Practice party

When we went to visit Jay's cousins in Nebraska last week, I decided we should have a mini-birthday party for him so I could practice making cupcakes.
I took along some monster decorations/activities I got on clearance at Target, and our "activity" for the party was decorating monsters (which I will use for decorations at the real party). Here is Caleb's creation:)
Here is a picture of what I bought:
I found them online too in case anyone is interested: MONSTER CRAFT

Here is one that my brother-in-law created.
After the activity we set out my cupcakes and took a few pictures. I got my ideas from other blogs. These cookie monster cupcakes were adorable, but seemed a little difficult to make.
So I settled on these adorable fur-ball and string monster cupcakes.
On my first try I got something that resembled a purple shaggy dog: If anyone has tips on how to make the fur-ball cupcakes look more like the ones in the picture (like a different tip on the frosting decorator?) let me know:)
Then I tried a different approach, but it ended up looking like monster guts instead of a cute monster.
My third try was a string monster cupcake.

John thought they looked kind of weird without mouths, so I got out the yogurt pretzels I had packed for my road trip and created a mouth for the string monster. That's when I decided I could combine the cookie monster and the string monster cupcake ideas.
Here is my final draft for the practice party. I'm thinking of trying some more colors, and maybe doing something different for the eyeballs. The eyes should be placed closer to the front of the head too:)
Everyone enjoyed them.