Happy New Year!

I hope that you are planning something fun to celebrate the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011! :D Here's to a great year for us all. I'll be back with more plush soon- I have a ton of new ideas for this coming year, as well as a bunch of Plushcatures that will be coming down the road over the next few months, so stay tuned. Cheers!

Dogs and Cats

I made these guys for some of my friends' kids for Christmas. It was something fun but quick that I could do for them, and I enjoyed working with color combinations that I hadn't used before. Their bellies and ears are flannel prints, which are fun for winter.

Merry Christmas!

Here are just a few of the piles of ornaments that we used to decorate the tree. Are we addicted to "ball" ornaments you ask? Are we in need of an intervention? Nah! You can never have too many ornaments, right? ;) Enjoy your time with family and friends and have a lovely holiday. See you in the New Year!

Wintery Snowman Blanket

This is another blanket made for a Christmas gift- the fabrics were from a kit I bought back in February, (but didn't get around to making until this December ;D) and all I had to do was cut out dozens of 4 inch squares of flannel, place them in a design that I liked, and then sew all the squares together to form the quilt top. It took me about 5-6 hours (with a few breaks) to get the quilt top cut out and sewn together, which wasn't too bad. Then I had to cut out the backing fabric to the right size, and then make the edge binding. I chose not to add the optional quilt batting between the layers, since I wanted this to be more of a blanket than a true quilt. After all that was done I sewed the 2 layers together, pinned on the binding, and sewed the binding to the blanket.


The finished quilt measures 36 inches by 48 inches, and it really was a pretty quick project- about 12 hours or so all together. (Not consecutively.) Since the blanket is all flannel, it washed up super soft and cuddly. :D I would definitely make this blanket pattern again.

Fairy Christmas

I was commissioned to make my first ever fairy plush for a very good customer's daughter's Christmas present. I have to admit that although I was excited at the thought of making a fairy, there was a slight moment of trepidation about how to go about it in a way that fit my design style and didn't look too cutesy, but at the same time read "fairy." I was pretty much given carte blanche on the design, the only tentative advice to me was to maybe use some blue and pink if I could.
Here is what I came up with:



I had this white and multi-colored cotton print in my fabric stash, and when I saw it, my whole color scheme fell into place. Since this was a fairy- why not make her hair pink? I embroidered a very light pink set of highlights to add visual and tactile texture, and managed to get some fairy iridescence into her dress by using green and blue ric-rac that had some sparkle to it which gave her instant fairy bling. ;) To integrate the wings with the Fairy's dress, I outlined the interior wing shape with another shade of green ric-rac.


It wouldn't be a true fairy without a photo of her outdoors in her natural habitat, and lucky for me the weather cooperated the day before I sent her on her way to her new owner. I'm really looking forward to hearing how this Christmas present is received since I had such I had a blast making her. Merry Christmas to the "Monster!" :D

Arctic Mermaid

This is my piece for the "Soft Served "art show at OhNo! Doom in Chicago. The show opens Friday December 10th, and runs until January 11th, 2011. Wish I could be there for the opening!

Let me introduce you to the very rare and seldom seen Arctic Mermaid:


The Arctic Mermaid was recently discovered by Plushologists, who were stunned to find a mermaid sunning herself on an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean. This breed of Mermaid prefers the beauty of the Northern Lights and the refreshing cool waters of the North over the sun and sand of her tropical cousins.

I have been wanting to do a mermaid plush for some time, but until now I couldn't think of a way to make it my own. I starting doodling mermaids, and somehow my mind wandered to winter and snow, and then voila! The idea for the Arctic Mermaid was born. She has a nice and soft faux fur sweater to keep her warm, and I hand-embroidered her smile, the highlights in her hair, as well as adding a few hand embroidered scales in her tail.



If you are interested in seeing more of the great art made for this show, head on over to the OhNo! Doom website this weekend, and if you live in the Chicago area, why not check out the show- you won't be disappointed, and maybe you'll find that cool and unique Christmas present for that special someone. ;)

Art Blocks for Ghana Project

This is the piece that I made for the Art Blocks for Ghana Project, which is a charity fundraiser that hopes to recieve enough money through the auctioning off of all the art donated to build a Children's Home in Ghana. I call my piece: "My Home and Native Land." The theme for the art was "home", and this is what came to mind when I thought about what means "home" to me. Living in the USA is great, but since I am Canadian and have all my family in Canada, I still call that "home," even after all these years. This was my way of trying to convey that in an art piece.

There are so many wonderful artists involved in this project that it would take me forever to list them all, but you can see their great contributions if you go to the Art Blocks for Ghana blog.

Here's a quick look at how I made my piece. It is made completely out of wool felt, and it took me about 4 hours to cut out all the varying sizes and colors of the maple leaves, I lost count of how many I actually cut out. If the photos are a bit fuzzy, I apologize, I was snapping them as I worked and wasn't paying too much attention to the focus.

Christmas Ornament Fun

This year I decided to make my own take on the traditional round "ball" shaped Christmas ornaments. These two sets are made from fleece with fun winter/Christmas cottons as accents, and hand embroidered faces to add character:


I also had a lot of fun making a trio of Christmas Stars that hang from the same ribbon, gradually getting smaller as they go.
This ornament is also made from fleece- a variegated yellow, with smiling felt faces sewn on, and it measures about 11 inches in length.



You can find them in my etsy shop if you are interested. It's definitely starting to get that Christmas holiday feeling around here! :D

And the winner is...?

Yardley could barely contain himself this morning- he was so exited to find out where in the world he would be traveling to next, and who would be his new parter in exploring a different area of the New World. He eagerly gathered around the names...


and watched as they went into the hat...


where the winning name was picked out...



and the WINNER IS:



BEBEBABIES!! Congratulations Casie! Yardley is eagerly awaiting his trip to your house- he can't wait to meet you. Thanks to everyone who entered, this was a really fun giveaway.