Some Sweet Handmade Plushies

My son asked if we could go buy some materials so that he could make his own plushies. After my first objections about time and cost, we ended up at a local craft store later that day.

I expected that we would get home and the difficulty of the project would set in for my son. This usually leads to a desperate plea for help. But that plea never came and before I knew it, he proudly displayed his first creation, one of which is shown in this picture!

Since that time he has expanded his abilities a bit and so I wanted to create a page where he (and I) could brag a bit about his skills. Not to mention that this activity has also given him something to constructively pass the time this summer and has been a good conversation starter among his friends.

All pictures are taken by me unless noted otherwise.

To make your own felt plushies, you will need the following materials:

*Felt of various colors

*Scissors

*Glue

*Thread and needle

*Stuffing

We were able to get all of these materials at local craft stores. And the cost is very reasonable!

The techniques for sewing and the templates needed are referenced in the videos or links under the videos in Youtube.

One way to start making the stars is of course to cut out star shapes in felt and sew them together. However, if you want to get a jump start on the correct way to make them, I would recommend watching this video first. This is the video showing how to make stars which are the easiest of the Super Mario Bros. plush toys. My son has made a bunch of these for his friends too!

These are results of his first attempts following the Goomzilla videos.

After making these, my son wanted to find a way to improve the shapes that he was cutting out of felt. He tested different ways to cut these out and came up with the following tips:

• Use very sharp scissors or a sharp razor
• Trace out your shape in advance using colored pencils (use white on dark colors)
• Leave a little extra material so you can trim it after your first cut is done.

I was not familiar with these characters myself, but apparently these are from the Paper Mario video game. My son says that these are very easy to make. If you want a plushie like this, you will have to make it. I haven't seen them in stores or any where online.

Goomzilla has many videos on Youtube describing how to make Mario plushies. My son's favorite is the Whacka.

For starters, he really likes a lot of the Super Mario games that Nintendo makes. And he also likes watching videos on Youtube that people make with the Super Mario characters. One of his favorite sources is Goomzilla. There are many more people out there that make these videos as well.

To make these videos, you need to have the characters. Rather than invest a lot of money to buy the actual Super Mario plush toys, he decided it would be faster and less expensive to make a lot of them himself.

However, he did buy some of the main characters as shown in the following photos. The Mario in this picture was purchased, but the other two characters were handmade.

In a great demonstration of cooperation, my son bought this Princess Peach plush toy for his younger sister so that she could participate in the action as well. Although I have to wonder if there was an ulterior motive to this purchase - to keep her from taking his plushies!

Both of these plushies were purchased.

The Mario plushies that he purchased all would be very difficult to make, and probably would take more time than my son has patience for even now.

The Toad and Koopa characters shown here require a high level of skill and detail. As you can imagine, these were purchased.