Ultros from FFVI

Finished Ultros!  He's the octopus from Final Fantasy VI I've been working on this week.  He ended up measuring about 3 feet in length.

I never made a plush completely from fleece, but man is it forgiving fabric!  I could even use his legs as pincushions and the holes just disappeared when I took out the pins.  He has a polar fleece body, legs and eyelids.  His teeth are 3 inches long made of felt.

The eyes were a bit tricky.  I couldn't find the right colors anywhere, so I had to customize my own safety eyes.  It's not too difficult.  I know of two ways to customize eyes.  One, if you need a black pupil you can just get clear safety eyes and paint the backs of them before applying them to the plush.  With these eyes I needed a red pupil, so I had to customize full black eyes.  I bought the largest I could find (60mm), painted them with acrylics and sealed them with clear nail polish.  The polish just needs to be applied to completely dry paint, then left for a day to dry thoroughly.  It creates a hard protective cover coat, doesn't chip easily, and makes a glassy look without the high price of buying acrylic sealant at the hobby store.  These eyes took six coats of paint (yellow on black is a nightmare) and three coats of polish.

 I honestly think he turned out amazing!  Here's the picture that I had to work with:

Hand sewing this took a while, though.  Glad I'll be getting my new sewing machine soon!!!  On that note::

KICKSTARTER UPDATE!

I met my $500 goal in ONE day!  It's amazing!  I didn't know people would love my plushies so much, but I'm honored they do.  It's truly what I want to do with my career, and launching this business means so much to me.  It will help me do something I love, as well as help support my three beautiful babies!  My husband is so supportive as well :)

My next goal is $1200.  Seems like a bit of a stretch (more than double what I wanted initially) but with 11 days left, I'm already over $900!!  With that extra $700 I could go to my first professional craft show and do business face to face with customers.  It would do WONDERS for my business!  That amount would cover rental fees, display cases, material for product, and transportation.  Here's to hoping!

And a braggy mom moment to end this post:

My twins rockin their chuck taylors! They will be four months old on the 23rd. Hard to imagine!  Also hard to imagine their brother will be 2 next month!!

Majora's Mask Hoop Art

The best Zelda game, in my opinion, is Majora's Mask. It's the video game that got me into video games as a kid (and now I have a triforce tattoo). I have a lot of Nintendo decor around, but nothing Majora. Hoop art is something I've wanted to try for a while now. Mixed the two together and this is what I came up with!

To make something like this, you simply start with the image you want to recreate in felt.  I blew up a picture of Majora's Mask and taped it to the window on the door for easy tracing.  

I took blank paper and traced the image onto the paper to create a pattern that I was then able to cut into the shapes of each color.  Trace the pattern on to each corresponding felt color and cut out the shapes!  It's almost like a puzzle.  It's imperative that you have an excellent sharp pair of scissors to cut the felt, or else you won't end up with clean lines, but frayed edges instead.  

To sew the pieces together, I used DMC embroidery thread.  I sewed them onto a stretched piece of black cotton fabric in a 12" wooden hoop.  The entire process took about 15 hours, but it's so worth it. I'm going to make a few different hoops in other sizes and make a collage in my entryway.  More updates on that later, as they are complete!  I'm working on a second one of these to put on my Etsy.