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| This year, one of my favorite families came up with a very creative idea to showcase their family's personalities. |
And the story goes like this:
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| Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar, and a handsome bag of Planter's Salted Peanuts. |
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| They met and fell in love! |
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| They had four delicious "babies": Butterfingers, Snickers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, and Peanut M & M's. |
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| The Butterfinger bar was their firstborn. He is very responsible and helpful with his younger "peanut & chocolate" siblings. He is also very tall. |
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| Then along came the next offspring. The Snickers bar. He provides a lot of chuckles to their family life. |
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| And of course, "Snickers really satisfies you!" |
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| Then along came a single serving Peanut Butter Cup. He is covered in cute chocolate and very sweet on the inside. |
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Lastly, a "FUN SIZE" addition to top off their family. Peanut M & M's. She is fun and colorful and you just want to eat her all up!
Did you enjoy that story?
Now would you like to see a little bit of how they were created? |
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| We started by assigning each family member to each treat. And of course, I had to taste all of them, you know, to get into the characters - that's what a good "costumer" does, after all. |
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I took each person's measurements and estimated fabric yardage for main bodies and lettering and details.
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| I graphed it out to get the right proportions. This was to help in estimating size and how much fabric to buy. |
Then I bought yards and yards of felt. And some "WonderUnder" for fusing and applique.
I cut and sewed the main bodies to the proper size for each family member. (See diagram below for specifics).
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I went to my local copy center and enlarged those chocolate bar wrappers by 200%. Then some by another 200%. After piecing and cutting and taping, I arrived at the perfect-sized letters for each candy. (Of course, this is just a sampling of the hundreds of pieces, as you can imagine.)
I then painstakingly cut out those paper letters. Then transferred those cuttings to the right felt colors.
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For the smaller letters, I fused the Wonder Under to the backside of the felt, then traced the letters backwards (mirror image) and cut those out.
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| Then I just peeled off the paper backing and ironed (fused) them onto the main body in the correct position. (I actually used a press cloth in between when I fused.) |
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I traced around the larger letters and just cut them inside the Sharpie line. They were just held in position with pins and I sewed an outline around each letter.
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Yes, I sewed around every one of them, people! Yeah, that's how I roll. No cheapy-cheapy for me. Or maybe that's the OCD part of me I cannot let go of. Oh well, I think it was worth it. This family can wear these costumes out, but those letters will never come off on the wash or play.
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I added special details as needed, like the embroidered "m" on the Peanut M & M's.
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I appliqued the m&m's and the peanuts on in a random fashion.
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| And the special face and arm details on Mr. Peanut. |
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I sewed across the top for the shoulders, leaving an opening for the head in the center. Then bottom hem was just left open for walking. I left armholes open. And in the Planter's Peanuts, I cut side slits to access pockets. Some of the wrappers got the raggedy-edge treatment just like the original wrappers.
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Then they purchased shirts, pants,and jammies to wear underneath.
Here are pictures of the candy before everyone tried them on!
Then it was time for the photo shoot.
And a recap of each one in costume!
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Wouldn't you say this was ALL worth it?!
I will never look at these chocolate bars the same - EVER! |
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