Rag Pets

Good deeds

Edgar Edwards, a.k.a. Super Elephant, is pretty much ready to go off to do good deeds and all sorts of superhero-y stuff. I might still fiddle around with his emblem on his cape a bit and make his tail tidier, but in the meantime, he's getting a feel for flying and some relief from the hot summer weather too.
I still need to write my article to send off with Edgar in the hopes that it and Edgar will be published in Stuffed Magazine. Writing isn't one of my stronger skills (I much prefer to read instead), so I'm afraid getting the article written might take a fair while...

While I'm on the subject of doing good deeds, I'd like to encourage everyone to have a look at The Kiva Organisation. Kiva (it's a Swahili word which means "unity" or "agreement") is making it possible for ordinary people to do good deeds and help alleviate poverty by lending money to poor entrepreneurs in the developing world so that their businesses can grow and that they can improve their and their families lives. You choose who to lend to, and all the loans are paid back in full, so you can lend the money onward to another business or pop it back into your bank account. The money goes to fund things like sewing machines, livestock or a myriad of other needful things for running a myriad of different businesses and even a little will change lives for the better.

Blog birthday!

Today marks two full years of Rag Pet blogging. What with my creative dry spell drying up my enthusiasm for blogging of late, it really looks like my little blog has entered the terrible twos! :)
Despite fluctuating activity on my part, you, my dear readers have been very active these past years. An astounding 20781 of you have visited my little blog since I made my very first post here two years back and on average approximately 28 folks pop by here per day. I'd like to say a huge big thank you to all of you, it still surprises and delights me how many people come visit this little corner of the web.

This being a blogging anniversary and thus something unique to life on the internet as it were, I thought I'd list where else me and the Rag Pets can be found on the net:

I really like Twitter! I tweet quite a lot and I avidly follow all my Twitter-friends' doings too. I would love to get new followers!
https://twitter.com/kittyvane

The Rag Pets have their own page on Facebook, that you can become a fan of, or "like", as it's called now days. There really isn't a lot on the Rag Pet Facebook page yet, since I'm not quite sure how to work it and I have to admit that I mostly use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and to play Pet Society. :)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rag-Pets/20122817157

I post on Flickr a lot, and it's the best place to have a peek at my day to day life asides from Twitter.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitty_vane/

I've had a gallery on DeviantArt for ever and ever, and if you're interested seeing more of my work besides just the Rag Pets and the occasional doodle I post here, DA is the place to go.
http://kittyvane.deviantart.com/

Speaking of neat things on the internet, I strongly suggest you visit the truly awesome blogs listed on the right of the page too. Each one of the blogs on that list has a super talented person behind it, and I'm sure they'd all appreciate a visit just as much as I appreciate getting visitors come by my blog.

Progress

The Forest Friends, my trio for PlushYou!, are coming along nicely. It feels so good to be making things again, after such a long uncreative spell. While my mojo certainly isn't all back yet, it's still very good to create!

Along with getting back into the crafting groove, the bright sunshine and beautiful blue skies of summer are lifting my mood too. Our balcony strawberries, tomatoes and chili peppers are growing, as is my general contentment with life. Summer always fills me with an extra bit of joy and energy, it's so wonderful to have long, long days filled with light and warmth that you can't help but feel cheerful! :)

4 years of Rag Pets

It's been four years today since I made the very first Rag Pet as a present for my best friend's daughter on her naming day. (You can see Molly, the first ever rag-cat here: photo!) These four years have really just flown by, and even after all this time, I'm still loving making Rag Pets and my love and appreciation of soft toys has grown all the greater too.

I think I'm not even a year old in this photo, taken by my dad. My grandmother made both me and my brother a pair of teddybears when we were born, and I do believe that my lifelong love of soft toys got started then and there! Gran also taught me to sew when I was about six years old, so I could make my own soft toys and she wouldn't have to hop behind the sewing machine every time I came up with an idea for a toy I wanted.

As a kid, when all my friends would push about baby dolls in their toy prams, I would proudly cart around a soft toy in mine, and I slept with so many soft toys in my bed that it was a wonder I fitted in there among them at all! Then, in my late teens – early twenties I believed that I was much too grown up for soft toys, yet I still slept with a little stuffed cow I had made for myself. I would have been mortified had anyone found that out though.
Now, in my thirties, I've come to the conclusion that you're never too old for anything you enjoy and once again hold my head up high amongst my plushies and I'm proud to be a toy maker.

I'm going to be making Rag Pets and soft toys for many, many years yet to come, and I hope that I can share the love for soft toys with many, many people all over the world! :)

Foresty fabric everywhere!

Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to vote on which theme I should go with for my PlushYou! pieces! With all the votes tallied, "Forest" came out on top (with "Circus" a close second) and even though I change my mind as often as I change my pants, I'll be sticking with this theme now. :)

I've made sketches and made my mind up as to names and now all I need to do is pick what fabrics to use...

I'd never say that I have too much fabric, quite the contrary, I think I never have just the fabric I need, but at times it is a little hard to pick only a few fabrics from the piles of plenty. I have already managed to prune my assortment a bit though, and I'm sure it will all come together in the end, especially since I have a pretty clear image in my mind of what I'm wanting to do.
And I always have BooBoo at hand to help me with things too.

(BooBoo isn't actually very much of a help, laking thumbs and getting hair on everything and all, but she's super cute, so it all balances out.)

Oh hello there!

It's been a while since I last popped by here, but I'm trying not to feel bad about not blogging all that often. Tartx has a really great post about blogging without obligation: http://www.tartx.com/blog/?page_id=233 and it's a philosophy I fully support. I don't want this blog that's so very dear to me to become something of a burden, and I don't want to have to churn out posts if I don't have a reason to post.

This post does have a reason, and that reason is a super one: I'm going to be exhibiting at PlushYou! in Seattle this fall! I'm really chuffed to be a part of the show again, and to get to share my work with the world. :)

I'm famously bad at making decisions; I will take forever to pick what to eat at a restaurant, and then change my mind once more while I'm ordering and choosing what to wear can take ages and many a wardrobe change before I make it out the door, wishing I would have worn something else instead. So I'm hoping you lot would be able to help me to make up my mind as to what theme I should go with for my pieces. To that end, here's a little poll:

a) circus
b) forest
c) space

Leave a comment with your vote as to which theme would be best, I'll tally up the results, and hope not to change my mind too many times over! :)

Candy for the ears

This and the previous month have been not so good creative-wise for me. I have a strong yearning to create, but my lack of motivation and energy seems to be even stronger. I really wish I knew the "why" for this absence of drive, and had the "how" to get my creative groove back... As a result, this poor blog has been quite forgotten and neglected.
So, in an effort to break out of the blahs and to start making my way around this block, and to share more about myself and my life asides from the Rag Pets too, I thought I'd post about something that inspires me no end and that I can not do without while at the workroom: music.

In addition to abundant amounts of musicals and Disney soundtracks (there's nothing better to pick you up when you're feeling down!) I mostly listen to artists and bands very few others have heard of or music that is, in a manner of speaking, an acquired taste. I try to pick music to fit what I'm doing or how I'm feeling at the moment, be it good or bad. And there's no other who seems to always have a song to fit any mood I'm in than Tom Waits. I'm a huge, big fan of Mr Waits, and his music has kept me company at the work room more often than not.

I like this particular song ("Everything you can think of is true" from the album "Alice"), because I firmly believe that nothing is impossible if you just try, that you can do anything you can think of if you just set your mind to it!
The world of Tom Waits' songs might not always be the happiest nor the brightest, but there's always hope there, a silver lining to every strange, raspy, whiskey soaked cloud; you might be in the gutter, but you're still looking up at the stars. I also very much enjoy the moody "circus from the wrong side of the tracks" feel of Waits' songs.

Speaking of twisted carnival music, I also listen to a lot of The Tiger Lillies. This is very much music that you either love or hate, for sordid songs about unfortunate souls who often meet rather unsavory fates, all sung in a falsetto aren't really to everyone's tastes.

This particular song is from The Tiger Lillies' "Shockheaded Peter" show, with songs based on the cautionary children's tales from the book of the same name.
A word of warning though, a lot of The Tiger Lillies' music is not safe for work or delicate sensibilities. Their sense of humor is really very dark and the subject matter of some songs could make a sailor blush!

As for music that's suitable for even younger ears and that's pretty sure to make you giggle a little bit, there's always Twink.

The beauty of Twink's music is that most of the instruments they use are toys and ordinary household objects, with one of Mike Langlie's (who's the band's leader) many toy pianos featuring in every song. You can learn more about Twink, and experience their wonderful candy coloured rainbow aesthetic on their own site, here: http://www.twink.net/

To wrap up this musical post, here's a song that always makes me smile:

Boku wa kuma = I am a bear

While I don't actually understand much Japanese, or know anything asides from this one song of Utada Hikari's music, I do know that at one point in the song the bear sings something to the effect of:
"In the evening I say "Good night Mr Pillow!"
In the morning I say "Good morning Mr Pillow!""
and that always gives me a giggle. :)

blank

I've been feeling a bit blah lately, finding it hard to rustle up inspiration and motivation. Hence, it's been a bit quiet here, despite my determination to post more.

You'd think that there was nothing scary about a blank piece of paper, because really, the worst it can do is give you a paper-cut, right? But when you're lacking in inspiration, it's a scary thing indeed. Much like any idea that's waiting to be made real, it just sits there and... expects things from you. And you know you can do it, it's just so very hard to get things done when you're feeling blank and blah and you end up sort of paralysed by it all. I love making plushies, but getting to the actual making bit is sometimes overwhelmingly hard.

There are times I wish that there was a pill that would give you limitless motivation and fire up your inspiration!

Happy Doll Festival!

I've been meaning to share more about my life outside of the Rag Pets, since I'm a lot more things besides being a toy making elf.
So, as today is Hinamatsuri, the festival of dolls, I thought I'd post a bit about my dolls here. I've been collecting Blythe dolls for about 5 years now and currently have 8½ of them (the ½ is because one of them is a "Petite Blythe", a much littler version of the full sized ones). I also have an Una Moof and a bunch of old and new Barbies hanging around too.

(You can see more pictures of my dolls in my Flickr, here: Dolls!)

I've been a big fan of dolls ever since I was a kid, even though soft toys were (and still are) number one in my heart, so much so that when my friends would tote around baby dolls in their toy prams, I would have a teddy bear or other plushie in mine! Still, I played with Barbies well into my teens, and one of the reasons I wanted to learn how to sew was so I could make clothes for them myself.
I quite enjoy fiddling with tiny little bits of fabric when making doll clothing, there's just something oddly relaxing about working in miniature! Of course having cute and quirky dolls as my muses makes it all the more marvelous too. My love of making mini-clothes is also why the Rag Pets have clothing that can be taken off and put on; I like the challenge of making actual working items of clothing in a tiny scale.

It's also thanks to dolls that I've made a whole bunch of wonderful friends all over the world, and starting to collect dolls again relit my love of photographing as well. It's quite amazing how big an impact dolls have had on my life really, and it's also the main reason I like to celebrate Hinamatsuri, even if it's not a holiday that's observed here in Finland.

Happy Hinamatsuri everyone! :)

Storybooks and fairytales

I have a few fairytale print fabrics, and since fairytales are, along with plushies, some of my most favourite things, I thought I'd make a collection of fairytale themed Rag Pets. I have quite a few Storybook Rag Pet designs drawn up already and I'm looking for many more fairytale fabrics too.

I started off with "Princess and the Pea" by Hans Christian Andersen, using fabric from the "Far Far Away" collection by Heather Ross.
So, this is Princess the rag-elephant.

You might think that an elephant is a bit of a daft choice to be a most sensitive princess, what with elephants having such thick hides and all, but in fact elephants have a rather keen sense of touch. That is, they communicate in part seismically, "listening" to sound vibrations in the ground with their feet! I must say that I also really enjoy the dichotomy of having an elephant play the part of a delicate little princess. :)

(You can see more photos of Princess in my Flickr, here: Photos!)

Princess has a pea-green button on her collar, which is made from Marimekko's "Muija" fabric, just like her bow. Princess herself is made from soft grey wool flannel and she has a very fancy mother-of-pearl belly button that's fit any princess. She has safety eyes and pretty blushy cheeks.

You can read and learn more about the "Princess and the Pea" story over at Sur la Lune, here: Princess and the Pea.