Paw prints!

A couple of weeks back, I bought myself a silicone mold with paw prints. I decided to try making a pair of resin pieces with the mold as I wanted to try layers, and see how I can add more dimensions to the work I’m creating. The results? — two very pretty paw prints! The surfaces are quite matte, however.

I’m going to leave it instead of doming it, because I feel that the effect would otherwise be taken away. They are not quite finished yet, however. I still have to sand the bottom, and dome it, before making them into pendants.

These will be the first items to go on sale in my shop very soon.

Cheers!~

Gengar, I choose you!

I made this gengar for my boyfriend.

Apparently, gengar is one of his favourite character, even though he always claims that he’s too manly for cute things like this.

To create the background for this resin piece, I decided to try dry watercolour technique about 5 hours after the first layer of resin was poured in. However, I think I still haven’t quite gotten the effect that I wanted, so I’ll probably try this technique again in my next few pieces.

I also made 3 other pokemon resin pieces. Pictures when I finish doming the surfaces. Cheers!

A little bunny says hi

I drafted a simple pattern of a rabbit several weeks back, and left it. I never got down to sewing the rabbit because I had so many other things distracting me. After much procrastination, I finally got down to sewing the rabbit. Since this was my first time drafting a pattern from scratch with no reference, my measurements were somewhat off.

I traced the template out onto a piece of felt I had lying around, and began cutting away. A good half hour later, I had the rabbit laid out. Or rather the different parts laid out. I took a pretty long time with the cutting and trimming because, as usual, I was distracted by the boyfriend, the cat running around downstairs, and my brothers running in and out of the room.

Also, I was trying to trim the shape right. I never knew how to cut properly in a straight line. I supposed it’s my personality to some degree because I tend to be careless.

After cutting and trimming, I had to figure out what I wanted to stuff the rabbit with. I still had a lot of leftover cotton from my previous projects, but I was reluctant to use it. I felt that cotton tend to flatten over time, and plushies ended up shapeless. Hence, I decided that cotton wasn’t a good stuffing medium for this. Since I still had a lot of quilt batting left, I decided to use those in place of cotton stuffing. I spent the next hour tracing and cutting out the batting, deciding that I should use the “sandwich” method for sewing. That should, technically, result in a more even looking rabbit.

Another hour sewing, and then finally this:

I’m pretty proud of this creation. However, as you can see from the picture, the sewing are still very messy at certain parts. But stitching this has helped me figured out some things, and I’ll probably be doing a second rabbit tomorrow evening or something.

I also decided to skip the arms and legs for the rabbit. My boyfriend said it was pure laziness on my part but I told him the addition makes the rabbit looks very odd since I had cut the fabric a little smaller than I had calculated.

The rabbit is also quite floppy at the moment, so I’ll probably need to stuff it even more. I’m thinking of a rounder bottom… so it’s back to the drawing board for rabbit #2.

What do you think?

Tofu: UPSIZED

Remember several posts back, I wrote about creating a series of tofus?

Well, I decided to re-work the tofus, and this time, I “upgraded” the design. The tofu is now bigger than before, with fabric eyes. I also changed the stuffing. Previously, I used cotton. This time round, I got some quilt batting, made a little sandwich and popped it into the tofu. The result was a fuller tofu plushie, and a tad more squishier.

I LIKE!

My current resin pieces

I finally popped the last few resins out — and they were perfect.

I was pretty pleased with how they look, and I’m planning to turn the pieces into brooches and pendants 🙂

My boyfriend really loves some of them and demanded that I make him a couple as well — less girly, of course. Some of the other girls who saw the resin pieces suggested that I add additional things to them, such as charms and ruffles and bows. I attempted and let’s just say it wasn’t what I expected.

I’ll probably start on a new batch of resin pieces tomorrow. As for the bottom piece with the coffee head, I definitely am disappointed with the outcome. The sticker embedded inside curled up because it got wet. Really should have sealed it before, but oh well. Lesson learnt.

Charity Sale and first sale

This post was ridiculously late. I had meant to put it up way earlier, but I never got down to doing it.

On 1 June, there was a charity sale in some Buddhist organisation that majority of my family are involved in. I don’t, usually, because of personal reasons, but this year, I decided to attempt to pitch some of my creations during the charity sale — just to see how that works out.

It started with a few rather miserable and sorry looking cat plushies, because, you know, I’m still pretty new at sewing. And then it progressed. I was actually quite pleased.

These were some of my works.

There were 5 of these. My aunt sewed a couple of them as well, so that the standards of these kitties aren’t subpar. I took about an hour and half to cut and sew them because I wasn’t quite used to sewing then. Believe me, there were times when I got ridiculously impatient and I started making my stitches extra big so that I could finish up faster. I had lots to learn. Eventually though, these kitties taught me to be patient.

Once I was patient and confident enough, I began to venture into other things. I attempted to make other plushies. Since I like tofu and odd-shaped animals, I tried making some other animals in cube-shaped. They were easier to make but the sewing itself was highly repetitive. Again, I had to learn to be patient.

It was quite an experience making these — I had envision them to be something so there were a bit of problems solving skills required here when it comes to getting certain ideas across. I had really enjoyed making these little critters and they make me very happy just looking at them.

Eventually, these 4 critters expand to include a monkey and a bat. The bat was actually quite popular with kids and I had to make another one on the spot, during the charity sale itself.

I was superbly pleased.

The only problem was the stuffing. I tend to under-stuff the plushies, if that makes sense. Also, I have yet to find a promising material for stuffing. My dad suggested using quilt batting, so that the plushies don’t deflate over time. I’m not quite sure about it but I do have a pack of quilt stuffing I intend to use for making Alice bows and alphabet appliques, I had originally bought that quilt batting for an alphabet set I was making for a colleague’s niece, but that turned out to be a bad idea.

Ending the post with the bat, standing on my bedpost.

Never knew he would be Mr. Popular eh?