Companies spend a lot of time and energy marketing to kids. In fact I’d guess that kids may be one of the biggest audiences in their business. They grab them with commercials, magazine ad’s, and product placement in their favorite shows. But the real kicker is when they use their favorite cartoon characters to sell the product. Well my oldest daughter just turned five and got what would seem to be the new hot ticket item for her birthday. A Zhu Zhu pet. These things are a wonderful replacement for a real hamster, however they have about 20 accessories to be complete. Ranging from housing attachments. to toys, the price can go pretty high to get your Zhu Zhu pet complete. So the little one noticed right away on the side of the box that wonderful attention grabbing image of a Zhu Zhu in a carrier. I’m thinking, “oh that’s cute, can’t cost much just for a little carrier that’s smaller than my hand”…um, thats where I was wrong. When I looked it up, the cost was…prepare yourself…$20. For less than eighth of a yard of low quality fabric. Holy Moly, time to improvise. So we decided to make one. Let me give you my disclaimer: I am not a seamstress. I have a sewing machine I have used 4 times and not very well I might add, but what the heck…she’s five right, who will notice crooked stitches?

Here’s what I started with: the Zhu Zhu pet for sizing, two pieces of coordinating fabric, thread, scissors, and rick rack (would have used ribbon but this is what I had on hand).

I made a basic square with rounded corners, stitched it together inside out, turned it right side out and attached the rick rack sloppily around the edges.

Lastly I attached some handles and slipped the hamster into his new carrier. Not quite what the commercial advertises, but the five year old was happy.

(sorry for the fuzzy cell phone images)

Listen here, if I can put this thing together, anyone can. The best part is that instead of marketing forcing us parents to spend $20 for a piece of cloth that will be lost in the laundry in a week, I managed to make the little one extremely happy in less than an hour. Improvising rocks!