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.

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! :)

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.)

The making of a super hero

Edgar is coming along, slowly but surely.
I'm having great fun working on him, although Edgar-work is occasionally punctuated by other projects and things that need doing, so he's not progressing super quickly. Still, I get to be the comics geek I am and I'm trying out some new things while I'm at it!

Edgar is the first Rag Pet to get safety eyes. I'd been looking for little safety eyes for ages and was lucky enough to finally find some, measuring a tiny 4,5 mm, through 6060 on Etsy (who I thoroughly recommend to everyone needing safety eyes of any size). I like the, umh... well, professional look safety eyes give and how easy, if a bit of a pain in the fingers, they are to pop in.
I also got some new polyfill at my local fabric store, expecting it to be that kind of crunchy, rough sort since it was really cheap, but it turned out to be lovely and soft with a great loft instead! Edgar now has some of this new polyfill padding his rag innards a bit.

Mr Edwards, aka. Super Elephant, like all great super heroes from Spiderman to Batman, is of course making his own costume. :)

Stay tuned for more Edgar Edwards, mild mannered office worker by day, Super Elephant by night — same Rag-time, same Rag-channel!

perhaps, maybe, possibly

I firmly believe that there is nothing that's impossible if you just try, and that there are no sorrier words than "could have been". So, with that, I've decided to try my luck and I'm going to submit an article to Stuffed Magazine in the hopes that it might get published.

I'm going to make a very special rag-elephant for my submission, as you can see bellow.

(Click on the image to see it better.)

I still need to get a few bits and bobs yet, but here's some of the fabrics I'm planning on using for Edgar:

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I sometimes find it hard to come by the motivation to work, but I'm really excited about getting Edgar put together! It's nice to have a real purpose for the Rag Pets I make, instead of them just ending up sitting in the living room bookcase waiting for the day I get my shop done. I've also had the idea of a superhero Rag Pet -being a bit of a comics & superheroes geek myself- rolling around my head for a long while now, so it's super to have a special something to make it for. And of course it would be absolutely awesome to have my work published in Stuffed!
Onward and upward! :)

Rudolf in the snow

I trudged through knee deep snow to take photos of my Christmas Rag Pet today, but unfortunately my camera's battery didn't much like the cold and it up and died after just a few photos. Also, a little snow -or sleet, to be more exact- storm hit about the same time the battery popped it's clogs, so I decided that it's best to trudge back home from the forest and go back for more photos when the weather is better and the battery fully charged again.

So, Rudolf the rag-reindeer is still waiting to have a proper photo shoot, but I thought I'd post the few photos I did get of him today any way, since he is my Christmas Rag Pet, and with Christmas Eve just a day away, he deserves to make his introductions in time for it.

Rudolf, or Rudy as his friends call him, is an ace at orienteering. He's got a very keen sense of direction and he's really good at reading maps.
He's made out of soft grey wool and his handsome antlers are made out of dark grey velvet. He has a lovely little tail too, but I didn't get a photo of it this time round.
Rudy is wearing a red wool waistcoat with ric-rac and button trim and a warm knitted woolen scarf. And he's very glad to make your acquaintance. :)

Lights, camera, photos!

Despite yesterday being yet another bleak, cloudy day, I managed to squeeze taking photos of my Luv-able + Hug-able quintet in between gaps in the clouds. BooBoo, my photographic assistant, helped me with setting up the photo shoot and she kept me company as I bemoaned the lack of light. PhotoShop helped heaps too, since I had to use a mix of natural light and indoor light, the lighting was a little off and the pictures required a bit of tweaking to get the whites white again.
I did my best to make do with what meager daylight we got and I lit all the lamps I could, but I could have still done with more light. So, I was wondering if any of you have any tips on how to cope with darkening days and lack of light when taking photos?

Speaking of light, we finally got ceiling lights for our living room yesterday! It was about time too; we've been living here for three years and only now got around to getting lamps and having them hung. I know that lamps are a small, rather silly thing to be happy about, but I'm still super happy to have them. :)

Things to come

For some reason I thought I'd already mentioned this in my previous entry, but it would seem that the flu (which is still bothering me) addled my brain and I didn't. So, I'm happy to now tell you that I'll be exhibiting in the Luv-able & Hug-able show at Gallery Hanahou in New York this winter! The theme this year is "Medium and Mini", with works ranging in size from plushies perfect for hugging to teeny tiny little plushies. The show will open on the 3rd of December and it will run until January 9th, so if you happen to be in New York during that time, please go visit the gallery!

Here's a little sneak peek at what I'll be making for the show:

I'm super excited to be a part of this, knowing that my plushies will be on show in one of my most favourite cities and in awesome company too! Among the artists exhibting this year is one of my most favourite plush-artists, Christina Gordon of Jamfancy. I've been a great big fan of her work for ages, so it's very cool to have my plushies rubbing shoulders with hers, as it were. :)