Zealous Craftvocacy

[zealouscraftvocacy]

While I relearn my plushie-skills, I'm indulging by just making the plushies I want to make for the hell of it, and this is my favorite movie of all time. I had been wanting to for some time, so it was really fun to bring this character to life at last.

It was neat working with EVA foam for the mask, but I wish EVA foam loved me as much as I do it. I will probably remake the mask someday. His face was drawn on Procreate, turned into a. PES file using Inkscape and Inkstitch, and three mental breakdowns later, successfully embroidered onto skin-tone minky I bought online. The rest is from thrifted fabric. Mostly fleece, not upholstery.

The biggest struggle was fitting the mask to show his eye. For some reason, I thought it would look cool if I cut out two eye holes, and filled one of them with resin, to simulate the black plastic piece. I could have just cut one eye hole and painted the blacked-out eye, and it would have made zero difference in photos. Lessons learned. I'm pretty okay with how he turned out, especially with his angry little face. There's room for improvement, but he's special to me.

[zealouscraftvocacy]

About a month ago, I had posted an Elktaur plush, and before I move on to other projects, I really wanted to make him a little Nowhere King buddy. It was really hard to figure out how I wanted to design him, since I usually have a goofier plush style than he warrants. But, some of the credit art in the later episodes had me thinking it might me kind of cute to make him as though he were a kigurumi pajama, and this is the result.

This guy was a struggle, since they don’t really have centaur pajama patterns readily available, but he allowed for so many fun little additions. His eyes are made with glow-in-the-dark paint, and after a few seconds with a UV flashlight, the glow gets STRONG. His body and antlers are polar fleece and minky, and he’s stuffed with a very sad Elktaur who has definitely seen better days, but unfortunately not that many of them. Originally, I had these fake antlers in my box of random bits and bobs that I thought would be great for the NWK, but I decided to make more cartoonish ones out of Minky (fun fact: I had to make three of them because I ruined one by bleeding all over it, sewing is fun!). I stuck the original ones on the Elktaur for the photo though.

[zealouscraftvocacy]

First plush I have made in a long, long time. He’s not perfect and there are some things I should fix/improve, and he ended up much bigger than originally planned, but I’m also not unhappy with him and wanted to share. I used to LOVE making plushies more than anything but stopped for about ten years because life becomes work, and hobbies become side-hustles, and you just end up felt guilty dedicating time to something purely for your own enjoyment.

I had been in desperate need of a way to relax for a while, so I decided to try it again. This little guy was such a fun way to get back into crafting and brush up on various skills.

He took a pretty long while to finish since I really only worked on him when I had a few moments to de-stress. Sometimes it was just placing a few pins or sewing a button before stuffing him back in the closet, some days I was able to sit and work on him while I watched a movie. I'm really glad I stuck with it until he was done and it felt really good to sit and make something just because I felt like it.