Cupcake Bin

I started this blog because I couldn't find any crafting/sewing/quilting blogs that I could relate to. Too many of them catered to crafters with kids. I don't have any kids and do most of my crafting for theater or just what I need for my childless, adult existence. This post may look like a craft for kids, but it came about in a completely different way.

A couple friends and I have put together a burlesque troupe and were working on putting on our first show (see totally not kid-related). Our event (which happened this past weekend) was to be gluttony or indulgence themed since it was happening in November (Thanksgiving as a theme is not exactly sexy) so our numbers were about food and booze.

I had this fabulous idea to do a super cheeky French number with uber cutesy costumes (think Katy Perry in California Girls) that starts sweet and ends with unexpected twerking (it turned out awesome BTW). To go with the cutesy theme I wanted us to have little cupcake stools to sit on to start the number. The other two girls in the troupe have woodworking significant others so I was hoping one of them could make a simple stool base that I could then upholster like a cupcake, but alas they were both too busy and it was up to me to do some clever crafting.

And was I ever clever! As if you would ever doubt me.

It's made from a kids toy storage bin and I covered it in such a way that it still opens up and can be used as a bin. It's not as easy to carry with the covering, but it's light and easy to move around.

I tried to find a simple stool at Target that I could cover, but what I found was either too large or too expensive. And then I saw these:

They came in two different styles: Frozen and Ninja Turtle. So I bought three, got some cheap vinyl (1 yd for each cupcake), some buttercream colored felt (2 yds of wide felt for 3 cupcakes), and some poly fiberfil seat cushions at Walmart and got to cupcaking.

I'll go through step by step on how I covered the bins, but a couple notes first. I used hot glue which isn't great at sticking to either plastic or vinyl - it will work, for awhile, but it's easy to rip off. The felt on the lids stayed well stuck, but the vinyl around the bottom had some issues. As things came apart I re-glued them with super glue. The super glue worked much better, but due to the size of the project it might be worthwhile to start with hot glue and come back through as needed with the super glue.


So, starting with the lid. I took a seat cushion and cut it into a circle the same size as the lid. Using the cushion corners that I cut off I kind of built up the center since the lid was concave in the middle. Then I covered that with the cushion circle.

Then came the felt, I had to gather it a bit to get it to the right shape, and actually managed to do so without burning myself with the glue gun (don't worry - that part happens later.)

All that was left was to trim the excess felt so that the lid went back on properly.

For the base of the bin/cupcake, I cut my vinyl in half against the grain (not that vinyl really has a grain) and folded the edges on 2 sides to make a clean edge. I pleated the vinyl every 3 inches and just glued it on the top since I would have to adjust for the taper of the bin once I glued it on.

One half of the yard of vinyl made it about 3/4 of the way around so I did have to use some of the second half. Once I made it all the way around the top I went through and glued the bottom pleats in place (this is where I burned myself).

Then I just glued all the pleats over the bottom and covered with a circle cut from the remainder of the second half of the vinyl. And there you have it.

We eventually went through and added some felt sprinkles to the top. 

If I had had more time I might have added a ruffle around the lid or something like that, but oh well. I don't have a picture of all three cupcakes - as you can see from the pictures, one was pink, one was blue, and one was green - but I do have a picture of us in our super cute costumes that go with the cupcakes:

Halloween - Graveyard Cabaret

This year I was lucky enough to be asked to co-produce a Tim Burton inspired cabaret show for Halloween. I did a couple numbers last year in the Halloween show put on by the local Cabaret group the Kit Kat Club. While I was discussing ideas with them I mentioned that I had always wanted to do a Tim Burton inspired show for Halloween. Well the idea stuck and that's what we did.

And it was most excellent. Easily one of the best Halloween variety shows I've seen.

My favorite Tim Burton movies are Beetlejuice, Corpse Bride, Big Fish, and Nightmare Before Christmas (not that I don't love all of the others as well) so I started re-watching movies for inspiration. Here's what I came up with:

From Beetlejuice: 

There's the scene where Beetlejuice is in the miniature model of the town harassing the Maitland's and their caseworker Juno distracts him with a devil themed strip club: Dante's Inferno Room. Since we were doing a cabaret show I thought it would be awesome to do a dance like he might see in Dante's Inferno Room.

I found some awesome music - Take Your Skin off and Dance by Martin Martini and the Bone Palace Orchestra - and three of us put together a sexy devilette number.

Here are some pictures (most photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

You can see some of our awesome graveyard set in some of those.

From Corpse Bride: There was an awesome number by Bonejangles and the Bone Boys where the tell the story of how the corpse bride came to be. The song is called Remains of the Day.

I decided that I wanted to do a black light skeleton tap dance to this song. Unfortunately tap dance isn't my specialty and I wasn't able to do all the choreography myself, so I enlisted the expertise of my talented friend Aly Cardinalli for some help with the choreography. It also took awhile to find tap dancers - they are a dying breed.

Since it was black light we also had a ninja come in with some props here and there.

Pictures (photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

There's some ghosts in the background of the first picture and a veil, "the family jewels" and a "satchel of gold" in the second.

I had never done a black light number before and it was very interesting to do. I wish we had had more time to work on how we looked in the black light since the skeleton was only on the front part of the costume. There's a couple places where it was hard to see some of what we were doing.

Inspired by Big Fish: Since I had decided last year that there would be no Thriller this year I decided to do a group circus number to make up for it.

I found the most fabulous song by Vermillion Lies called Circus Apocalypse. It was awesome and creepy and the words were all about joining the circus, but you have to die first. Just perfect for a Tim Burton Cabaret.

So I put together a group and did a creepy circus dance with acrobats, clowns, a bearded lady, a strong man, lion and lion tamer, a knife thrower, a tightrope walker (me!) and of course, a ring master.

I made my tightrope walker costume - it's the only costume I made for this show which is very weird for me.

Pictures (photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

 

 

From Nightmare Before Christmas: As a group we sang a portion of This is Halloween to open the show. We were onstage with just flashlights so I don't have any pictures of that.

Our finale was to Jump in the Line by Harry Belafonte - which of course you remember from Beetlejuice.  I made some skull maracas for the finale:

We had a lot of fun decorating the stage and coming up with a set for the show. Not only did we have the lovely graveyard, but we also had a tree, a coffin filled with a skeleton orchestra (you can see them in the photo of the ringmaster and the strong man above), and a coffin entrance:

That's the tree next to the coffin entrance - it had a false back so you could through the coffin.

I also decorated some bottles to use a vases, and a vase:

 

 

The bottles were painted with spray paint then decorated with puff paint. The vase was just lined with puff paint - I had originally planned on making the lines straight, but that didn't work out, and I think it looks even better with the squiggly lines.

I also made what I am now referring to as "noddle plants" since they were made from pool noodles:

 

I cut out spirals from the noodles and shoved them into cross-sections of the noodles for the base. Then I spray painted them. On some I added some puff paint for extra color. I hot glued them together and had to hot glue the whole thing on a small piece of plywood because they were too light and didn't want to stay standing.

Apparently I didn't take any close up pictures of them completed. Here's some cropped out of other photos from the show - oops:

They were stuck in among all the tombstones in the graveyard:

It really was an awesome show.