Recreate Gabba Gabba Land – Party Decorations!

If you really want to transform your house for your Yo Gabba Gabba decorations, and are up to the challenge of a more ambitious craft project, then posterboard, construction paper, plain cardboard, and glue are all you need to bring the four realms of Gabba Land to life. Each Yo Gabba Gabba character, with the exception of Plex the Robot, has his or her own home with its own distinctive landscape, and you can recreate pieces of each landscape to make a 3-D world. Of course, you can purchase a Giant Wall decal from your child's favorite character (Muno Land is shown to the right) if you are short on time.

Muno lives in a pink, purple and blue-hued land that resembles a cross between a Martian landscape and Arches National Park. Foofa’s home has green hills topped with flowers that look like white daisies. Brobee’s home is filled with autumn-colored trees, while Toodee’s home looks like a collection of icy, pointed peaks.

Visit the Yo Gabba Gabba Nick Jr site in order to find backgrounds on which to base each piece of your landscape. For each character, choose one prominent feature from their realm to draw onto your craft board. Choose the arch from Muno’s realm, a tree from Brobee’s, an ice formation from Toodee’s, and one flower-topped hill from Foofa’s home. Standard craft board is 22in x 28in, although you may be able to find it in larger sizes. If not, be sure to use the whole length of the board when drawing your shapes. If you prefer not to draw, another opt ion is to print the templates from NickJr.com, cut out the shapes you want to replicate, and take them to a print shop to be copied and enlarged.

Since the formations in Muno’s realm are striped in pink, purple, lavender, and blue, you will need to use construction paper to decorate your landscape. The easiest way to do this is to take 16 pieces of construction paper – four of each color – and cut them to be three and a half inches tall. Glue them to the arch in a repeating pattern until the colors come together at the top of the arch. Then, flip the arch over and use scissors to trim the extra construction paper away from the shape of the arch.

For Toodee’s realm and Foofa’s realm, you should be able to find green and light blue posterboard to match Toodee’s monotone ice peaks and Foofa’s green hills. Use a ruler to help you draw clean, straight lines to create Toodee’s peak, and cut it out with scissors. Free-draw Foofa’s green hill on the poster board, and then turn to the construction paper to make flowers for the hilltop. Cut petal shapes out of white construction paper, and circles out of yellow and orange paper. Then glue the flowers onto the top of the hill so that they overlap, and so that lots of petals are sticking up above the top of the hill.

Finally, you need to create a tree for Brobee’s home. First, draw a simple trunk out of light brown posterboard. The trunk can be a rectangle, or it can flare out on either side at the bottom. Second, choose a color of posterboard for the tree itself – the trees in Brobee’s land can be pink, brown, orange, or green-hued. I recommend brown in order to be very distinct from the colors of the other characters’ homes. Use the background from NickJr.com as your guide and draw a simple pine tree. If you want to dress up the tree a bit, cut some thin strips out of yellow or pale pink construction paper to glue on top of the branches.

Finally, use the plain cardboard to stand the pieces upright. Cut the cardboard into tall right triangles, or triangles whose long and short sides meet at between 80 and 90 degrees. Use rectangles of posterboard folded to a 90-degree angle as tabs to secure the cardboard to the pieces of landscape with glue. Set up your pieces in different corners of a room, and Gabba Land is ready!

If you're really ambistious (and price isn't an issue) you can add Yo Gabba Gabba stand-up characters to each land. Another option is to just add your child's favorite stand-up character to the decorations. These stand-ups with the backdrop of Gabba Gabba land is a great photo opportunity and makes a great image to include in your Yo Gabba Gabba thank-you cards.