Beanie Baby Swing Tag Costume

My kitty Marla has been going to the vet at least once every week for the past 2 months. Here lately she’s been getting a weekly check up and an antibiotic injection as the test results came back from her removed kidney that it was rife with a really bad bacteria which is basically why it went bad and had to be removed. In order to save the other kidney I crate her up and haul her out of town every Friday and if I’m lucky Rob doesn’t have plans and he can accompany me because I get crazy bored in waiting rooms by myself. 

 

A post shared by Allison Murray (@finefurryfellows) on Sep 19, 2017 at 3:10pm PDT

One time while Rob had his own business going on and I was sat by myself in the waiting room, no more cute animals that owners would let me coo over, I started reading everything in sight. And that’s when I saw the invitation to my vet clinic’s Halloween party complete with costume competition with a $100 grand prize in clinic credit. Now I don’t know if you know, but having a cat’s kidney removed is EXPENSIVE and Miss Mar has been to the vet 11 times in just 2 months so when I saw that prize I was all “THAT PRIZE IS MINE!!!” with my inner hands rubbing together.

Yeah, like that. I came home triumphantly telling Rob that since we have the cutest pups in town that we needed to GET ON THIS BUSINESS and he totally agreed. But then things got nuts, blah, blah, blah and I didn’t get around to making the CUTEST costumes for the dogs and, I sort of lost their pirate costumes and,well, here I find myself at the last minute in need of DIY dog costumes.

 

A post shared by Allison Murray (@finefurryfellows) on Sep 19, 2017 at 3:14pm PDT

Rob often says that Ollie is cuter than a stuffed animal, and so it finally clicked… I’d make them stuffed animals. So I dug through my card stock stash and made this with little effort and even less cash. The only cost was a new collar for each of the pups, because Beanie Babies aren’t scruffy and their old collars had seen better days!

I think the most fun part of this project was making the poems that go inside of the tags. Now Ollie is serious business and everybody says so. Every week he hears Laura ask him “Why are you so serious?” Because he is. He’s all business these days. And so his poem goes something like this…

His nose is wet, his humor dry.
Our dear fluffy Oliver is one serious guy.

Our Carly, she came to us from a bilingual household with the name Gordita, which is a term of endearment in Spanish that means cute little chubby girl. And we loved the name until one day we learned (grossly, mind) that she was not chubby, she just had worms. It was so ew. So we decided to give her another name, one that rhymes with her original but means something important. She was dubbed Carlita, which rhymes, after my Boston Terrier loving grandfather Carl. And so her poem reads like this:
Our little mamasita, we named her Carlita.
Used to be the gordita, she’s so glad to meet you.

Now isn’t that just too fun? I’ll admit I’m no poet, but I still think their little tags are the cutest and I’m hoping enough to bring home that blue ribbon prize and gift certificate!

For this project you will need:

• Cardstock in red, white, gold
• Printer
• Silhouette cutting machine
• Free Silhouette cut files (large Beanie Baby swing tag cut file, small swing tag)
• Adhesive (I used rubber cement)
• Ribbon

Your cut files have the different sections you’ll need to build your swing tags, including the poem text that will fit on each heart. You’ll need to rework the poem to fit for your pet within the space (remember Beanie Baby poems are always short and sweet!)

Here is your cut list:

• Ty worded shape out of red
• Large heart shape out of gold
• Large heart shape out of white
• Small heart shape out of white

Each piece has a hole in the corner to hang your swing tag by the collar with ribbon. This hole also helps making matching up the shapes a breeze.

Next glue your first set onto the large gold heart cut out.

Print your poem out and make sure it will fit neatly onto your white heart cut out (with the swing tag’s hole on the upper right side). Glue these pieces together and allow to dry.

Trim the excess paper away with a craft knife or scissors.

Glue the front and back of the swing tag together and allow to dry, overnight is best.

And just in case you’re wondering, what’s up with all of the layers? it’s to help make the tag sturdy and better able to stand up to the rough stuff a pup might get up to! If your dog is especially hyper, you might want to squeeze a piece of chipboard or something in there, but I was worried about it getting too heavy. You might hold the pieces together as suggested and see if you think you need to go that extra step.

Add a length or ribbon to secure the swing tag to your dog’s collar and this is done.

See?!? He’s just so SERIOUS!

Now normally a swing tag would be folded and open up but that just seemed like a lot of trouble and asking for even more trouble with more edges to get caught up on and this is infinitely easier, lighter and I don’t think the pups know the difference, anyway :)

While I made this for my pets, it can easily be costume for our dog’s humans, too. With one of those onesie pajama cosplay type animal outfits like these, this is totally a people worthy Halloween costume.