A very fun Christmas commission

One of my tasks this December was to create 3 specific types of plush for Christmas gifts. The commission was from one of my best customers, and it was a really nice creative challenge making them for her.

The first one I was asked to make was a Nutcracker, and after doing a bunch of research and drawing up lots of variations on the idea, I settled on this design. Meet Hans the Nutcracker:

Hans patrols the town, making sure that everyone is in the Christmas spirit. In his spare time he cultivates both holly and mistletoe. He's made of flannel, with fleece for his face and hands, and faux fur for his hair and mustache. His teeth and facial features are made from felt.

My next objective was creating Eve, the Christmas Fairy- this one also went through a bunch of sketches before I settled on the final design idea:

I took my inspiration from a Christmas tree- and created my own fabric for her dress from two variations on a green dot cotton fabric, cutting them out and then sewing them together to create a tree-ish design. I added candy cane striped tights, with snowflake shoes, and sparkly felt buckles, and topped it off with a sparkly white felt pointsettia flower in her hair.

Her wings are created from the same candy cane striped cotton, with bright pink flannel centers.

And lastly, and MOST challenging was this guy, Optimus Prime:

In case any of you don't know, Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots. He's made of mostly fleece, with felt accent pieces. I hand sewed on his helmet antennae, exhaust pipes on his shoulders, and the tires and gas tanks on the sides of his legs. I had to somewhat simplify his design to be able to make him in my style, but overall I'm pretty happy with the way that he turned out.

These were a TON of fun to make, and I enjoyed this commission a lot. It was really great to make Optimus, since I was/am a big fan of the Transformers. My sister and I had quite a few of the original toys when we were kids- and I kick myself for getting rid of them when we "grew up."

Anyway, I hope that these were a big hit in the home where they landed for Christmas- I know that they almost weren't allowed to leave my house when my family saw how they turned out. ;D

Well, that's it for 2011- I'll be back in 2012 with new creations. I'm off to spend some time relaxing, re-charging the creative juices, catching up on my reading, and viewing all the content on my DVR that I missed while I was sewing away the past month. :)
Here's to a great year in 2012 to you all!