Un Poco Loco - Coco Ears DIY

I have been Un Poco Loco for Coco since I saw it in theaters! It is visually stunning!!! And the story, wow! I love Disney but Pixar specifically is dear to my heart. If you want to read more about how Pixar came to be, or are interested in leadership and business, I highly recommend the book Creativity Inc by the President of Pixar and Disney Animation, Ed Catmull. I've been wanting to reread it! Anyways...on to some DIYing!

I found a cute flower headband at Target a couple weeks back that was screaming to be a set of Coco ears. All of the felt flowers were already made, score!!! With that being done, this project only took one nap time to make (this is how I measure time now I guess).

I thought it would be so cute to completely embroider the Mama Coco skull onto the ears...I got two stitches in before a massive knot appeared and I chucked that idea. I just need to stick to hot glue. If you have the ambition and patience to sew, I'd love to see how they turn out, also you are a saint.

Supplies:

• Target flower headband (Target Spritz party collection $5, side note: if you are sensitive to how headbands feel, this one is a bit rigid. You can still use the flowers and put them on a more comfortable band)

• 1 foam sheet (Hobby Lobby)

• Felt: black, cream, pink, teal, light blue, orange (or whatever colors you like!)

• Pom pom ribbon (found on clearance in the target craft section this week)

• 6 cotton balls (or batting)

• Scissors

• Hot glue gun

I start all of my Mickey Ear projects by cutting out the foam sheets to size. I have a pair of park ears that I trace to get the right shape and proportion. If you don't already have a pair of ears, there are plenty of templates that you can print out from Pinterest by searching Mickey Ear DIY. I cut four pieces so that the foam is doubled up on each ear, making it a little more sturdy.

Next cut four pieces of your base felt color (in this case black), leaving enough room to later wrap the felt around the foam.

Attach the two foam pieces to each other using a couple dots of hot glue. Next, if you would like to sew the felt portions of the ears, you can do that by sewing along the curved edges and leaving the bottom open. Place the foam inside and stuff with 1 & 1/2 cotton balls on each side, or to whatever puffiness you like :). I chose to hot glue the edges to save time, as shown below. It looks more messy, but the pink trim on these ears helps to cover my mistakes.

I start by wrapping one piece of felt around the foam and stuffing with hot glue, leaving the bottom slit open.

Do the same process with the other piece of felt and cotton balls, this time hot gluing the edges to overlap the piece of felt that is already attached.

To hide the hot glue seem, cover it with the pom pom trim, using a thin line of hot glue to attach it with the poms facing upward, and trim the ribbon at the corners.

At this point, I started to decorate my ears. The fun part!!! The Mama Coco skull movie poster (found on google images) was what I used to make my skull shape. If you don't want to free hand this portion, I recommend printing an image out and cutting it out to trace. You could also do this when making the letters for the Un Poco Loco ear. For the Mama Coco skull, all of the cuts were made by folding the felt in half to make it more proportional (like making paper snowflakes). There are a lot of fun things you could put on these! I considered Dante, the colorful flags, the famous guitar, but decided to keep it simple.

Now to attach the ears! Normally, it is easy to attach the ears directly to the headband using hot glue. With the flowers sitting directly on top of the headband, I had to make some adjustments. Luckily, when I tugged on the flowers, they moved fairly easily to sit more in front of the headband. If they aren't budging, you can pull or cut the flowers off and reglue them to the front after attaching the ears. Before you glue the ears on, try on the headband and position the ears where you want them to be (the headband stretches on your head and the ears will sit differently). Once you find the right spot, glue the bottoms of the ears shut by overlapping the felt. Then apply hot glue liberally to the bottom of the ear, and place it on the headband. Hold the ear in place until it dries, using more hot glue as needed. After both ears were attached, I used a couple dots of hot glue behind the flowers to attach to the ears and give even more hold.

All of the ears I have made use this hot glue method at the base and have held up wonderfully!

I think these are my favorite pair of ears I've made so far! Just in time for Pixar Pier coming this summer!!!! If you make a set of Coco ears, I would love to see them! Use #malloryerinmakes and #unpocolocoears so I can see your creations!

Keep Making!