Piranha Plant - Super Mario Cat Bed

This is my 1st Instructable post so bare with me.

Here is the cat bed i made designed on the Piranha Plant out of Mario

materials you will need to complete this project are;

1) Two hanging flower baskets ( i used the medium sized one but you can choose to make it bigger if you like)
2) 1 Wooden broom handle or length of thick wooden dowel
3) Cable ties
4) Red, Green, White, and Black felt
5) Cushions
6) one large flower pot
7) 20 Meters of 8mm woven rope (give or take depends on the height you go for
8) Cement and sand (to make heavy base)
9) 2 squares of wood ruffly 5 inches by 5 inches about half inch thick
10) enough ply wood to cover the plant pot opening
11) nails

The tools you will need are

1) Hot glue gun
2) scissors
3) Hammer
4) sewing machine (i didn't use one but it can look better if you do)
5) Patience

This step is pretty simple

you get your two hanging baskets and remove the chains as theese are not needed

then you stand one upright inside the other so it makes 3/4 of a sphere

and then cable tie them together at points where joints cross each other put as many as you need or can to make it as stable as possible

make sure you trim off all the long ends after you are done

get your cushions and take out the stuffing and put it too one side we will use this in a minute

with the material cut the sewn edges to make one big bit using cable ties attach this to the inside top of the hanging baskets (this is to hold in your stuffing and will be covered over later so it hasn't got to be the neatest job in the world)

now start putting stuffing behind the material through the holes padding out the mouth this doesn't have to be too thick as the cat isn't going to lay on this part

now get your red felt and lay it out and put you baskets on it and wrap it around the head see how it covers (this is the part that took me the longest as im not a seamstress) and cut how you think is best making sure to leave enough to cover the lip of the basket as this is where you will fold over and glue

the technique i used was to make oval type shaped the same way a beach ball is made this meant i had three parts to put over it which left seams but i glued the overlap to seal it

once it is covered all in red the hard bit is over and the rest is fairly easy

first get your broom handle and roll it in you card board to desired thickness and put some tape around it to hold it in place cut your broom handle to the desired height wanted

now grab the 2 squares or wood and nail directly through the center of one into the top of the broom handle now get the other and put this central inside the bottom of the baskets and screw this to the other piece of wood this should act like a clamp holding the baskets between them

now use hot glue to seal between the wood, cardboard, and baskets to just stableise it and fill it out a little when you got to put the rope on

so by now you should have a 3/4 red sphere ontop of a cardboard tube

this is the easiest part use the hot glue gun and attach the rope starting behind the head then wrap it round and round the cardboard gluing periodically (i did it after every 5 lines of rope) until you run out of rope

job done told you it was easy

right we will start with the spots i used a £2 coin for size put this on my white felt drew round it and cut out loads of them

teeth i cut rectangle strips the height i thought was reasonable for teeth and the length of the open mouth drew a zigzag down the middle of it and cut that

the tounge i measured from the back of the mouth to the front and misused about an inch and guessed the thickness just meassure it if you want tho and made an oval shape with a straight end

lips this is where it got complicated as my felt wasn't long enough so i had to make two tubes and join them together

But if you use a sewing machine you could create one long tube instead of having a little part in the middle like i have

i used the part of the broom handle i cut off earlier to roll my felt round to get the thickness of the lips then hot glue gunned the felt together and slid the handle out and back filled it with stuffing once the lips are made either sew or glue the ends flat

first cement your flower into your flower pot once set

you can attach all the parts you have made to the head it just a matter of putting them together

so fill up the bottom of the mouth with stuffing and lay your black felt over the top of this glueing it inside the lip of the basket all the way around

then do the same over the inside top of the mouth aswell

i used the hot glue to stick the felt to the lip and then little blobs where the cable ties are and pushed it against it to hold it up out the way

then i glued in my tounge with hot glue again

then i glued my teeth on the outside of the basket with hot glue

then i hot glued the lips to the outside over the top of the teeth making sure the seam was the part i glued on to hide it from sight

then start glueing your white spots onto the outside