the squidgiest, the plushiest, the softest of recycled loveliness

I love soft things.  Toys.  Cuddlesomes.  Here is Blueue:

Oz the cat and Blueue the teddy

with my cat.  I was 4 when Blueue came into my life, I found him at my school jumble sale and he’s been by my side ever since.  See – I was a second-hand shopper even then!  He’s had his foot eaten off by a hamster, been held over a candle by a very mental ex-boyfriend and accompanied me on many trips into hospital.  So as you can see, I’m a fan of the cuddly things.

So today I’m going to be blogging about plushes and softies made out of recycled materials – and believe me – there are a LOT out there.

Firstly the wonderful work of melbangel – the reason why I love her plushes is because they are so obviously made out of recycled materials.  The bold patterns and weird shapes make these creatures marvellous to behold – and I LOVE their names. Weirdoo Megan and Weirdoo Moochie are by far my faves – I LOVE Weirdoo Moochie so much!  SO CUTE!

Weirdoo Moochie

Weirdoo Megan

I really hope that melbangel makes some more of these as they really are so original and so adorable.

Leah Riley is a true inspiration – and is mostly the inspiration for this blog.  She’s apparently ’embarrassed’ by the amount of t-shirt material she has built up, so she’s been creating a plush-a-day.  They range from skeletons to birds and each one is highly original and a great use of leftover bits of material.

Abigail the goth bunny

I guess I love this one because of the hidden goth within me.  LOVE the stripes (I love nothing more than stripes and polka dots) and bunnies just do it for me (although Anya may disagree – I’m SUCH a Buffy geek!)

I can’t wait to see what else she comes up with in her desire to use up all that material.  Leah – you are truly an inspiration to this hoarder of material!

Lucy Kate Crafts creates beautifully crafted and unique pieces.  I’m in total awe of her photostream and virtually drool over the plushy wonderfulness that abounds.  This little fox is one of my favourites.

Fox Softie

It’s unusual to see a fox – and I think that’s why I love it so much.

However – there is one of her softies that I would LOVE to have on my shelf.  As some of you know I LOVE peacocks, in fact I have an art deco style one tattooed on my back.  She has created this beautiful upcycled softie:

Peacock

How beautiful is this? I love it so much.   So gorgeous.

What I love about Loopy Dolls is that you know one of their pieces as soon as you see it.  I think that’s the strength of their design and imagination.  The faces are so cute – I could imagine a whole range of Loopy Dolls postcards, t-shirts etc.  They could take over the world!

Octopus

So there you go – some truly inspiring plushes/ softies that will hopefully inspire us all to go out and use up those scraps of material and create cuteness.  You can see my gallery of other cuties here – and I promise – that I am going to try this right now.  I have these two books (one I was given by my old school library when they were chucking out a load of books and one I got from Deptford Market for 50p):

Toy making books

and they have some great patterns in them so I’m going to try now to create some wonderful plushness.  In the meantime I’ll leave you with a family of plushes I created a long time ago called OOOOkies:

La Famille OOOOkie

created using upcycled velvet, buttons and t-shirts – however the felt and hearts were bought 😦