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!!

Free Giveaway!

I opened up a geekyGAMERgirl Facebook page! Woo!  To celebrate, let's do a giveaway.  That's right... free stuff!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

For participating in this giveaway, you will be entered in to win one CUSTOM baby cloud monster!  You will be able to pick your monster's face coloring and style (any color), fur coloring (white or gray) and number of eyes and size of eyes. You just tell me what you want your baby cloud monster to look like... I'll create it for free for the winner! (free shipping too!)

This contest is only available to US residents. Ends August 8, 2012.  Winner will be announced August 9, 2012! You must "LIKE" the geekyGAMERgirl Facebook page to enter, and in order to gain access to additional ways to enter more times.

I also wanted to share how I package my monsters.  It's important to be creative in your packaging, as well as your shop items.  Here's how I do it!

I wrap up the monsters in bright colorful tissue paper, include their original sketches and a packing slip and... voila!  My husband's reaction, when I first did this, was literally "WTH Heather...?".... but I love it.  It's personal, it's creative, and it's freaking cute.

Oh! And Adora has come by from her sky-cave to find a new home, as well. You can check her out on my Etsy.

And a big shout out to Matin Lapin for featuring our very own Trevor the Thundercloud Monster in her blog,  that you can read here, and in an Etsy treasury in honor of Ilyap'a Day that you can see here!  Check out her Etsy store, too.  She has a lot of cool items, see them here!