by Currie Jean

Created on: August 21, 2008

FSM TREE TOPPER

Materials:

A rectangular piece of cardboard, a toilet paper roll, or a paper snowcone cone; a roll of beige yarn; two ping-pong balls; red and dark green paint, brown tissue paper (or another color with brown paint), two googly-eyes, one beige pipe cleaner, glue (white, or a glue gun), one stapler (with staples!).

Instructions:

First, you need your base. If you have a TP roll or snowcone, you're set. If you have a piece of cardboard, roll it into a cone, then staple or glue it in place, and trim off the excess. Then paint it dark green to help it blend into the branches at the top of the tree.

Paint your ping-pong balls brown, and sit them to try. Don't worry, they don't have to be perfectly covered. While they're drying, take your yarn, and cut it into many six-inch segments, eight-inch segments, and twelve-inch segments. Try to have at least five of each length. Don't stinge on His Noodliness's Noodly Appendages! Scrunch up your tissue paper in to balls, then unscrunch them again, so that they're all wrinkly.

Once the ping pong balls are dry, cover them in spots of glue, and then cover them with the tissue paper. If the tissue paper is brown, lightly dust red over top to give the meatballs a more "meaty" appearance. If your tissue is another color, paint brown, then dust lightly with a bit of red. Let this paint dry as well.

Take your pipe cleaner and bend it in half to make a "V" shape, then bend it at both ends a couple times to give your the FSM eyestalks some surface area. Glue the googly eyes onto the ends of the eyestalks.

Once your meatballs are dry, glue them to your base, one on each side. Glue or staple the eyestalks to the base behind them. Then, it's time for the Noodly Appendages: drape and twist them all over the base, gluing as you go. Try to drape the noodles all over the meatballs to hug them, cover up as much of the base as possible, and also hide the location where all the parts are attached if you can.

For another decorative holiday twist, you could make FSM garland! Just increase the length of the noodly appendages, so that they can twine through the branches of the X-Mas tree.

To make an FSM plushie, use the same basic rules as above, but exchange the ping pong balls for cottony poof balls, don't bother making a base, and use a needle and thread instead of glue or staples! For this project, you'll probably need even more yarn for more noodly appendages than are sufficient for a tree topper.

For hanging ornaments, make smaller plushies, and attatch a hook or loop of noodly yarn to the top. These would make wonderful gifts for solstice-celebrating secular friends, as well as for the more open-minded of religious folk.

And remember - just as in Pastafarianism, the more Noodly Appendages you include in your crafts, the better! Sending pictures of your creations in to Vengaza.org might even get you featured on the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's front page.

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