Happy Owlentine's Day!

I stumbled upon this horrible pun last week in a flurry of exhaustion after one of several 8+ hour plushie-making shifts. "Matt... what if I called them OWL-entines?!" I excitedly asked my husband, who made a disgusted face before thinking about it, laughing, and saying that I had to use it.

We were booked to play wizard rock music at a Yule Ball at Ithaca College in NY this past weekend, so I put in a week's worth of designing and stitching some teeny new owl plushies to sell. I spent almost every day last week sitting up in my craft studio, stitching their tiny, fuzzy faces. They turned out so cute and were a big hit with the kids who visited my merch table at the Yule Ball!

This was also the first show where I used this cute, yellow vintage suitcase as a display on my merch table! I scored this find on Etsy vintage later last year and it worked really well for this. I eventually want to figure out a way to add a tiny clothesline to the top half of the suitcase where I can pin prices and other things; maybe some of my homemade buttons. For now, I just made this cute sign advertising the little owls and set it down on the hinge.

The first two little owls are just smaller, simpler versions of Henry and Henrietta, the owl plushies I've been making since the beginning of Fairweather Friends. I've been using more embroidery techniques on the new ones, including french knots for the little highlights in their eyes and satin stitch for their beaks rather than orange felt, which I had used before. I also designed a new little yellow owl that I love so so much.

Instead of offering these new little owls online, I'm hoping to keep making them whenever I get a chance to stock up on them for the shows I'm playing. Maybe I'll even end up with enough to sell on summer tour! I may eventually sell them online, but for now and the rest of this year, they're an in-person exclusive for the people who come to see me play live (while supplies last). I've also designed two more new little owls, so there may be more colors and faces to choose from soon!

I hope you all had a lovely Owlentine's Day and that these little heart-faced owlets warm your heart. :)

Post Office Box Art Wall

A few years ago, I moved into my senior year dorm with the hope that I'd figure out a new way of decorating the white cinder block walls. I had the same set of posters from freshman to junior year and thought that something fresh would help with the ridiculous case of senioritis I'd acquired (which, honestly, I'd been experiencing since halfway through freshman year). I asked my YouTube subscribers in this video if they could send me little pieces of art on 4 by 6 inch index cards and send them to my PO Box. What I ended up with was pretty amazing.

Now that I've graduated from college and moved into an apartment with my husband, I've been working on getting the art back up on the wall. The following are pictures of the most recent incarnation of the art wall!

You guys sent me such a huge variety of things on these cards... every single one is completely different. They're full of colorful paintings, sketches, collages, tracings, letters, photos, embroidery... pretty much everything you could think of. Nearly every one came with a story behind it. One person's letter described a super sweet account of how this challenge united her family. She'd set up paints and cards, then invited her mother and younger brother to join in. They sent me a beautiful stack of colorfully-painted cards and a thank-you letter for bringing them together.

Some of the cards contained words of encouragement that helped me through my senior year of college quite a bit. A lot of the people who sent me art knew that I had a bit of trouble with staying happy at school, whether I was homesick or lonely or struggling with my choice of major. One in particular just said "BE BRAVE" with the hopes that I would wake up, see that card, and find the strength to keep my head up. The amount of love and kindness that went into these works of art just fills me up with so much gratitude.

I'm so happy to have these cards back up on my wall. If you sent me one, thank you so much for thinking of me and putting the work in. There's plenty of room for more still, so if you're interested in adding to this awesome wall, (and maybe seeing your art in the background of my videos!) send a 4 x 6 inch piece of art to Lauren Fairweather, P.O. Box 274, Woonsocket, RI 02895.

Plushie Profile: Nerdy Raccoon

I haven't been terribly productive lately, but I've got a bunch of plans up my sleeve for things to write about and adorable stuffed things to make, so I'm excited to get back into the swing of things. Yesterday, I worked on a set of five little raccoons with nerdy glasses. They're almost the same shape and size as the foxes and a pretty similar process. This is what he looks like once I've sewed the details on and started running it through my sewing machine:

All of my plushie designs so far have been two-dimensional until stuffed, so during this major sewing step, I sew all the way around the outline of the animal I designed (leaving a hole to stuff on the bottom). You can see in the picture that I've just finished going around the tail and am heading up his side. This is probably my favorite step in the plushie-making process and it's taken the most practice. For the longest time, I wasn't terribly confident in my ability to sew anything but a straight line on this machine (which features some super cute owl stickers I added).

Overall, this guy is one of my favorites I've made. It was kind of difficult to successfully machine sew  around the glasses to attach them, but once I make a few more, it should get easier. I think animals with nerdy glasses are super cute, and this has been the most successful way I could figure out how to make them. I did a plushie commission of my friend Beth earlier last year where I actually cut around the insides of the frames, and that was really labor-intensive and came out looking a little odd. I could probably embroider glasses onto future plush toys, but I haven't tried to embroider anything that complicated before so I'm not sure how that would work. Someday, I will figure out an easier and better-looking way to construct some adorable four-eyed plushie friends!

If you like him, check out the Etsy listing for Riley the Nerdy Raccoon plushie in my shop!

Product Photography

Today, my husband Matt helped me take photos of me holding a bunch of the newer plushie designs. It's hard to tell exactly how big the stuffed toys actually are by looking at the photos I took in the light tent with the plain white background, so this is something I'd been meaning to do for a while. I also ended up cutting my hair short today, so he also took a few for this blog, which you can see in the sidebar and the page about me that is linked there. Here are some of the pictures!

I'm hoping to eventually find a happy medium between the white background and these pictures of me with the plush toys, but I'm not really sure what that is yet. I like how detailed and clear the photos in the light tent turn out, but these new ones communicate the size and context in a much more understandable way. It's also more time-consuming and requires the help of my husband to get these done, so I can't take them right after finishing a new design. I also don't have as much control over them because I can't physically take them myself and it's tougher to light them.

Lately, Etsy has been putting out tips on improving your shop and product photography seems to be one of the most important things to focus on. Because my plushies are colorful, I need to make sure that the background can help to unify all of them without clashing with or distracting from any of the plushies. I'd eventually like to put together some kind of set that would fit inside my light tent and communicate the relative size of each item. I'm not sure what that means just yet.

Plush toys in general kind of tow the line between wearables that require a model for the pictures, such as hats or sweaters, and small items that require well-lit close-ups with plain backgrounds like earrings or polymer clay sculptures. Which type of product photography helps you to get a better idea of what you're looking to buy, especially in this case?

Plushie Profile - Fritz the fox

After what seemed like forever, I'm back on track with plushie-making. I was finally able to motivate myself to sit down all day and work on a new plushie design, and he just happens to be one of the designs I shared with you guys back before Christmas in this post. There, you can read a little about the process of designing what became Fritz the fox! This is what he looks like in progress:

One of the things that these new plushies have is this cute, attached tail. You'll also find a similar tail on the upcoming nerdy raccoon design, but this was my first time working on a plushie that has one like this. The little felt tips were easier to add on than I thought they'd be, and I really like the way they came out! I'll probably try to use these built-in tails from now on, as they're much easier to make and neater-looking than the tails I've made separately and sewn into the seam of the body pieces.

After making these guys, I think I'd like to work in this size more often. These foxes are pretty much the same size as my most popular plushies, the owls, and the same price. I'm also getting a little better at this style of eye, even though this is the smallest I've tried them. I think that they look really great and I'm excited to tackle his partner in crime, the raccoon, within the next week or so... maybe even tomorrow if I'm feeling particularly motivated.

You can now find Fritz the fox, along with his cute story and more photos, in my Fairweather Friends Etsy shop. Hope you guys are having a lovely 2012 so far!

Etsy Meetup and Goals for 2012

Since a few days before Christmas, things have been crazy busy. I sent out my last holiday mailing and headed to NJ to spend time with my family the day before Christmas Eve, then came back to Rhode Island the day after Christmas. Almost right away, I turned around and drove half an hour to Providence for an Etsy Home for the Holidays meetup with Vanessa and Sean, two awesome Etsy staffers. A bunch of other Etsy sellers were there, and they were all super nice.

Photos belong to Vanessa of Etsy Labs.

This was my first Etsy meetup and I had a great time! Everything was pretty relaxed. I got there early so they still had awesome Etsy swag for us (I got a tote bag filled with stickers, buttons, and some paper goods). Vanessa introduced herself and gave me a nametag for me to add my shop name to, and the next two hours were spent chatting with other sellers. Especially since I'm relatively new to the site, coming up on my one-year anniversary in March, it was a lot of fun hearing about what other sellers do and getting advice from those who have been selling on Etsy longer. I also brought one of my Buxton Bear plushies and a bunch of people seemed to like him.

Photos belong to Vanessa of Etsy Labs.

I talked to Sean Flannagan from Etsy for a little while about the new social networking integration on the site, which he helped to develop. I was already posting on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube whenever I posted new items, but being able to do that automatically from Etsy and also have really easy ways for people to follow and like me directly from my shop have been so helpful. We also briefly discussed the PayPal issues and he seemed to be hoping for an alternate on the site in the future as well. It's good to know that the whole Regretsy fiasco has sparked this gradual movement towards other payment options for independent sellers online, even if it may take a little while for something else to acquire the international reach PayPal has.

The location alone would've been worth the trip. This meetup took place at Craftland, a boutique and gallery full of handmade crafts from around the world, most of which are also sold on Etsy. They even had a pretty large section of unique, handmade plush toys similar to mine. The cashier even moved to charge me for Buxton because he fit in so well with their products... which is good to know because I would love to apply to sell my plushies there someday. All in all, the night really was like visiting a real-life version of the site I spend so much of my time and money on. I picked up a few items for gifts and myself, traded business cards with the other sellers, and called it a night.

Pretty much every night since then has contained a long visit with family or friends for the holidays, and our good friends Mike and Nina (of sweatingit.net) came to stay with us for the new year celebration this weekend. During the craziness and the short break from working for long stretches of time, I spent my free minutes thinking about where to go next. I've never really been one for serious new year's resolutions, so these are a few specific crafty goals that I'm hoping to work towards over the course of the year:

1. Design and make more plushies for Fairweather Friends. I want people who find my shop to have more things to look at and choose from, and if I have more items listed, there's a better chance that someone who stumbles in may find something they want to own. 
2. Spend as much time as I can keeping those plushies in stock. Ever since I started this shop, I haven't had enough time to make as many of each plush toy as I've wanted to. While this is far from a bad thing, it's difficult to promote to new potential customers when the shop could easily empty overnight. 
3. Learn to read knitting patterns and knit in more than just a straight line. My mom bought me a beautiful set of Harmony knitting needles for Christmas and I want to learn to use them. I learned to knit back when I was in high school, but never learned to read a pattern or move beyond just basic, straight knit-stitch scarves. I would love to be able to make hats, mittens, socks, and other small projects this year. Maybe I'll even start knit tagging / yarn bombing. 
4. Redesign LaurenFairweather.com. I've kind of already been doing this, but I want to finish it and get it up and running with help from the awesome Kyle Barr who isn't quite as baffled by coding websites as I am. I count this as a crafty goal because the design is more illustration-based than websites I've done in the past. It is super cute and I'm excited for you guys to see it.
5. Decorate and clean up my craft room. It's a great working space right now, but I'd love to get some color up on the walls and neaten it up a bit. I have a bunch of crafty magazines I've worked my way through and I think I'd like to put pictures from those up as inspiration. I also have a bunch of pretty, antique-looking keys left over from our wedding favors that I'm hoping to tie into a pretty garland to hang up. 
6. Make more crafty YouTube videos. I've already done time lapse videos and just straight video blogs about my crafts, so I'm hoping to come up with more creative ideas. I've really been liking voiceover-type videos lately, so maybe I'll write something pretty to read over clips of me accomplishing the above goals. I'm definitely up for suggestions or requests if you have any. 
7. Work on improving my product photography. While I think the plain white background is fine, I really need to take photos of myself holding each plushie so it's easier for potential customers to tell how big it is. This has been difficult in the past because I can't really take pictures of myself with my fancy camera so I need to bother Matt to get them done. 

I hope you're all having a lovely 2012 so far! Hopefully I'll have some new plushies to show you very soon. 

Illustrator Designs - Fox and Raccoon

For the past week or two, I've been busy waiting in line at the post office so I can get my orders out in time for the holiday and designing new Fairweather Friends characters to be made into plushies. Tomorrow, Matt and I are driving to NJ to spend Christmas with my family so I won't have a chance to print out their patterns and start stitching them together, but I'm just itching to show you guys some of what I've been working on.

I asked twitter if they'd be interested in seeing my designs before they're made into plushies, and they responded with a pretty firm yes (except for my friend Ashley, who claims that there is enough cute in this world already, thank you very much). In the past, I've kept the designs relatively secret before I make them except to show them to a friend or two, but I feel like you guys would be the ones to share them with if I'm especially excited about them.

I guess most of the issue is that not all of the little creatures I design end up being made at all, whether I decide against it or can't find the right fabric or something else. I don't want to get your hopes up or anything. Either way, I'm definitely going to be working on these two (already have the fabric all set!) once I get back from traveling for the holiday.

This fox and raccoon are good examples of how lately, I've been trying to keep my designs in a similar style. I start with a basic shape and face, then adjust it and add things to make them identifiable as whatever animal and personality I decide to make them. This makes it easier for me to design in Illustrator without a sketch first, as I can really easily just make small changes in that program. I hope that this will eventually make my Etsy shop relatively unified so people who've been following my work can pick out something I've designed from the crowd.

I was having trouble getting the little black spots around the raccoon's eyes to look good at first. That's how I ended up giving him nerd glasses-shaped spots in the end! Sometimes I like to just try random things, make alternate versions of my designs, and then choose what I like best. I think he turned out super cute this way!

Things may change further once I start working with the actual fabric, whether it's by accident or I figure out a better way to do things as I go. It's probably pretty safe to say that they'll end up just as cute, if not cuter, than the original designs. Keep an eye out for them over the next few weeks!