The Moon Rabbit

Made by Kit Albern

In a lot of eastern cultures, they say there’s a rabbit in the moon instead of a man in the moon. When I bought this pattern I was initially thinking I’d make a jackelope, but then I began to wonder what a moon rabbit would look like. So, I course-corrected and decided I’d try to create my interpretation of the mythical moon rabbit.

While I did cover her in faux fur, her interior is paper mache.

The first problem I ran into is that I didn’t have any cereal box cardboard. At the time I just used posterboard. (This later came to bite me in the butt.) Putting the pieces together was actually a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it quite a bit!

But then came the second problem; I had gotten a bit too far along on the head when I remembered I wanted to add glass eyes.

I hand-painted these eyes with little crescent moons on them. I wanted them to be dark, mysterious, and glittery. I use nail polish to paint on the back of glass cabochons since I think the shimmery enamel looks more beautiful than any acrylic paint.

Pouring hot glue into the head to stick the eyes in place was NOT working; I had gotten too far on the head, so the angle was all wrong, and the hold on the eyes was very weak. If you squeezed the head wrong, they’d pop loose. I was also beginning to come to terms with the fact that the poster board wasn’t as thick as I would’ve liked.

Then I remembered: I had expanding spray foam!!

It took a lot of cleaning out the can, but I finally got a good layer of spray foam (you can find it as “Great Stuff” or other brands) inside of her. Like magic, it filled up the cavity, holding the eyes in place and making the head lightweight but solid.

Finally, it was time for paper mache!

I used brown paper bags. I went with the uncooked flour and water recipe; I knew I’d end up covering her in fur. I didn’t need the interior to be pretty: I just needed it to be strong. It took about four sessions over the course of two days, which was much better time than I’ve had for past paper mache projects. I was surprised at how sturdy she is. Her ears are perfectly stiff!

Once the paper mache was dry, I applied a layer of blue tissue paper as a decoupage to her ears, and painted that with darker blues, blacks, and purples. I used a paintbrush with watered down white paint to flick stars onto her ears to create some quick galaxies. Then, I took a white paint pen and drew on some constellations. There’s Cancer, Aries, and Leo on her left ear, and the Big and Little Dippers on her right.

After that, I painted the area around her eyes black and applies some fine flocking powder (Folk Art’s “Velvet crush”).

Then came the trickiest part; furring the head and ears. To get a perfect fit, I actually printed off the ear pattern again and cut it out, then sewed the darts together to create a perfectly sized and shaped piece that I could glue onto the back of the ears. It fit like a glove! I was a bit more carefree for the face; I eyeballed symmetrical pieces of fur and glued them on. I used an electric trimmer to shorten the fur around her muzzle, just a bit.

After that I just had fun with her; I put some aluminum rings on her ears, painted the fur black near her muzzle, and glued a dichroic glass gem onto her forehead.

A HUGE thank you to Jonni for the pattern; I wouldn’t have been brave enough to even attempt her without the template. I’m planning on selling this beauty, so wish her well as she goes to bring luck into a new home!

If you want to learn how to paint beautiful glass eyes like these, I highly recommend Back to Earth Creations on youtube; she makes gorgeous dragon eyes, which is what I referenced when making the moon rabbit’s crescent eyes.