Rag Pets

Rag Pet road trip

The Terrific Trio came with us this weekend as we headed up north to visit J's parents. It was lovely to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and to just... be. J's parents live right on the shore of a gorgeous lake surrounded by an equally gorgeous garden, orchard and forest. It's an abundance of nature at it's best and it's also the perfect place to simply relax and to enjoy life. Even J. managed to relax a little, since he forgot the power cable of his laptop at home and was unable to do any work while we were away. :)

I know it'll be hard to let these three go, so it was nice to have them with me this weekend. It gave me a chance to spend a little extra time with them and to build their story a little deeper; it's almost like they have lives of their own in a way. Not that the other rag pets don't have lives of their own of course, but they live them in my head mostly. It was also nice for the Terrific Trio to see more of the country, seeing as they'll be representing Finland out there in the big world. :)

Now it's back to work as usual. I'm currently working on some business cards to send off with the Terrific Trio for people to take with them at the exhibition and I'm still slogging away at all the all the photos of them.

Blogging about blogging

Yay! This blog & my rag pets were featured in the Plush You blog today! :)
Both me and the Terrific Trio are very honoured to have this little feature.

Go check out the Plush You blog, asides from all the great features of talented plushie artists, there's also information about the up coming show there.

The Terrific Trio

Say hello to the Terrific Trio, three very special rag pets who are going to be jetting off to Seattle very soon, to make their appearance at the Plush You show.

From left to right: Maija, Aino and Piia

They're cute little soft toys by day, and they fight crime at night!
Well, OK, they don't really fight crime -or I at least think they don't, but then again, I'm asleep in my bed at night so they could be fighting crime unbeknownst to me. :)
I'll post individual photos of each and tell you their stories once I get all the photos sorted and edited.

Today I took some more photos outdoors and even popped by J's office to borrow their windowsill and view for a backdrop! The weather was surprisingly nice today, even if we did have a small storm rip through here tonight. It's been dreary and rainy here most this week, and today we had a welcome patch of sunshine, so I grabbed a friend (thank you again for your help Lady A!) and trooped off to the forest to snap away. It was good I had a friend with me to hold a brolly to block the wind and to create some shade, since it really was very sunny and a bit blustery during the day.

In other news, me, J, and the Terrific Trio will be taking a little trip up north to see family starting tomorrow. I'm hoping to take yet more pictures of Aino, Maija and Piia while enjoying the lake shore, garden and some well deserved rest.

Say cheese!

I had the wonderful chance to have the Plush You Trio professionally photographed today. J's friend is a super cool photographer (check out her work: here, she's very talented) and she lent me her talents for the day. I was a little nervous going to the studio, since the closest I've been to a professional photography studio is the kind where you go to have your passport photo taken.

Needless to say, I had a grand time! Not only is Jenni really nice and super talented, the studio was an experience in itself too. There were so many neat machines and things there to ogle; even the camera stand looked more like a tree! It was wonderful to see how it's really done, and I'm happy to have such high quality photos of the Terrific Trio.

I finally settled on names for the trio today. I've had a handful of names floating about my head ever since I drew the first design sketches, and I've been whittling it down during this process, picking the perfect name for each one.

I'm going to tackle editing the CD full of photos we got tomorrow, I'm much too tired to get stuck into it now and it's coming to midnight/my bedtime besides that.

Picking buttons

The Plush You trio is pretty much ready for their trip now. They still need to have a few little details, like picking buttons for a cardie, finished and to have their photos taken. I also need to design a label to hang around their neck, that'll have their name and story on it. I've been putting the label designing off a bit, since it's not one of my stronger skills. That and I have about zero ideas all together... or then it's just that I have too many ideas and not a clue where to start with them. I do need to get cracking with the label design & button picking though, I'd like to have the trio on their way to Seattle by the middle of this month.
I'm getting a little nervous and a lot excited as the time for the trio to go draws nearer!

P.S: I hope the picture above shows up OK, since for some reason TypePad and Flickr don't seem to be on speaking terms right now and I'm having a bit of bother getting the photo to show.

Nekkid pets

Don't worry, the Terrific Trio aren't chilled, it was nice and warm the day this photo was taken so they had no trouble lounging on the sofa nekkid as the day I made them. :)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I don't much like stuffing. It's hard work and it takes up the most time in the whole rag pet making process. One thing that makes stuffing a bit more bearable is watching telly while doing it. Due to this I've gotten addicted to day-time TV and have thus discovered that Oprah and Dr. Phil are perfect companions to stuffing. I've also developed an addiction to audiobooks, because they allow me to combine two of my favourite things: sewing and reading. I'm currently listening my way through "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer and I'm liking it a lot so far, the reader is really good. I go through about a book per week (if it's a long book) and I'm eternally grateful for LibriVox, my main fix for my audiobook needs.

An other thing that makes stuffing easier is that I got some gorgeous organic cotton stuffing from NearSea Naturals a while back. It's really lovely and soft, yet there's a nice "firmness" to it, and I know this might sound silly, but it smells absolutely lovely too! And you don't need to use as much of it as you would ordinary, cheap-o polyfill, since the cotton has less air fluffing it up. The Terrific Trio are the first rag pets to have the new cotton stuffing inside of them.

Snip, snip the scissors go

Elephant is a little embarrassed by her lack of nose.

I enjoy the whole rag pet making process, but there are bits that I like less than others. Like for example, cutting fabric. I'm even less keen on stuffing; I guess that any part that's hard on your hands isn't up there among my favourite parts. I do treasure my scissors though, they are after all my most important tools along with my sewing machine. And I have quite a few pairs too, each pair dedicated to particular materials, since cutting the wrong thing with the wrong scissors will blunt them in a blink. Out of all of them, my pinking shears are my favourite pair, since they save me so much work and bother finishing raw edges.

On the other hand, I absolutely love to pick out belly buttons for the rag pets. I have big jar full of buttons and I love rifling though them all, looking for that perfect button. I tend to buy one or two extra buttons every time so as to add to the jar. Yet despite this, I never seem to have the kind I need, much like with sewing thread! Although I admit that I am a little addicted to buttons and so I will never have enough of them no matter how many I have. :) I've been a button addict ever since I was a kid. I remember playing with my gran's button collection, happy as a pig in muck. My gran had a really fantastic treasure trove of buttons and I hope that some day my collection of buttons will be just as grand.
Two of the Terrific Trio have old, vintage buttons I had set aside for them and one has a button I bought especially for her.

Big, soft news!

I'll be exhibiting at this years Plush You show!
I've actually known I got in for good a while now, but since I'm still all giddy about it all and because I'll really and truly believe it only when I see it, I haven't really told much anyone. That and it's take a bit to get this blog/website up too.

Three special rag pets will be making the trip to Seattle, and here's the first sketches I made of them:

(Click on the photo to see it bigger.)

The names might switch about and the outfits might change a little still, but I do know that the Terrific Three will all have finnish names, they will be representing Finland over there in the big world after all.