My adventures with being SuperMomma this week are almost over! (Ha!) I’ve done fleece bats, sock snakes, paper penguins, and I’ve got to come up with 3 fish by 5 pm this evening, before I put my cape away for a while.

To be serious for a moment, VBS ends tonight and while the kids have had a great time, it’s been a long week. We get up early around here and now they’ve been staying up late too. They’re tired. And I know all the amazing VBS workers at church are worn out too. I see why it’s only a week long. (My SuperMomma cape is too small and insignificant to be worn by our Super Hero Volunteers this week! Seriously!)

And while I usually post farm stuff on Friday, I’m going to save it for Monday so I can show you how to make 3 stuffed snakes in under an hour and use an owl punch to make penguins! For the snakes, I have to give grateful thanks to my crafty-buddies the Dirt Diva and Kristi (who just started blogging over at Suffolk Sutphins!) for their inspiration.

Rather than socks, I actually used some old tights that the Ladybug has outgrown.

I made the snakes at lunchtime on Wednesday (before the flat tire incident began). And yes, they really did only take an hour. Watch…

I used Always Artichoke Stampin’ Up! ink to color the white socks green.

1 minute to cut the tights into 3 snake bodies. 5 minutes to scrub the snake bodies with ink to make them greenish. 10 minutes in the dryer to try and set the ink.

I snipped some red SU! ribbon up for tongues and hunted up some buttons for eyes.

While they were in the dryer, I scrubbed up with Lava Soap, cut some red ribbon tongues and ate a bowl of Cheerios for lunch. That Stampin’ Up! ribbon is a little stiff and crinkly, which gave it a great texture!

I snipped a little hole in the toe of the sock and inserted the ribbon, then flipped them inside out and sewed the ribbon in place. The fabric is very stretchy, so this was a little frustrating. 10 more minutes.

I turned them inside out to insert the ribbon at the toe seam and sew it in place.

Then I stuffed them and sewed the ends shut. 5 minutes each. I ran out of leftover stuffing on the 3rd one, so I had to finish stuffing it with fleece scraps. Again, the stretchy fabric was a little challenging.

Stuffing them was kinda creepy. They bulged just like a snake that just ate a mouse.

Then I sewed the button eyes on (which took about 10 minutes and was probably the slowest part) and we were done!

They actually turned out kinda goofy-cute.

Then they came home and said they needed penguins for the next day!

With the flat tire incident and the migraine that followed (and the piles of laundry on our couch!) I was even shorter on time and inspiration on Thursday, so I went back to my papercrafting roots and grabbed my owl punch–thanks to another crafty friend, Jacqueline, over at My Paper Moose. She used the new SU! owl punch to make adorable penguin gift tags, which I totally lifted into charm necklaces in my hour of need.

I was in a hurry, so I just punched 4 owl sets in black and 4 sets in white incase I needed extra pieces.

The trick is to snip the ears off the owl and use black on white to create their little tuxes.

I put their eyes together with Crystal Effects first (see top left) so they had time to dry.

I left their little feet on because I thought they were cute. The Crystal Effects gives the eyes a bubbly, raised look. Google-eyes would have worked too, but I couldn’t find them in the mess of my workshop at the moment. But the Crystal Effects takes time to dry well! It’s not a 5 minute step. More like 15.

So I had bowl of cereal for lunch while I was waiting.

Tell me they are not adorable!

The SU! large tag punch was still pretty small and tight, so I used a different one that I have from Michael’s that’s bigger to create the base. I took a second to add a spot of white “snow” as well. This project when really fast, so I would have added some glitter details like Jacqueline’s, but right now I only have gold-colored glitter glue. My silver is loose glitter and I didn’t have that much time.

Quick. Simple. Perfect.

A simple ribbon chain and it’s a wrap! They loved them–although one of them didn’t make it through the night. I wish I had a laminating machine. That would have been the perfect final touch. Kids can’t help it, they’re a little rough.

Just 3 fish to go…