Plushie Makeover: First Time Custom With NerdECrafter

Hey, it's me. Today I'm doing something a little bit different, a little bit experimental, and I'm not even totally sure if it's going to work. This video I'm actually doing with my friend Jackie, whose channel is Nerdy Crafter. Be sure to check out her video as well, because she's going to be trying the same thing. I'm sure most of you are already familiar with her content, but if not, she does a lot of like reviewing craft kits and different things with clay and sculpting. I'll leave her links everywhere. What we're doing is a plushy makeover. I don't know. Let me get my thing. I got a whole collection of squish mallows. I thought that these would be perfect for something like this, because they're very simple. They're really cute designs. It's not like we're going to be changing something hideous into something cute. They're already pretty darn cute. Oh, they're cute, but they're really simple. I think that these would be good as something that I can add to. We have eight options here. They have no scent. I have a rough idea of what I want to do with these, but I don't have a concrete plan yet. Oh, hi, my dear. Oh, that's a pegasus. I was wondering what this one is. Apparently, it's a pegasus. Kind of looks like a purple pig with wings. Pegasus works too. I hate that my ring light is always reflecting. I might kill you one of these days. I think this should be quite interesting. I've never seen anyone do this, and I've definitely never done it myself, so this is going to be an experiment. I have not picked out which one I'm doing first, but we're going to see it now. Boom. Okay, so it's a panda. I always have to start with the most obvious statement ever. If you're not a squish mallow connoisseur like me, they're super soft, kind of squishy, and they're shaped like marshmallows, which is really cute. However, I kind of want to try to add some limbs to mine. I know that defeats the whole marshmallow look, so look at this. Boom. Okay, no longer a squish mallow, so we can just get that out of our brains now. This is now a brandless victim for my creativity. Congratulations. I'm going to be using some felt to create my add-ons. I have this awesome array of colors already on hand, and I think it'll work for my purposes. I'm going to need some black and some white. Actually, this cream color is a much better match. Okay, cool. I'm making some arms and some feet. This is my sewing box, which doesn't get used all that often. I found a needle and some thread to match with my felts. All right, get out of here. Starting with the arms, I'm just going to Aw, she's waving. Say hi. I'm using this shape as a template, which you can't see at all. Dress is essential right here. And I made four of those, matched them up with their soul mates. Thread, needle, threading the needle. Okay, let me say this. This is not a sewing tutorial. I mean, I don't think you would really want me as your sewing teacher anyway. I have no clue what I'm doing, but I have figured out how to use a needle and some thread, weave it in and out through two pieces of fabric, and attach them together. Sewing. And hey, when you speed up the footage this much, it kind of actually looks like I know what I'm doing. In reality though, my sewing education consists of my 11-year-old self sitting on my bedroom floor trying to figure out how to make clothes for my stuffed animals. Wow, I've changed so much. I have this very wobbly stitched limb, and I'm just going to turn it inside out. I'm going to make another one of those. Let's all admire my bravery for clapping while holding a needle. Thank you. Somehow this little loop developed. That happens sometimes. Totally normal. Just don't worry about it. Put it away. It's fine. I have this huge bag of polyfill that I've had forever. Grabbing a handful of that, and we're going to stuff the stuffing inside of the stuffy and stuff. All that's left to do now is just sew them on, and you can see nothing when it's black thread on black fabric. Aw, it's cute. And here comes the other one. Boom. She got arms. Oh, girl. No, no. You gotta shave that. Grabbing the cream felt, get my little feet cut out. Terrible transition. I literally switched hands. Sew them. Magic fingers, magic fingers. There. Feet. Altogether, I think it looks good. I mean, fine. It looks okay. Actually, there's something wrong here, and that's when I realized pandas have black feet. That's why this looks so awkward. So scalpel. I'm going to remove the feet, and starting from square one, I'll spare you having to watch that whole process again. Here I am attaching the new feet. That looks so much better. So now we have a panda with limbs. That cannot be the end. Oh, no, no. So I'm cutting out one little, two little, just two little cone shapes. What? Sew those together. Oh my gosh, a bug. Whoa, I missed him. You just witnessed attempted murder, and I'll see you in court. Now I'm popping open some fabric paint. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to see you. It's just been needles and thread this whole time. I'm painting some lines to make this look like an ice cream cone. Pretty tricky to paint on such a hairy surface, but we got this. We're gonna make it happen. Flip it over and ping. The other side is done. Oh, look at that mistake. Yeah. Luckily, you won't be able to see that in the end because I'm gonna be rolling under the edges anyway, and this ice cream cone is going on top of our panda's head. We're doing the upside down ice cream cone thing again. Look, it's not new for me, but usually when I try something for the first time, like customizing plushies, I stick with a very familiar design because I can only manage one new thing at a time. I'm very sensitive. Whoa, those are some gnarly looking stitches, and now here's where it gets a little bit weirder. Stop waving now. You're starting to look desperate. I'm actually going to paint on the plushie. Yes, yes, you heard it. I really wanted to add the ice cream on her head. I suppose I could have just cut out some felt and like a little splatter shape and then done some more sewing, but nah, I'll just, I'll just paint. Of course I'm using fabric paint, so this paint will not crack or crumble, but it is still kind of a weird thing, like moving around the little fibers with the paint and trying to decide like which way to make them lay down. It's like a really thick hair gel or something. Also, this was extremely nerve wracking because once this paint sticks to that fuzzy fabric, it's all over. It's done. It's there. It's not leaving, so I have to be really careful. Once that dried completely, I went back at it again with a second coat, so I'm just trying to smooth over everything the best I can. I should have worked more on getting all the fur to lay down flat in one direction with the first coat. Quick inventory. We have arms, we have legs, we have ice cream, we have ice cream cone. What's missing? How about these? No, sprinkles. So clearly I could put the sprinkles on the ice cream. That would make sense. The thing is though, I didn't want to put all the details concentrated in one area because I felt like then the rest of the body would just look kind of plain in comparison. So instead of putting the sprinkles on the ice cream, I just put them all over the panda. And now for the sprinkle song. She does have the kind of demon eye thing going on. Anyone remember the demon eye popsicle? Yeah, same vibe. So I'm adding a few little highlights in her eyes to help with that. And once that dried, flipped her over and poof, sprinkled. The original is probably more of a crowd pleaser. It's simple, but I love that mine is now completely unique. It's custom, it's with my own style. I love it. Hey, we talked about that. It's not as dramatic of a makeover as I would do with something like a squishy because I'm not painting over every inch of it. I'm really just adding to what's already there. Even so, I think this has a completely new feel and I'm really happy with it. Let's move on to the next little creature. The owl is adorable. The cat is amazing, but I actually think I'm going to pick the dinosaur who kind of reminds me of someone. Oh, Pickle. So this does kind of look like Pickle the dinosaur minus all the colorful spots and the freckles. Also, Pickle is not much of a smiler. With just a few changes, I could easily turn this into a Pickle the dinosaur. But you know what? I want to go a little bit more challenging than that. I'm going to make this into a monster because Jackie is known for creatures and monsters and we've decided to kind of use each other as inspiration for one of our plushies. So I had to really dig deep and discover what truly scares me. I've got it. So rainbows, one of my favorite things ever. But what if we change up the order of the colors here? Just move that over there. Okay, cool. Yep, perfect. Suddenly, this is terrifying. I'm already scared. This area here is the perfect shape of a rainbow. So I'm going to paint a rainbow, but in the complete incorrect order. Oh, it hurts. I'm wounded. So if you don't get it already, I have a little pet peeve of when the colors of a rainbow are in the wrong order. That doesn't mean that every time something is colorful, it has to be in rainbow order. It's fine to have just colorful stripes in no particular order, whatever. But if you are making a literal rainbow, then yes, I would like the colors to be in proper order. Please. Thank you. This is just completely and totally wrong. The colors are in the wrong place. We have a mix of saturated colors, pastel colors, muted colors, all in just a complete mismatched mess. I hated it. This time around, I definitely did a much better job of really smoothing out all the little fibers and getting them to lay down nicely. I'm going to move on to another area. His cutesy little frilly spines. These are way too friendly. They've got to go. So this is my first time actually removing something from a plushie. Then I'm laying down three sheets of felt. Colors don't really matter. I'm going to be painting over this anyway. I'm layering them to create a little more thickness. I'm using the old spine as a guide to create a new, more monstrous spine. Grabbing some fabric glue, and I'm going to glue each layer together, and then I'm setting that under a bunch of my old textbooks. Left that for a couple hours, came back to it, and guess what happened? Nothing. That's what. The layers did not stick whatsoever. The glue does say not recommended for felt. I'm pretty sure Jackie is using the same fabric glue and having success with it. Maybe it's the type of felt that I'm using, or maybe it's just me. Would we be surprised? No. I'm just going to skip to plan B. I'm cutting my piece out completely. It always comes to this when things go wrong. Got to bring out the hot glue. Even my hot glue had some trouble keeping these pieces together, but it's fine. I don't really need a rock solid bond here. I just need something to hold long enough for me to paint over this whole thing. While I was at it, I threw together some horns. I'm going to paint all of this using that same terrifying rainbow that I used on the plush. This, again, is fabric paint, which is great because it doubles as a very strong glue. Once this paint dries, these pieces will be nice and securely sealed together. Here's my little invention in order to hang it to dry. Brilliant, yes. Six hours later, coming back for the other side, just finishing that up. Of course, I'm going to add every single color on the horns naturally. I really did enjoy this process because it's customizing, decorating, being creative like I love to do, but I don't have to make the thing from scratch, which I've done in the past. I really love the two handmade plushies that I did make, but I never made any more because I don't really enjoy the process of trying to figure out the template and stitching the body together and all of that. My spikes are finished and quick little try on. I am going to be sewing this on, which should be really fun considering how thick and tough this piece is. It's okay, I got my thimble out and I know how to use it, I think. This was definitely a struggle. I kept getting my thread knotted and then I don't really know how to deal with that. It's hard getting started, but then once you get the first part kind of secured, it goes a lot faster. I did prick myself many times, owie, and never failed to say, owie. Why am I saying owie? What is that? I have never noticed that I say that. That is so stupid sounding. Eventually, I got this thing fully secured. I think it did come up a little bit too far in the front, but that's fine. Now the horns are going on, just attaching those. You know, he's not very intimidating. Are you laughing at me? Real quick, I'm going to touch up the orange in the horns because it got a little bit buried in the fuzziness and I want to bring it out again. And then I'm thinking he needs some angry eyebrows to really scare us. You know, ooh, ooh, ooh, scary. I'm also just going to add some stitches here to show that he's really tough. You know, he's got some enemies. He's not afraid to, you know, battle or something. So here he is. It's the anti-rainbow monster. I definitely prefer this new version because the original kind of looked like a less special pickle. I think what I've done here definitely makes it a little bit more interesting. I could see people thinking that I didn't go far enough with the monster thing. He's not scary enough. You know, maybe you wanted blood and guts and all that kind of crap, but I think he's a little scary-ish. He does look a little like a court jester who's in a rock band or target practice, but no, he's the anti-rainbow monster who terrorizes rainbows. Who would his victims even be? Moving on, I'm grabbing the squirrel plush. Ooh, bonus snacks. I thought that this was a chipmunk at first, but the back of the box confirms it's a squirrel. First of all, get rid of that loose thread. And I think I kind of want to add some arms to this. Remember those feet I took off of the panda? One panda's feet are another squirrel's arms. And also saving me a little bit of time. Hooray. Woo. Yeah. I'm just going to clean out some of those old guts. And then I'm jumping right into sewing these on until I notice, uh, yeah. Why are her arms coming out of her stomach? Those need to be higher. So let's try that again. And then somehow ended up in the same exact spot again. Okay. This time I'm not fooling around. I'm not going to do this again. And somehow it's still ended up a little bit lower than what I wanted, but you know what? This is fine. The amount of times I lost my needle. I definitely have at least two needles floating around my art room loose. So I can look forward to a nice surprise at some point, some point. Eventually I got out my pin cushion to keep it secured somewhere. Isn't it cute? My mom crocheted this for me. The pins are like the Once I've secured that. Yes. With my not facing at the outside. Admire it. She's got arms. They're so wide and flat. They kind of look like wings. Oh, she's a flying squirrel. I think she needs some accessories. So I'm making her a nice little acorn. I drew out the shape with a marker, which, you know, whenever you make your acorn for your flying squirrel plush, don't do this. The ink kind of became a mess and I hated myself for it later. I'm painting the details on the acorn. I just love acorns. Okay. They're one of my many obsessions. I just think they're so cute. I'm going to make a back for this and glue that on with hot glue. This isn't a seam that's going to need a ton of strength. I may collect plushies and use the word owie. Owie. Really? Again? But you won't catch me playing with these. At least not during the week. No, these are for display only. They really don't need to be durable, but still I only opted for glue on the seams that would have zero tension on them ever. And here you go, my sweetie. Oh, she's so happy. So I did throw a couple stitches on there to hold that in place. No more flying around, which is kind of sad, but she's got an acorn now. Okay. Do you want to stay in the frame for like two seconds? What the heck is going on here? I'm going to give her wings. Yes, those are wings. Some little details and it's time for her glow up. I'm using some chalk pastel to give her rosy cheeks, getting her lashes on and a little sparkle in her eye. Come on now. I think she needs one more accessory. Perfect. I'm going to cut a little length off of that. Tie that into a perfect little bow where the satin finish is facing out. And I'll fiddle around with the positioning a little sewing that on just in that time, the edges of the ribbon have started fraying. So I'm trimming those up and using some clear nail polish to seal in those edges to stop any future fraying. And she's done. I mean, I think this one was already really cute, but Oh, she's so cute. She just has a lot more personality. Now she's got accessories. Two of my favorite things included here, bows and acorns. Oh, I love it. So here are my three custom plushies. I really had no idea how I was going to go about this in the beginning, but I think this turned out really cool with each of the plushies. I tried to experiment with like some different techniques and ways of customizing them. Let me know if you guys would be interested in seeing me customize any of the remaining plushies. I want to thank Jackie. This was such a fun idea and I'm so excited to see what she ends up creating. Thank you all for watching and I'll see you next week. Bye.