Anger Management Aardvarks!

So... hopefully you all remember my dear friend Chuckles, first craft for me of 2011.

Well, Chuckles lives on my desk at work. Last week we were having a particularly stressful/annoying week and we decided Chuckles needed to bite things. The computer, other people, really anything that frustrates us. Basically he would be our anger management tool - act out through him so that we can remain calm, cool and collected. 

 We also decided that he would be good for awkward situations... aka hold up the "awkward aardvark" if you have something to say that makes you uncomfortable. As the "A" words continued, I decided I needed to make some aardvarks for the rest of my team, so we could all use them as we see fit. Fortunately for me, there are only 4 people on my team so this was not too daunting of a task for the weekend.

Although I love chuckles, I figured a pile of small brown aardvarks would not be nearly as fun as a pile of multi-colored, slightly larger aardvarks ... and from there came this beautiful pyramid of creatures created to match my co-workers favorite colors (note that the one on the bottom right is blue - not purple - just sayin'):

Chuckles knows he is #1 as he was the original crazy aardvark of the bunch, and the one below him (1st purple aardvark) is for my mom - but the other 4 now live on the desks of my team members, including our co-worker in Canada. Yay for inter-office mail being free and spanning to the international offices too! ;-)

While making them and watching old "Bones" episodes with my husband, I snapped the following pictures - for documentation and my own amusement:

Comparing Chuckles (aka Aardvark version 1.0) to version 2.0 (bigger and brighter!)

Empty aardvark skins waiting to be stuffed, sewn, and given a face:

A pile of freshly cut aardvark patterns - aren't they cute :)

And... my favorite... apparently while turning an aardvark inside out, if you leave his ears inside, he can double as a dinosaur! Raaaawwwrrrr... hahaha, yes I played with these little guys WAY too much that weekend :)