Handy Dandy Handycrafty Thread

How did you make those?

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nah, I used an exacto knife and a special eraser for stampmaking that comes with a thin blue plasticky layer on one side. I can and have often used bog standard erasers.

another cushion cover.



This is exactly the kind of sewing project which would've taken half an hour instead of three if I had a sewing machine. Eh. It's a world map print which Actually Has New Zealand on it so it's all good.

I made a craft once!!

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SpoilerThis guy was the prototype, he's sittin in my room right now all cozy with the rest of my plushies.



And, for reference

It's a sparsen from my adventure! A friend of mine really liked their design, so I learned how to make this for him. It turned out much nicer than I could have expected, and I'm surprised its even able to stand up. Also he BIG

I have a bunch more felt and stuffing and buttons, so I can theoretically make more. But I haven't touched the stuff since November. Whoops! Money well spent.

Oh hey, schaz, do you have like, one massive photo of a bunch of your projects? That would be really neat

that's an adorable sparsen.

The bulk of my projects are, much to my embarassment, incomplete, but I'll assemble them for perusal this weekend then?

So my first major craft medium was crochet - I'd make tiny things out of embroidery floss and a lace hook, and make wire-able 3D shapes with larger projects made from yarn.

Now my main medium is needle felting. Pipecleaners and sometimes stiffer wires are used to help shape limbs, but they're not really poseable. They're sculptures, and because the overall texture is quite same-y and matte, I like to add beads, fabric, and occasionally slightly more out-there stuff if I think it's going to give the final model the right "look". Examples of the latter include airdrying sculpting PVC (mostly used in Japan to make miniature deserts) or stone chips. Generally I try to stay on-model, to try and "learn" a sense of curves and outlines and shape.

So, here's one massive photo containing all the stuff that I really should get round to finishing at some point:



As you can see, it's all Pokemon. Several items are a couple limbs short of being a full set (Nindorina, Crustle). Others are stalled until I stop feeling sorry for my inability to sew complicated shapes out of Actual Fabric (Huntail, Leavanny, Meganium). Japanese crepe fabric (chirimen) is my favourite to work with aesthetically, even if it frays like a motherfucker at the scales I prefer to work at - my most ambitious (completed) project with it to date is this Hawlucha:





Other junk I haven't posted here for whatever reason:



Huntail and a Nidorina. It was originally meant to be a Nidoran F, at a scale matching my Scolipede evolutionary line, but it worked out waay too big for a Nidoran and needle felt actually has limits as to how much you can compress it. I still want to make a Nidoran and Nidoqueen all to scale, at, uh, some point. Along with the Tropius, Sceptile evolutionary tree, Larvesta, probably bead-mascot'd Sigilyph, Bayleef, Druddigon, Sylveon, Sewaddle+Swadloon, Yanmega, Flygon, realistic models of various irl bugs, birds, fish maybe, idk,,,,

I probably have other things that I haven't shown anyone! Because I completely forgot I had that Espurr in the works until I fossicked around in one of my boxes looking for the Meganium base. These kind of things tend to be "out of sight out of mind", if they're not within my eyeshot I easily forget about 'em. Also I've given some of my stuff away so photographing those in a group shot'd be a challenge and a half. If someone's paying my flights though, I'll happily give it a shot.

Other things I could show off if people egg me on instead of doing the Right Thing and yelling at me to finish X already: My collection of eyes-to-be beads and buttons; the technicolor shitshow of wool roving I've hoarded, my fabric cache, my collection of stamps.....

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This is exactly as I had hoped it to be

Tiny chikorita yesssss

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Ok so after an afternoon of picking up and starting some of the stuff in my previous post, punctuated with Getting Mad At Video Games and feeling like the sorest, sulkiest loser this side of the Gamer Gates, I was like "fuck it I'm making something small"

then this happened







It's been five hours and boy should I have grabbed something to eat at a sensible midpoint, instead of makingg myself dinner at 11pm

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So good! Nice crafts, Schazer.

Thanks! The feet were made from twist ties - I found a bag of 'em for giftwrapping purposes with metallic tape. No idea how they ended up in my house, because I sure didn't buy 'em.

Re: Plastic beads: I could, but I'm such a stickler for details that most of what I find just won't cut it. The bulk of beads are rotationally symmetrical, and I'm not fond of the bead-holes/thread showing. It looks untidy imho.

I actually tweaked the Chikorita a little before taking photos yesterday, when I "finished" it it looked more like this:



You can see it's got a much more bug-eyed look, and the side profile isn't nearly as good. Seeing as I tend to leave notions 'til last, the felt surface is often quite compacted at that point and resistant to further prodding to make a good half-bead-sized recess.

Keeping all this symmetrical at this scale is also nightmarish, because even a slight deviation off-centre can make the whole face look lopsided, and if the base itself isn't kept symmetrical it's like good luck lmao. I must've spent forty minutes easy on Natu's eyes - its left in particular just wouldn't look good. Even now I'm like "ugh I wish I was ambidextrous so I wasn't constantly making two left feet/eyes/wings and subsequently tweaking one of them."

Oh gosh, it's probably very easy to make a life size joltik ;;

Try "accurately to scale to my 4-inch tall Scolipede sculpture" on for size



life-size, they'd be the same size as the scoli doll. At that scale I could probably make a plush/amigurumi instead.

I was talking about how to get into needlefelting with a cool antipodean, so here's a hot tip for folks looking for materials to start needle felting:


click through for the full-sized image, it's phone quality but hopefully it'll illustrate my point?

Needle felting looks most polished when you've worked the surface is like a tennis ball's - with few stray fibers and a clean outline, and felted enough that you can no longer see the directions the original fiber was laid down in. Some wool sliver is easier to work with than others! (My terminology is not industry standard.)

The green in the above picture is an acrylic, but is just as nice to work with as pure wool. It looks and feels "spongy" compared to the blue and especially the gray, thanks to the fibers being "crimped". It's the same green I used for the Tiny Natu, and the yellow joltik in the photo with the chikorita is made of the same stuff, different color.

The blue is pure wool, also crimped. It feels spongy and the orientation of the fibres isn't obvious if you look at it close up. (most wool sliver comes in a hank though so it's pretty obvious.) The Huntail, plus everything in burgundy, is made of this stuff. I love it.

The grey is also pure wool, but the fibres are still mostly straight and it gives the overall wad of wool a distinct "grain". "straight" fibres are silky to the touch, unless you're using el cheapo wool like this charcoal shit. Compacting this stuff takes longer, and you're likelier to have loose ends sticking out all over your project unless you shave the poor thing. Rolling the stuff between your fingers and generally crushing it before you work it helps a fair bit.

Good luck, have fun, and make sure to show off your shit if/when you do try your hand at needle-felting!

schazer told me I should post these here so here I am (the cool antipodean)

I wanted to get back into sewing toys again but wanted something easy to do because I hadn't made one in a really long time, so I chose fish

here's a mullet





here's a flathead

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mwah <3

This is making me want to raid the local fabric shops for a bunch of tasteful earth tone fat quarters to send you

I DON'T NEED ANY MORE I AM DROWNING IN THEM

thank you though

Those are really cute! Also professional quality product shots, geez

Here be spoilers for the upcoming pokemon game!

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So cute! Are you doing all of them?

High quality, high cute