Everyday Frugalista

My 20 year old daughter had a birthday coming up, and she is a huge fan of a Japanese Sanrio character called Gudetama.  He is literally a lazy egg yolk.  You can find him perched on a piece of toast with a bacon blanket wrapped around his shoulders.  He also has a butt crack, which is interesting for an egg yolk. Well, he is a hilarious character, no wonder she likes him so much!

We usually think of some theme for our family birthday parties, so my son and I came up with the perfect theme;   Gudetama!  The problem is , there isn’t a lot of party ware for an obscure (at least here in the US!)  cartoon available!  We found that the figures, socks, clothes, etc are pretty expensive, so I decided just to make a simple homemade centerpiece  out of two cheap foam sheets that can be found at any craft store.  I bought one yellow and one white each of the larger sheets.  Besides those two foam sheets, all I used was a hot glue gun and glue, one pipe cleaner, one piece of scrapbook paper, scrapbook alphabet letters, and a Sharpie and stapler!

First step:   I curled up the yellow sheet to make a tube, and stapled it shut in the back.

Flatten the circle a bit to give it an oval shape, and then cut an arch across the top cutting through both sides at once.  If you are uneasy about free-handing this, use a plate to draw a cut line across the top, then cut across at the line.

I just kept trimming until it resembled him, I had it cut way too tall to start with.  I probably ended up cutting it down about 1/3 of the original size.  

At this point, I used all the extra pieces of yellow to cut out the hands and feet.  Sorry I forgot to snap pictures of this part, but they are pretty basic.  His legs look like jelly beans, and his arms just look like fingers!  I  cut a tiny mouth out of the white foam board, and drew a black line around it’s mouth with a sharpie.  After I glued his mouth on, I just drew little slits for eyes directly on him with a Sharpie.   Be careful, it smears easily!  I hot glued all these items on him while he was still easily flattened.  I left little spot in one of the hands to hold the balloon so I could stick that in later.  It will look nice if you glue around the top edge of his head too.  Wouldn’t it have looked cute with a flowering plant, or some glittery flowers coming out of the middle?

I made the balloon out of pink scrapbook paper and gold foil lettering.  If you start in the middle of the paper, and write your message out, you’ll end up with plenty of room.    I then cut out a balloon shape around it, and hot glued a pipe cleaner all the way up the back of the balloon, so it would be held up sturdily all the way to the top, and wouldn’t flop over.   The bottom of the pipe cleaner got glued into his hand.

The last step was cutting out an egg white for him to sit on.   I cut out a large cloud out of the white foam piece, then hot glued the figure to the white foam, and Voila!

This is a super easy project, and cost less than $2.00!  Birthday party success!  Add a few yellow balloons, some yellow and white plates, and it was party time!  

I also wanted to show you a picture of the adorable cake our local bakery, Trefzger’s,  made. I had to give them a little education about our little egg yolk friend since he isn’t from around here, and the cake ended up looking perfect! Have you every made anything Gudetama?  I’d love to read comments about your creations!