My daughter said that it was a monster living in the minion’s brain!

Dance Party!

Well there you have it! That is how we created this zombie minion dressed up as a bunny! We plan on putting bone shaped sugar cookies in it for the party. It should be a fun centerpiece for our table. I hope you and your children have fun with this and make it your own! Please share pictures of your creations or ideas that you might have for those empty snack containers you have sitting on your counter!

Before I finish this up, I want to share one more thing with you. On Sundays, I get the wonderful privilege to put on kids worship for the children at our church. Today I didn’t get to do that, because the kids are still too sick. We still played music at home though. A favorite song of mine that I love to play for them almost every Sunday is “This is the Day”. In this song it repeats many times, “This is the day that the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” What a wonderful way to start each day. Rejoice in Him every day, because he made each day for you and me. Watch this fun music video with your kids. I love this version, because it directs it at the kids. It says, “We are the kids of the living God.” It also has many more great songs that play after it. Have a little dance party with your kids today. Thank you for crafting with me, and enjoy your day!