Words really can't describe how excited I am about a collaboration between the Muppets and Jason Schwartzman. Along with the Muppets Movie and Moonrise Kingdom, I cannot wait to see this.

Make :: Hot Box!

ASH FOX AND KRISTOFFERSON FOX COSTUME TUTORIAL

Every year the dental society hold an event where we dress up and do a pub crawl, but there is no particular theme in place. In my first year, I went as an old woman; big boobs, grey hair, granny clothes and in second year I went as Medusa - I made a dress out of a bed sheet and made snakes out of pipecleaners and put them in my hair.

For my most recent one, a couple of ideas crossed my mind. I had just become infatuated with Wes Anderson and all of his characters so it was a toss up between Max Fischer (of Rushmore) and one of my older ideas, Max from 'Where The Wild Things Are'. Sitting at the computer staring at pictures of the both of them, thinking about which would be easier and also more interesting to do I got hit by one of my best ideas yet; Ash Fox. The perfect combination of Max Fischer's social awkwardness with the same amount of dressing up as an animal as Max from WTWTA. Perfect. Plus, who can resist a little fox who modifies a tube sock as a bandit hat and wears it out in public? Not me.

There are loads of tutorials on how to make a Fantastic Mr. Fox mask, however none of them dealt with how to make the muzzle, something I wanted to do to make the outfit more authentic (as far as an Indian girl dressed as a fox in gym clothes goes...) So here it is, I hope someone out there finds it useful!

WHAT YOU NEED:

• Felt, in ORANGE, GREY and CREAM
• Needles and black thread
• 2 pairs of white socks
• White beanie hat
• Black balaclava
• Paint - white red and yellow. I used oil paint which was fine but it dries really slowly
• Compass
• Cream or grey: sweatshirt and sweat pants
• Cream towel
• Safety pins

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Due to it being the largest piece, cut out the tail first. Make it into some sort of tail like shape and about the length of your forearm (to your fingertips).

2. For the cream bit, just lay the cream on top and trace out the shape I’ve shown, and sew this onto the original tail.

3. Next do the face. Using a compass draw out a 7 inch circle onto the cream felt and orange felt. Cut out the whole circle for the cream then cut this in half. For the orange, draw a line through the middle of the circle and cut out just one of the halves (a semicircle).

4. Sew one of the cream halves to the orange half, try to make the stitches as small as possible so they don’t show too much. Even if they do it’ll make it look handmade so that’s not so bad. (I’ve shown grey up there as you do the same with grey for Kristofferson)

5. Once sewn together, cut out a wedge from the orange half, off centre. This will make the orange segment smaller than the cream and the reason for this is that on normal foxes they have a lot more white/cream showing on their muzzles than they do orange/red, so this makes it look a BIT more authentic as far as felt faces go…

6. Now, take the cut part that is further from the cream, and fold this over to the midline and sew it up - this is going to make a 3D cone shape muzzle for the face. At this point it will become a bit smaller in diameter.

7. Now you can sew on the nose with the black thread, make it sort of a triangle shape. I also added whiskers using those black plastic ties you get to hold wires together but just threading them through the sewn pieces and pulling them out the other end. Another alternative would be to use thin pipe-cleaners. It should look like this now, and will be a cone shape

8. Now for the ears. These are fairly easy and can be made with the leftover felt. Trace out an ear shape onto the orange felt and cut this out, then do a smaller version of this on the cream felt. Do the same for the other ear. Sew the cream onto the orange piece. I did it so the stitches showed and you could also do a BLANKET STITCH to make the edge black - I did this because if you look at Ash’s ears and foxes in general, the outer part of the ear fur is black and not actually orange. Not essential but just some detail to add if you wanted.

Now that all the foxy pieces are done, we move on to the best part, the sock mask!

9. Put on the beanie and put it on your face how you’re going to wear it. Cut 2 holes where your eyes will be and one for around where your nose/ mouth are. Make sure the eyes aren’t too far apart or it will look freaky, and don’t make them too close together or it’ll become a weird cyclops thing. Also, to add to the Ash-ness of the sock, I painted on the rim a red-then yellow- then red line to make it look like the neck of a sock. I did this with oil paints.

10. Looks like a Shy-Guy from Super Mario… Now to add the face and ears. Do the muzzle first - it’s tricky but pull it through the mouth hole and shape it so it’s symmetrical and the right sort of shape, check the profile and amount of orange showing vs cream. Try to get it right! I had to put a fold on each side of mine to get it to sit properly which you can incorporate into your stitches used when sewing the orange and cream together. Sew this in place.

11. Now add the ears onto the best suitable position and sew into place. Another option would be to sew the ears onto a headband, and cut holes into the beanie. This would help with times when you want to take the mask off, if you had some sort of nose or facepaint on. Bear in mind that it WILL get hot in this mask and the clothes!

12. Finally for the mask, add the sock on the top of the head, as this is what makes the mask really. To do the sock, paint the toe and the heel red; I did this using oil paints. I then trimmed the sock at the neck as it was way too long! Stuff it with the sock’s pair, and sew it onto the top of the mask. While you’re at it, paint a red rim onto another pair of socks - these are to wear and tuck your trousers into.

13. Finally, for the badge. Ash wears this little red ‘A’ badge on his top. To make it I cut out a circle of red felt using a jam jar lid, and drew an A on it. I then painted the parts that were meant to be cream (I’m not sure if it was yellow or white so I used both and it ended up cream…) and it should look like this:

14. Now sew this onto your jumper. Put on the towel as a cape and pin in position, pin the tail onto the sweat pants and tuck them into your painted socks, put on your mask and you’re done!

Make :: Gypsy Caravan

ROALD DAHL INSPIRED BED

One recent day, when sitting at home wondering (again!) how to spend my money, I had a quick look at Amazon at some books. I've been trying to increase the amount of books I've read because if I'm being honest, I'm one of the least well-read people I know. As usual however, I trailed off and sought after some Wes Anderson inspired books and came across one called 'The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox' at a discounted price, an offer I couldn't really turn down! This book is wonderful and in detail it talks about where Wes has drawn inspiration from for not only the story, but the clothes of each character and their rooms, and the chairs that they sit on.

On particular thing that caught my eye was Ash Fox's (Mr Fox's son) bed. The red colour and the golf detailing were (as described in the book), inspired by some doors in Roald's gypsy caravan.

Now, for some time I've had my eye an old TV stand that some neighbours have had outside their flat for roughly 4 months now. Once I got inspired I decided to take it; thankfully no one put up a notice enquiring of it's disappearance because I had painted it within the hour I took it! So here's how it started out:

The masking tape was placed around the edges to create a 3mm border, exactly 1 masking tape width away from the edge. I also did this on the sides along with a smaller box border to mimic the design on the drawers. A few things I didn't think about when I did this:

1. The thickness of the paint. It was actually really thin, so I needed to put on several layers before the paint stopped showing
2. The fact that masking tape pulls off paint on the edges (whoops)
3. Doing things free-hand normally results in them not being symmetrical (double whoops)

Nevertheless, I did what I could before I left my flat and came home for summer - there's still the curved bits to do on the sides - but considering it started out as nothing at all, I'm really quite pleased with it!

Make :: Master of Foxes

KRISTOFFERSON SILVERFOX PUPPET

As I was walking through town a few weeks ago, I wandered into a craft shop in the market. Walking around, just looking for something to spend my money on, I came across some lovely grey and blue felt. I wanted it, but I didn't really know what to do with it, so I decided to make a needle book as at the moment all my sharp objects are stacked in my sewing box waiting to implant themselves into my fingers.

When I got home as I went to put the felt away I found my other pieces of felt, some white, some beige and as I laid them out in front of me, it hit me. Kristofferson!

Kristofferson is the gentle shy and very talented fox from Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, with the most beautiful blue eyes and large grey ears, he's also got the most adorable outfit.

I really didn't put much thought into making this, because I'm the kind of person who does things like this on a whim and without really planning them out first, so I don't have any sketches but I took photos at each stage, so here they are. Hope you like it!

I never got around to actually adding on his tail or his shoes, but at least he can still meditate ;). The plan is to eventually make the whole family, including Kylie (!) but one thing at a time!

Life ::

Just over a year ago now was the first time I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox. For many reasons this film is special to me in so many ways, but the main thing I remember about that cold December day, is that it was the first time in years my whole family sat down and watched a film not only the whole way through without falling asleep, but together.

The first few things I put on here will be Wes Anderson inspired pieces of work, as his films inspire me in the most lovely way, so I hope you enjoy this blog and the things I make and ideas I come up with as much as I do.