The Plopling Family!

So the babies from before ended up bigger than I meant, so I decided they are just children, and made new babies! And now I have a family of cute adorable Ploplings with 2 kids and 2 babies:

Available at my store: http://neoitvaluocsol.etsy.com

They are absolutely adorable together! The little babies are super tiny and squishy, I just love them... which is probably why I decided to keep the originals and have them made to order. hehehe... soon my house will be overrun with cuteness ^___^

So little Baby Ploplings despite their cuteness and age are very mischievous and smart. The story I will write with them will have to do with naughty activities of them trolling people. The children Ploplings will have a story about the values of education. Being an educator myself, I feel a need to have one tale about the benefits of being educated. I have already written a story for the adult Ploplings, it is a tale about how they fell in love and made this lovely family of rainbow cuteness hehe.

I'm so excited just thinking up the Plopling world and creating these creatures, but I'm beginning to realize that them not having gender makes it hard to write about them. I never realized how hard it is to write a story without he-she her-him pronouns. I want to use "it", but "it" isn't very descriptive, so I'll have to think about it. I guess I could name them righties or lefties, but I accidentally got carried away when making them and made all the children righties XD

Ploplings!!

Ploplings are invading my mind!!! They're all I seem to want to make lately! What is a plopling, well a picture is worth a thousand words:

The Blue one is known as Plopchen and the yellow Ploplin. They are inlove.

Ploplings come in all sorts of colors, and when I put them on my store they will be made to order(since the original two are inspiring some fun stories I may need them for photos). Ploplings are genderless critters identified by the spiral on their head(known as a swirl) and stubby arms. Their age is seen through the length of the swirl. Therefore Baby Ploplings will have short swirls, and will look sorta like this:

The direction of their swirl usually determines which Ploplings they will mingle/flirt/and mate with. The size and shapes of their swirls are seen as unique differences, such as a humans hair color, shape, body type, etc, but the Primary types of swirls are ones with a bulge at the tip and those without.

I plan to write little stories to go with the Ploplings I make. Not sure yet how I want to do it. I almost want it to be a kinda picture book kids story with real themes, using the plushies for the pictures. If you have any ideas I'd love to hear them!

And the finished results...

So here is the final result of the zombie bunny!!! I took a picture of it int he sun light so it has some eerie shadows going on:

Here is it with normal lighting front and back:

I'm pretty happy with how it came out, the greatness of it is purely in the sewn on details. The drop of blood from the mouth, the red/yellow eyes, they're what make it a true Zombie bunny. That and I guess green fur XD

I also finished the Pink Bunny Fox! She looks really cute with the orange one(look they're holding hands!):

They're for sale: http://www.etsy.com/listing/80022186/bunny-fox-plush

So that is what I was working on, but NOW I have a new fascination, I'll probably blog about it tomorrow cause I want it to stand alone, but consider this a sneak peak:
Ploplings! They're cute plump critters with stubby arms and a spiral appendage on their head. The designs at first were cool and exciting to make, but now that I've sewn them they've been opening up tons of creativity! I want to make stories to go along with them, and I have a whole bunch of Plopling History! So I have a feeling October will be full of lots of posts about Ploplings!

Halloween Fun and bringing back the old!

I got a new custom order yesterday! Part of the order is for similar plush to what I am already selling with some modifications(different colors, larger sizes, etc). But another part is the awesome idea of the ZOMBIE BUNNY! With Halloween coming in about a month, I got very excited for this, so I started it right away. I'm quite proud of the design for the zombie bunny, here is my progress thus far:

I also plan to add some black stitch marks to make it look like some pieces were once removed but stitched back on. All in all I'm very excited to see the end product!

I'll be working on that the next couple of days. In addition to that I'm bringing back a lot of my past designs that have already sold. But often I don't like making the exact same thing so for some of them I am adding a twist or changing colors or whatever. One of those is my new jack o lantern Hot cocoa mug with ghost marshmallow.

For Sale:Click Here

The original was just a white mug with normal marshmallow, but one day I was feeling festive and so it started as an orange mug with green handle, then I realized it'd be cool to add the jack o lantern face, then I was talking to my friend and she's like "make a ghostmallow!" and so it was done! The ghost came out super cute too, best suggestion ever.

I'll also be making a red and blue mug, and if they don't sell in a couple months I'll probably add some X-mas decorations and make them winter themed :D

In addition to that I've been working on a Mr. and Mrs. Bunny Fox. The Mr will look the same, but the Mrs. will be hot pink. We'll see how those turn out!

Plushing your own designs

Time for more beginner plush advice! This time on making your own patterns!

So as some or all of you may know I don't use other people's patterns. The general process I go about making plush patterns consists of these steps:
-Sit on the couch with a pad of paper and make little cute doodles of possible plush.
-pick my fav doodles and make a larger doodle of the size it will actually be on a separate piece of paper
-Cut out the shape and start plushing!

More complicated patterns may contain more steps... but thats the general idea... think of what you want to plush, and then think of all the shapes you'll need.

But it can't be that easy right? Well I think it is this easy since I've been sewing since a kid and I've had a seamstress job and such, as well as i've been making plush now for 9months, but what do you do if you're a beginner?

My suggestion is start with some basic shapes first(circle, triangle, square, etc) and definitely start with 2d plush(notice I said circle, triangle, square as opposed to sphere, pyramid, or cube). As you get used to making these basics and get the hang of how basic shapes work, start making your own shapes.

Take this elephant:

It started by this basic shape of a cookie cutter I found(Or I could have made a similar doodle):

I then transformed that basic shape to this:

I used that paper cut out pattern to cut out the body for the elephant. Yes in this case I needed to add ears and tail and eyes, but the primary shape was that simple.

After you get used to this 2d pattern making you actually have the skills to make A LOT of plush now! You will also be able to move onto basic 3d shapes like cubes, cylinders, and spheres- you can find patterns for these shapes online, and I would start with their patterns unless you have good geometry sense, if you work with these shapes, you will get more familiar with making certain other similar shapes.

Coolest Thank You ever!

^_______________________^

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tXUjPwtNFA

Weee so busy!

I've been busy working on these sweet little things:

They're a custom order I got, apparently they are from an xbox 360 game called Ilomilo, by the same people who made Little Big Planet. They took a decent amount of time and work to make. The hardest part was definitely that antenna, and I hope the postoffice isn't too rough with the package, since they're somewhat fragile.

I made a pattern for it and it's for sale on my etsy:

I've also been working on some x-mas designs and some new hybrid animals. The bumble fish came out really wonderful! It's so cute i'm not sure I can part with it...

It's funny because it came out nothing like my design. Originally he should have been round like a bumble bee... but I must have been distracted when I cut the fabric, because he came out so long and narrow. But I like that he came out this way, he looks more like a fish!



And now for a sewing tip.

One of the most wonderful ideas I had was to keep all sorts of scraps. I call it my scrap bin, but really it's just a drawer. As long as a scrap of fabric is bigger than a dime I pretty much save it, especially if it is black, pink, white or yellow. When I watch movies/tv with my hubby, I often times cut these scraps(especially the colors I mentioned before) into useful shapes, like round eyes, oval eyes, blush marks, noses, hearts, etc~ these would be what those plastic containers are for. I put all the cut shapes into the plastic containers so I can find them later. I feel like having a bunch of eyes pre-cut, and blush marks, noses, etc helps to keep the flow when I'm sewing on a machine. It also keep my work place cleaner since I cut elsewhere. Also if I cut a bunch at the same time, I get in a rhythm and can cut them better and faster. That and using scraps for this type of thing saves on fabric! So if you plan on making lots of plushies for a long time, you should have a scrap bin!