I am on my way to being the best auntie ever or the worst sister-in-law that ever lived. Possibly both.

I am making my 2-year-old niece a plushy for her birthday. She is very hands-on baby and wants to help with everything and be involved in the center of attention. A few weeks after her birthday everyone is going dipnetting. She is two and can not help with dip netting or do anything but watch.

So I am making her a toy salmon. And I am making it so she can filet it. It has guts. It has bones. It is all one piece and child friendly, and I am debating using embedded magnets or velcro to hold the filets on.

She has a kitchen set with a little wooden knife at her grandparents house, who have already heard about this and think its a great idea. We are gonna teach this kid to clean and process fish. She already knows where meat comes from and she will want to get in and do what everyone else is doing which she can not do because the fish are only slightly smaller than she is.

So, salmon plushy

BTW, I make plushies by winging it. Actually I make all my art by winging it. If you would like to comment on the fine art of making shit up as you go, feel free. If you wanna ask for a pattern, uhh,

Progress! On to bones! On to guts! Be the unhinged fairy godmother!

One sad looking headless inside out fishy 🐟

And the much happier right-side out headless fishy 😄

I have weird priorities for this fish. I want the gill plates to be shaped like a real fish so she can learn how to pick a fish up correctly and develop the fine motor skills to do so. But thats turning out to be a bitch and a half.

Also I have no googly eyes anywhere in the house and thus far I've been able to do this entire project with material on hand. I've used 4 old tee shirts and a pair of jeans, but I will need to buy velcro and eyeballs.

the head/jaw/gill plate got a lil wonky and honestly I'd like to take it apart and try again but I'm running out of time.

But we have eyeballs! We have guts! We have a gill pocket and oddly attached pectoral fins! I just need to get ahold of some white velcro for a spine and I'll have a completed plushy.

I'm actually quite proud of the velcro arrangement I've come up with, because to peel it apart with the toy knife she'll be mimicking the motion of actually fileting a fish.

He's done! He's adorable! He's filetable! I had to hide my phone from my niece because she wanted to see the pictures I was showing her grandma.

I think I may try and make another one that's less child friendly and more accurate, because I had a great time solving topology problems, but I did sacrifice alot of anatomical details in the name of practical toy construction. I like what it says as an art peice, the junstiposition of a medium associated with simplified design and the details biological reality. There's also a fun parallel that comes up when sewing and food processing (specifically fish processing) are both pretty heavily gendered labor, but when you put them together they almost cancel each other out conceptually.

Bulbasaur was never the same after that day 🐉

Omg omg I got a bulbasaur at build a bear and I was kinda embarrassed about buying it for myself and stuff but there weren’t any other kids in the store or shoppers for that matter and the girl helping me said she was glad to here it was for me as she collects some plushies and has her own bulbasaur.

Well she was almost done stuffing him and then I noticed that you can put scents in your bear and fucking love cotton candy and the girl basically car salesmen style sold me on the scent pad and asked where I wanted the scent to go

And I didn’t know where it should go but she herself being quite the plushie enthusiast was like “you’re gonna hug him a lot right? may I reccomend right here” and pointed to his forehead

So I was like “awe cute yeah that sounds good” (my bulbasaur is totally stuffed mind you and I even had her make him extra firm )

and then the girl rolls up her sleeves and was like “alright bulbasaur! Here we go! I apologize in advance but this is gonna look very inappropriate!”

And she fisted my super full bulbasaur all the way to her elbow saying sorry to him and to me over and over again. It took her several tries to get the scent pad in place since my bulbasaur was so stuffed and she looked like she was straining and saying “I don’t know why they didn’t think about this design more, so many parents are gonna complain about this one day, I know it”

So all in all this was the best build a bear experience I’ve had since I was a little kid and I love my fat, cotton candy scented, anally inclined bulbasaur to pieces

Every time I see this post I cant stop fucking laughing

would you guys like to see the greatest beanie baby poem ever written

This was posted on a ‘second hand finds’ Facebook page…

…only to be followed by this amazing message.

The roller coaster ride started.

With a happy ending…

…and a sweet poem to finish.

Plush Bees // Molly Burgess on Etsy

Mushroom Bears // Mount Royal Mint

Time to sleep

"The toys! Every creature we met, she remembered as a toy!"

where is he going??

[ID: A single Chip the cat Beanie Baby with a little flower bead necklace sitting alone in a train seat. End ID.]

"The toys! The toys! Every creature we met, she remembered as a toy!"

DOCTOR WHO | The Star Beast 60th Anniversary Special

U-Chan the pink bunny

U-Chan's person's mom wrote:

"Hello I am interested in your services for repairing my daughter’s #1 love - her bunny."

I'm sure many of you could empathize with that description of a stuffed animal! And the bunny was very well hugged indeed. Here is her diagnosis photo:

There were many options for her repairs... just repairing holes, lining her, recovering all or part of her, to clean or not to clean. Her family decided to recover her pink areas (with the most balding and holes) in new fabric but keep her white areas original, just stitching any injuries there. And she would get a full spa to spruce her up as well.

Here she is in her bubble bath (patients always have a bath first, if they will get one at all, because then all fur is matched to clean and fluffed fur):

Then it was time to choose fur. There were many shades of pink and lengths of fur. Her family was leaning toward a shorter furry fleece, closer in length to her white fur, but wasn't sure. So I recovered one back panel in it and sent a photo for approval:

Approved! surgery would proceed. :-)

Here's here heart being made and installed with a bit of her original stuffing:

And here she is all better, feeling like a new rabbit, but still her original self. All her original pink was under new fur, and her original white was all visible:

Looks great! wrote her family. So U-Chan flew home to Minnesota ready for more hugs and adventures. :-)

THERE IS. a website. that takes 3D models with seams and pulls it apart to make a plushie pattern and informs you where things need to be edited or darts added for the best effect. and then it lets you scale it and print off your pattern. and I want to lose my MIND because I've lost steam halfway through so many plushie patterns in the mind numbing in betweens of unwrapping, copying all of the meshes down as pieces, transferring those, testing them, then finding obvious tweaks... like... this would eradicate 99% of my trial and error workflow for 3D models to plushies & MAYBE ILL FINALLY FINISH SCREAMTAIL...

so this website let's you:

this is. beyond. this is BEYOND. and as far as I can see it's free???

Me coming home from work knowing I have to wake up and do it all again

I made some frogs. They're smol and very round. :)

Saturn Devouring His Son

[ID: a shoebill gently biting the beak of a shoebill plushie]