Creeping Gigantism

Argh, I have the nasty habit of cutting the pattern pieces a little bit larger, and larger, and larger when I don't use a pattern template.  With cat toys that can start making a toy oversized pretty fast. My Beets have been one of those items that keep getting a little bigger each time.

 

Well today I 'downsized' them quite a bit, not only do they make better RADISHES, I use less felt for the two leaves on top too.  And it gets them back to easy to play with cat size. 

 

Honestly, my carrots have gotten way too big lately, and the fried eggs (larger than the real thing) and even some of the mice, which I still cut freehand.  I lay out the folded fabric and start slicing without really noticing that it's getting a half inch too long here, added width there, and once it's stuffed it just looks too large sometimes.  I've got to make an effort to tone things back to 'moderate' instead of jumbo.

A Few Tips -- Part 4

Safety Lock Eyes

When you use safety lock eyes on a stuffed toy you can spice it up a bit by adding a ‘ring’ around the eye.  Safety lock eyes are plastic animal eyes with a shank coming out the back and a washer that slides onto the shank, effectively ‘locking’ them in place. Once that washer goes on there’s no way to get it off the eye so you have to be certain that the eye is placed right on the toy’s head. 

 

The ring adds depth – I make mine out of felt. Black felt usually but I’ve used other colors too. You cut two squares of felt 1 inch by 1 inch and with the tip of your scissors cut a very small slice into the center of each piece. Just large enough to get the shank of the eye through. Put BOTH pieces onto one shank, then take your scissors and trim around the eye, leaving 1/8^th or 1/4^th of an inch of black around the eye.  Then you simply pull one of the circles off and put it on the other shank and you have a matched pair of eyes with ‘rings’ helping to add extra detail to the face of your stuffed toy. 

 

Kydex Plastic 

I’ve used Kydex for a long time. It’s the only plastic that you can cut with a scissors and that does NOT warp or bend over time.  I use it to stiffen my falcon tails but it can be used anywhere you want something super straight on a designed doll. 

 

The plastic can be found at any plastic manufacturer, check your Yellow Pages for one around your area. All of them should have a retail outlet at the plant, where you walk in and can buy small amounts.  I bought mine in the 10 foot sheets (ten feet long, 4 feet wide, rolled up to fit into the back seat of my car). 

 

Last time I got an entire sheet it cost me $89 but that sheet lasts me almost ten years.  You can get much smaller pieces or even ‘scrap’ for close to ‘free’ if you ask nicely.  This plastic is the type they use in hospitals along the walls so gurneys don’t gouge into the wall. Disneyworld uses it on the sides of all their fast food kiosks. It takes a good deal to scuff it up and is very easy to clean.  I’ve gotten it in a medium beige color and once in a pale grey.  Any scissors will cut it, just make sure to round the edges a bit on your cut pieces so they don’t chew into your fabric and cause a hole if played with. 

A Few Tips - Part 3

Making Tags -- If you need to make hang tags, topper cards or pin-able tags for your items for craft fairs, packaging or such, it's pretty easy to come up with something useable without having to have a ton of them done up on card stock at a printer place. 

 

The Dollar Stores often carry clear contact paper which looks identical to lamination plastic. You get 3 feet for $1.  Or you can go to WalMart and get the 5 foot rolls for about $6.  Not only do they have the smooth surface, there's a ridged surface that works well too. Just do not get the 'frosted' type, you can't see through it and you need the surface to be clear.

 

Do your tags in Microsoft Word, drop in a picture if you want from online, play with the font styles and sizes, and when you're done just print them out on your printer.  Unroll the clear contact paper, peel back the clear part and carefully lay your page of tags (or cut tags) on the sticky part.  I start at one side and lower it down, pressing to eliminate any air bubbles. 

 

You can do one side only, or both sides if you need a stiffer tag. Once done, trim with a scissors.  Use a hole punch at the appropriate place and you're good to go.  It's very cheap, easy to do, and if you did it right it will look fairly professional.   And it's a FRACTION of the cost it would have been if you had the tags laminated. 

 

NEVER Buy Retail -- If the store you buy your supplies at has a coupon program, sign up for it. Fabric stores take coupons from competitors.  Buy on sale. There's no reason to have to purchase at full price if you can help it.  Need more coupons?  Check the company's website, they often have smart phone coupons available, or a special printable one. 

 

Alternatives To Buying Fabric At The Fabric Store -- Yes, you can get fabric off eBay (especially discontinued prints) however the shipping costs add up pretty fast that way. A better way is to go fabric shopping at Goodwill, St. Vincent de Paul, or any thrift shop.  It's the easiest way to get leather so thin you can machine sew it (leather skirts, gloves, thin coats, etc.) as well as interesting prints in roughly 1/3rd to 1/2 yard pieces.  The cost can be less than half what you'd have paid at the fabric store for comparable fabric type.  For odd prints or something truly unusual, it's always worth looking through the racks. 

 

My sister found a fleur de lis print 'full size' quilt that was $5. We sat and watched a movie as we used seam rippers to separate the top layer from the bottom, took off the interior padding of the quilt, and she had enough fabric to make a Medieval outfit from it for herself that looked fantastic.  It was roughly 4 1/2 yards of useable top and another 4 1/2 yards of bottom fabric in solid color.  THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX FOLKS!

A Few Tips - Part 2

Knotting Thread – When I was a kid everyone told me that when you hand sew you knot the thread by wrapping it around the needle and taking a stitch.  Bullshit.  Those always pulled loose. 

 

The best way to knot thread is to tie a knot, take one stitch into the fabric and pull the thread to within ½ inch of the knot coming to the fabric surface. Take your needle tip and slide it BETWEEN the threads in front of the knot and pull the first stitch tight. There is now no way that it will get loose on you and you can continue hand sewing. 
 

Sewing A Wad Of Feathers To Something – Occasionally I need a tuft of feathers for the tail of a bird, or for the fluffs on top a falconry hood (I make soft sculptured falcons), or even just to attach to a cat toy (green feathers work great for carrot tops).  You can sew them in easily without using glue to hold everything together. 

 

Just line up the feathers in your fingers till youhave the amount you need (I use 4 or 5), take a threaded needle and hold one end of the thread to the feather clump and start winding tightly around the base.  I go around 8 or 9 times. Then take two stitches THROUGH the threaded area. The bundle is now ready to sew in.  If you want you can trim the very bottom of the feather clump even so nothing sticks down too far but make sure not to cut the thread there.

A Few Tips - Part 1

Any crafter knows that sometimes things don't go right - when you're living in a house with pets and other people you can have mini-disasters as you're trying to work.  This could be anything from someone picking up a box of just cut pattern pieces and spilling the entire thing, mismatching EVERYTHING to the cat taking a NOT midnight rip around the room and bouncing off the sofa which scatters over 600 beads in every direction before you can slam a hand down on top the container. 

 

A Bead Fix -- If, gawd forbid, beads go flying everywhere into the carpet or rolling all over the wood floor, don't panic. There is one very easy way to get them all back without doing an individual pickup on your knees with your fingers. Even if the beads are really tiny seed beads.  Go get your vacuum cleaner. Get a pair of nylons or a nylon knee high or a piece of gauze or anything very lightweight and put it over the end of your vacuum hose. Hold it in place with one hand (or rubber bands, STRONG rubber bands or you'll have another issue to deal with) and just 'vacuum' them up. The beads will be right there on the end of the hose and you can get them all corralled without much time and effort.

 

Fuzzies -- If you're cutting fuzzy material like fake fur, the loose fur on the ends of your pieces can be cleaned off by hand.  However if you're cutting horribly fuzzy material like velvet, textured stretchy material with that wavy fur that's on the market now, or even that ultra soft terry cloth type fuzzy fabric that sheds like there's no tomorrow - well there's an easier way than struggling with the 'fallout' as you stack your pattern pieces.  Don't even attempt to do it indoors. Especially in winter when static electricity can roll the loose stuff up your arms and out of the garbage.  Take the cut pieces outside and shake. SHAKE them hard, ship them against your hand, run them along the side of a chain link fence.  That'll remove nearly all the fuzzies and make handling the pieces a lot easier as you sew them on the machine. Sure it'll let your driveway look like someone murdered a Muppet, but better outside than in.

 

Whiskers -- If you make stuffed toys and want whiskers on them that actually LOOK like whiskers and not sadly drooping thread, the perfect produce for that is fishing line.  Don't get the ultra thin fishing line, it will break when you double knot it. Get the medium size thickness.  A reel of line costs less than $2 at WalMart, it comes in clear, bluish and greenish. Sometimes even grayish.  I use the 8 pound test.  You get a good 700 yards so it'll last you a long time.  It's frugal, and you can be as generous as you want to be with it.  The end fits through the eye of a needle and you sew it through, knot it twice, and rethread the needle to move the end out through the fabric a little further from the first stitch - giving yourself two whiskers for each strand. Where the needle holds it will put a kink in the line so only thread the end, you cut off the kinked part when you're done, leaving beautiful whiskers (I do 4 per side of the head) fanning out nicely.

Back To Making Popcorn For A While

The felt popcorn idea really seems to stick. I do them up as cat toys, a bit of stuffing and catnip in each.  Of course at that size they ALL probably end up under the furniture, but that's not my fault.  I basically do 6 per baggie as a set. Doesn't seem like a lot but if you're doing 10 bags then that's 60 pieces and that does take a bit of time.

 

I use white felt, and a small piece of yellow or orange felt as the 'kernel' down at the bottom Each bag also gets one with a black kernel, since everyone knows that there's ALWAYS at least one unpopped one in the bottom of any bag of popcorn.

 

The pattern I use is similar to the one on this url link (and the image is from there too), but I make the waves around the edges 'deeper'.  The flattened piece I start with usually is 4" across or just under. This gives me enough of a roundness to get the catnip in.

http://playingfood.blogspot.com/2009/11/popcorn.html

Who's It For? A New Design

There’s times when I get a new idea and grab some newspaper and a marker pen and start scribbling – doing quick sketches to see how the idea looks on paper.  I cross out, redraw, over mark on the lines till it looks closest to what I want, then I’ll go find the fabric in my ‘storage’ room (which is now chest high in places with boxes of sorted colors and loose piles of folded polar fleece, fake fur and such) and pull out what I would need to do up ONE of the new design as a test run.  But leave the pattern and fabric there to the side for a day or so.

Inevitably coming back to it with ‘new’ eyes I can see where things did need to be tweaked more and make further adjustments..  Then I have a working pattern.  Mostly.

Sometimes after making the first test piece I have to adjust a width or length or redo a section.  By this point though what I put on paper usually is good to go. UNLESS I’m missing the obvious.

Basically – Who Is It For?

I had this with the current New Idea.  I had found a scale pattern on cotton fabric in the quilting section that was a nice size for a small toy.  Smaller scales would have been even better but the print was ok.  I’d wanted to do a CatFish pattern for a while, and sketched out the tail part first with a straight shape like a carrot (too bland) then a curved shape (but not TOO curved, the scales were all in straight lines) and went with a gentle curve like a shrimp, and if I put on two side fins in felt along the upper edge of the tail it added visual interest.  The same tail ends that I use for my catnip shrimp toys could be used here as well, and in the same way – pinched around the tip end at the bottom and stitched in place.  The top cat part would be two arms/legs with a pointy eared head like I used on the catnip bats. Two very small bead eyes complete the look.

That looked good.  Even with the arms preferably potentially up in a V, or out straight sideways, or angled down.  The OBVIOUS thing that went wrong was the size. I have this creeping gigantism that comes in sometimes.  What I’d drawn was way too big for a cat toy.  Ten inches long from ear tips to tail end was too long.  If I wanted it as a kids toy, it was too short. 

 
OK, go back to the newspaper sketch and size it down.  Five or six inches looked way better.  BUT I know at Bristol people were taking my little squid cat toys and pinning them to their outfits or hat (Thanks Steampunk People) and I was getting extra sales that way.  With that in mind I also sketched out a 4 inch version as a potential for pins.  Checking through my fabric stash I found another scale print in all reds so I now had two different scale prints to use.  I like variety and would have wanted a blue scale print as well but neither Hancocks or JoAnn Fabrics carried anything so at the moment I’ll only have the two types.
 
First up – the Cat Toy version.  Yeah!

Pricing Quandaries

Pricing -- That’s a hard one to decide, even after all these years.  What to charge that will be willingly paid by a customer.  What will make someone stop and pull money out at an event and buy from you?  What’s fair to charge? Do you decide to go with a higher price and try to make what you feel the item deserves, or do you go with volume and keep the price low?
 

Yes, there’s still the old reliable way of figuring out what you paid for the materials and triple that cost, hoping it covers your time. Is your time worth minimum wage, or $10 an hour, or $15?   Or more?  Just because you’ve developed expertise does that mean people should be paying you $25 an hour even though the materials in the item may come to a whopping $3.40?  Or do you put three hours into a soft sculpture and only sell it for twice the cost of the materials because it’s a niche market and you know you CAN’T get more than that from someone willing to buy it? 
 

There’s no easy way to figure things out.  If I did ‘art’ the assumptions by a buyer would let me put a price tag on the item that follows that thought pattern since art is about skill and the final look of the piece, it’s got an intangible factor going for it. However with crafts -- that’s an entire different paradigm.  And crafts aimed at PETS falls into a whole ‘nother category itself. 
 

People get their cat toys in one of three different ways. 
 

1. They buy them from a pet toy supplier.  The items are made in bulk usually in China, may not even contain catnip though it may say so on the label (one I took apart only contained a bit of sawdust, definitely not catnip) and if they come from overseas they’re not allowed into this country unless they’ve been chemically treated with a pesticide to avoid bringing in something foreign in regards to insects.  Does this stuff seep into the cat toy itself?  Probably. Not everything is packaged in plastic. 

2. They buy them from someone who makes them in the USA. Whether it’s a manufacturer who does them in bulk at a factory that then warehouses their product and ships through a distributor, or from an individual who has a cottage industry making them at home in smaller quantities.

 

 

3. They make their own cat toys. 
 

So pricing, when you’re in category #2b, is competing with the low cost (or even ‘free’) of category #3, and the ‘big boys’ in category #1 and 2a.  You’ve got to be competitive.  Bulk suppliers still make a profit, so those $3-$7 toys in the pet supplies section of the store may be wholesaled at .50 cents to $1.75.  Middlemen and the retail outlet get the rest of the selling price. 
 

Retail typically doubles the price so if a store has to pay $3 for an item they’re going to turn around and sell it for $6.  If a crafter is selling outright to a retail establishment, they have to estimate what the final sales price will be that the store can move the item at, and cut that in half when they’re dealing with a store.  If a crafter is selling the item on their website or an internet sales site such as eBay or Etsy, they’re looking at a ‘retail’ price and can set their prices accordingly.  However if they’re doing their own local craft events, the selling price typically is lowered because what MAY sell for $6 each online now is competing with a sometimes ‘rummage sale’ mentality at local events and won’t move at the $6 price at all. 
 

Which means cutting back on the price to be able to get customers to pull out their wallet/purse.  It may take a while to find the right price point. The type of event you’re at also affects your prices. Church bazaars need lower prices than outdoor arts and crafts fairs for instance.  And if you’re in the Midwest, that wallet is VERY hard to get open, compared to East/West coast.  It’s a balance game.  Sometimes you have to slide back down to wholesale pricing to get those customers interested. 



Sushi - Shrimp - Food To Go

I hate it when they ask you at the fabric store 'What are you making?'  They always figure it's a dress or pillows or something.  When you give them an odd response it seems to throw them for a loop half the time. 

 

Chipmunks

Little Zoidberg Faces

Beets

Shrimp

Bat Purses

 

Well, OK, one of the three ladies at Hancock's cutting counter knew who Zoidberg was from Futurama and she busted out laughing, the other two were clueless.  We both tried to explain but they just didn't get it.

 

Anyway, this week has been shrimp, both large and small.  Little 2" shrimp to go onto catnip sushi. Three colors of shrimp to be made up as raw and cooked (yes, there are blue shrimp for sale at the store sometimes).  Some I put tails on, some I don't.  But they all get those knobby backs when I do the detailing with 4 strands of thread. 

 

The sushi is always popular at Pennsic War so I'm making sure that this year I'm not going to run out before the end of the 11 day event.  Some of it will be sold by the piece, probably in a basket with a neat little sign. The rest will be sold as sets with plastic packaging, we've been saving up a lot of plastic containers.  I'll do up fancy labels like they're really proportioned foods, with photo pictures and laminate the labels.  Just to give things a new look (AND to sell them as sets of 3, 4 or 6 pieces). 

  

I don't have any pictures of the packaged ones yet, but these give you an idea of what the others look like.  My goal is to have about 50 sushi and shrimp as separates, and about 24 packaged sets.