Makeover | Twine-wrapped dog and cat

twine-wrapped dog and cat
 Meet my two new pets.

They’re much less trouble than my two old pets.

twine-wrapped dog and cat craft project
I found them at the St. Vincent de Paul Dig ‘n’ Save. (The new pets, that is. The old ones were also someone else’s discards, but that’s another story.)

craft makeover with twine
The Dig ‘n’ Save is pretty much The Island of Misfit Toys for castoff junk. The items that languish on the shelves at the regular St. Vinnie’s stores get hauled to the Dig ‘n’ Save and dumped into big bins to be sold by the pound.

What doesn’t sell there gets thrown out.

I couldn’t let that happen to these guys.

craft makeover with twine
Because how can you turn your back on a one-eyed dog with blue nostrils?

craft makeover
 So I brought them home and decided I’d give them a makeover with some jute twine. To begin, I painted the grey dog tan, which was the closest color I had to the twine.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
 Then I started wrapping the twine around his legs, holding it in place with clear craft glue.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
 Once I had the dog’s legs covered, I moved onto his body.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
I’d do as many full-body wraps as I could. On the spots where I couldn’t wrap the twine all the way around, I’d just fill in the holes with individual short strings secured with craft glue.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine

The body was the easy part. The face and the tail were a little tougher to figure out. It felt like I was doing a jigsaw puzzle — except that I was creating the puzzle pieces as I was going along.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
For the face, I started by wrapping the twine around his ears.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
When I moved onto his muzzle, I decided to paint his nose black and leave it exposed.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
I wrapped his eyes, from base to top, with plans to attach button-type eyeballs later.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
For his tail, I wrapped the points from base to tip.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
Then I filled in the main part of the tail by wrapping all the way around it where I could and filling in with individual strings where needed.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
Once I had the dog all covered, I moved onto the cat.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine
 Since he was mostly black to start with, I decided to paint out his facial features. I figured the black basecoat would melt into the shadows if there were any gaps between jute strands.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine
I felt kind of mean covering up his face.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine
 Here he is all painted.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine
I started the wrapping process with the ears.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine
Then I moved onto the cat’s neck and worked down his body, wrapping and glueing as I went.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine
When I got down by his legs, I pressed the twine into all of the bumps and indents and waited for the glue to get tacky before winding around a new row so the twine would stay in place.

cover a paper mache cat in jute twine
It was a little tedious to have to keep glueing and pressing and waiting for the glue to dry, but I liked the finished look.

cover a paper mache cat in jute twine
For the tail, I wrapped the twine all the way around where I could. I cut short strands to fill in the base of the tail and anywhere else there were big gaps.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine
I did the cat’s face a lot like I did the bottom portion of his body. I just wrapped the twine all the way around, pressing it into place and glueing it as I worked my way up from neck to ears.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine
 Here’s the cat all wrapped.

covering a paper mache cat and dog in jute twine
They both needed eyes yet …

craft project
… so I pulled out my collection of random metal pieces. (I live close to a junk yard and always find these little pieces laying on the side of the road when I’m out walking.) I painted four of the circle pieces black, using acrylic craft paint.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine
The two small circles became the dog’s eyes.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine
The two larger circles became the cat’s eyes. I wanted his nose to bend around his head, so I used black craft foam for that.

dog and cat craft project

Don’t they look much happier now than before?

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