The Super Hero has a Weakness...

and it's being an unwilling victim in a tug of war between a 4 year old and his 12 year old brother. Why a 12 year old was fighting over a toy that wasn't his, I don't know. Here is the result:

Poor "Z Man" has a split arm. Sigh! I knew I should have double stitched those arms. But I didn't since made him xmas eve late at night. I'll try and patch him and hope he holds. Knowing my youngest nephew I didn't think this would last more than 6 months anyway. It's just sad to see something you worked on so hard be abused. I guess that why I don't usually make things for children.

Li'l Red

I recently won a sweet little pattern from Ginger Melon's new Fairy Tale Dolls. I got to choose from several and I chose Li'l Red. I spent some time sewing her up yesterday. 

If I make another one I'll enlarge the pattern cause it's just so tiny and I don't much like sewing so small. It turned out cute and I gave it to my daughter who needed something special to cheer her up. She had a nasty fall over the weekend and scraped her face up, almost broke her nose, has a huge knot on her head and has a mild concussion. I'd show a pic but she refuses to let anyone see her until she looks better.

I have finished my Vintage Circus piece but will wait until my ADA group sees if first before I show you all.

I still have lots to do on my Indian doll and the next ADA Challenge is coming up next month too. I've been thinking about my Wonderland piece and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to make it. I don't think I can afford it right now. I'm hoping to still be able to do a piece for Patrick Gill's Vintage Halloween Challenge if he has one this year. This is an extremely stressful year financially so far. Lots of ideas...very little money. So if you are wondering why I'm not posting projects like I used to, that's why.

Worktable Wednesday

I have 2 different kinds of projects going on my worktable lately. First, I'm continuing with the Halloween dolls. Mummies, Skellies and Werepeople. These will be the last of this series.

Secondly, I've been working on new digital prints to add to my etsy shop. I spent so much time this Spring and Summer working on Plush and Dolls that I've really missed doing my little graphics.

What's on your worktable today?

Demented Alice Is Done.

She started out so cute but became more mad as I finished each stitch

until finally she became a demented thing. I hear Wonderland can

do that to you!

What ever you do, don't drink from that bottle!

2 mad friends.

Step #3 "How I Create My Plush"

How I create my plush Step 3

1. I first print out the pattern pieces from the previous post and then I pin and cut out all my pattern pieces to the fleece (white) and felt I begin to hand sew them all together. I used fleece for the rabbit's fur cause I wanted him to be really soft. I've never used it this way before so my initial idea was to machine sew the plush together after I hand sewed all the details.

2. I decided that some of the details should be dimensional instead of flat which is my usual style. I'm quite proud of how the glasses came out.

The Doctor was quite interested and came to take a peek.

3. I hand stitched all the body pieces together. Here he is all sewn together and almost done. I didn't show any of the sewing cause I didn't want to bore you. Really wishing

now that I had made the bow tie dimensional too.

I ended up hand sewing the fleece body together because I was afraid I'd jump off a bridge if I messed it up on the machine after I spend so many hours hand sewing the details on. I

really loved how nice the fleece was to sew.

Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking using this background but the White Rabbit is done.

He doesn't have whiskers like the drawing because I couldn't figure out how to do them, so if you have any ideas let me know.

I have a whole Alice In Wonderland series plush planned and I'll show peeks here and there as I work on the other characters. Alice is next.

Hope you enjoyed this "creating my plush" series.

You can find PART 1 HERE and PART 2 HERE.

Start With One Bunny And You Know What Happens!

A sweet little White Chocolate Bunny has moved into the studio.

She has an adorable cottontail.

Hippity Hoppity Easter's on it's way!

And so are Carmel, Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate Bunnies!

I think they need ribbons around their necks...what do you think?

Hot Pink Penguin For Valentine's Day.

My daughter who I call "the Girl" or Queen of Snarkdom

on twitter requested that I make a Hot Pink Mini

Penguin for her for Valentine's Day. She wanted a
heart on it with her nickname "Sen".

I sewed this up while watching the Opening Olympic
Ceremony and got so excited the "N" got a

bit wonky, but I know she'll like it anyway.

You have no idea how huge this request is for me!

She wanted me to make something? She really

likes my little creatures?

We have struggle much though her teen years

and the fact that she is putting value on what

I do is priceless to me!

Would you like to see my Hooters?

Cute aren't they?

The two biggest are softies and the little

one is a brooch. They are all headed

for my etsy shop soon.

Mermaid Doll Is Finished!

Here is her pretty little face. You can see her seashell bra
and her starfish hair clip.

Full body shot. Oh those scales took forever!

I'm holding her so you can get a better idea of her size.

The doll is based on my mermaid Illustration shown here.

Penguins, Penguins Everywhere! A Mermaid and A Treasury

Since I've been under the weather recently and I can't just sit and do nothing, I've been sewing penguins. I now have penguins in many colors and many sizes taking over my cutting table. I have more than is shown in the above photo. Once I got on a roll I just couldn't stop! Not entirely sure what I'll do with them all. I've listed Herman the big guy with the heart in my shop and 2 of the blue and pink small ones in a giveaway I'm doing for One World One Heart, which you can click on the sidebar link to get more info and also check out my previous post.


I'd really like to know what people think of these because I'd like to make more plush/softies based on my stationery designs. I don't want to waste my time if they are ugly or people don't like them, ya know?

Here's a mermaid softie I'm starting. She's based on my mermaid print I have in my etsy shop. She's got a bit of the old nakedness going on right now, but she doesn't have eyes yet so doesn't know. Shhhhhh! Don't tell her!

I was in a great treasury made up of etsy Twitter friends. See my Cupcake Love Print in the middle there? There were so many great items but unfortunately I didn't get this blogged about in time and the treasury has expired! Darn it! Anyway scrapaddict put it together and it was cool.

One World One Heart Giveaway Event

Welcome and Come Ride The Magic

Carpet Around the World!

A Whimsical Bohemian created this wonderful international
Blogging event.

This is it's 4th year and I'm so please to be a part of it! This event
has bloggers from around the world offering wonderful giveaways
all at the same time and a wayto connect with others around the world.

You can click the link on my sidebar to get more info about this
event and a list of all the great creative bloggers who are participating.

***I realized after I started reading other people's blogs that I should
have put some info about myself, so here it goes.***

I'm an avid reader.

Mother to 2 teenagers.

I have a Chihuahua furbaby.

I'm completely obsessed with Dr. Who, international

soccer and zombies.

I have a serious addiction to coffee. I design stationery and
have started making dolls and softies.

This is my giveaway. It's an 8.5" 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) digital print
of my Penguins In Love design plus my original small 5" (13 cm) plush

based on the design. The print is on linen textured stock and printed

with archival inks so will not fade. The plush penguins are hand sewn

by me from my own pattern. I would be happy to change the

English words to a language of your choice.

To enter the giveaway is easy as pie! No jumping thru hoops!

Just leave a comment and an email address so you can be contacted if you win.

You do not need to blog, tweet or follow my blog in order to win.

The giveaway starts today and I'll pick ONE winner on the 15th of February.

Remember to enter this giveaway just leave a comment - One one comment per person please! Good Luck and have fun riding the Magic Carpet Around the World!

The response to this giveaway far exceeds my wildest dreams! So in all fairness I'm going to add another giveaway so that 2 people can win & possibly even 3.

This is the additional giveaway. A little Valentine's
bucket, magnet shown on front, mini red penguin,
note pad & some other goodies.

So Very Busy Lately

Worked on a new plush for the etsy shop last night. Need to go back and re-work a few things before it's ready but over all I'm pretty happy with it. Any of you who have seen my etsy shop will recognize her from my Penguins in Love art. This is Gwen the penguin. She does stand alone but I'm thinking of adding rice or something to the base for more stability. I usually like to do plush much smaller than this but wanted to give this size a go.

I've been super busy with the kids falling ill with the flu one after the other, lots of ebay orders, a lovely large website order and sketching the hundreds of ideas that are exploding out of my head.

This is Binks. He doesn't usually get pictures taken since he mostly looks like a big dark blob when I try, but he was very cooperative this morning. I guess he feels bad that Lita gets all the photo attention so I promised him he would be the furry star of today's blog post. He'll be 12 this March. I rescued him from a pet store as a bitty little fluffball. As an all black cat he was in danger of being sold to the "wrong people" so I snatched him up and he and I have been very happy together.


On further news, the studio re-do is just about complete. I have a few things that I need help moving out and some shelves to put up then I can take pictures for the after. I'm am so loving my new cutting table/shipping center! I've used it and it's lovely!

New Items Up In Etsy Shop and WIP

Penguins In Love A2 Note Card Set.

Cupcake Love 5 x 7 Print.

Do ya get the whole love theme yet? LOL!

WIP

Possible Panda Plush with Embroidered Heart
It's all hand sewn so I'm not really sure I have time for this but I did
make a prototype which led to another idea.

I printed some ideas onto fabric for soft plush dolls. Still working
out the kinks. These could show up in my etsy shop soon.

Quick peek at my Rose Tyler Dr. Who doll. I'm still not happy with her face. This is her second head and 3rd face and I'm not happy yet but I don't have time to keep messing with her so I'm o.k. with her. I love how her hair and Union Jack t-shirt turned out though. Once she gets her legs and eyebrows I'll take better pics. A Captain Jack Harkness doll is in the works too.

A New Project

A new doll design. Can you guess what it is?

Today is my son's 20th birthday & Zombie day!

So today is my son's birthday. I'm not going to make the fuss I did last year. For some reason this birthday is a little easier for me but next year's 21st will be hard, especially since the youngest will be 18 that year.

I made this zombie doll for my son's birthday. We share a love of anything zombie & I knew he would appreciate the handmade gift. And he did. He's named the zombie and is going to hang it from the rear view mirror of his car. Oh and the pink thing in the zombie's hand is of course BRAINS!

Happy 20th Birthday RJ!