Crafting General Thread

[skinstealer]

i have made a frankenplush...my first one, actually. im working on the second as we speak, but i wrote this postmortem last night at @starsystemerror 's request and wanted to share it here.
 

[image description: a graduation themed teddy bear with white fur and a pink satin graduation outit, as well as a blue rabbit plush with "jesus loves you" on the front. below both of them is a blue rabbit plush with "love me" on its chest, as well as a heart patch and white neck mane.]

[CW: toy destruction, object sapience-related death, religious abuse]

the components for sacrilege were a teddy bear made by Hugfun with a graduation theme, and a bunny plush made by Dan Dee with...a "Jesus Loves Me" embroidered on its belly, as well as a fucking horrible soundbox that screeched the awful children's song of the same name, in utterly atrocious quality, and unfortunately subjecting the people i was on call with to it. as an ex-christian and a college dropout who dragged themself through high school and fucking **HATED** the entire process of graduation and the Traditions around them, i was very much inspired to have this be our first frankenplush. i had been psyching myself up for the past few days about endeavoring on this journey, but with my crippling toy empathy and destruction trigger, i was very Very nervous about diving into this. however...i have a frankenplush party coming up. surely, things must be done. practice must be had. thankfully, this went extremely well!

part of how it really worked out was the framing. we joked with cheet that it would be vital to make the component plushes sign medical consent forms, and that this would be very validating and healing for the patients involved- this is clearly some kind of organ donation/transitioning/important medical procedure situation and they are here because this Will help them, and some of them are even excited. looking at the plushes here...well, it seems obvious. one wants to escape the trappings of the pressures of achievement and success, especially in an academic environment, and the other...well, wanting to get away from christianity that's been outright stamped into you is a massive endeavor, especially when it's what's expected of you. it made complete sense to do two things: allow the graduate bear to Not be the base, so that they could achieve a new life free of their old expectations, and do some kind of censoring to the jesus bunny so that they do Not have to deal with that being the assumption.

so, we used the bunny as a base. there's not a lot of crazy parts variety here- theyre both bipeds, and fairly simple ones. i considered ear swapping, but i have a deep fondness for rabbit ears and it felt wrong to remove those specifically- and our rule of thumb is to follow those instincts, and go with our gut. best way to work with our brain on this. i was talking about what i would do in call and king clod suggested we censor the text in a way that said "love me"- which we actually waffled pretty hard on at first, while the idea wasn't fully developed. at first we considered a piece that obscures the first word and embroidering "everybody loves me" in the same vein as our favorite Louis Wain piece, and a nod to mental health recovery, but ultimately...there's not a lot of room, and i do nooot think our embroidery skills are up for that. not at that scale, anyway. we then considered "i love me", yknow, as a self assurance thing...and while that's nice, it still didn't fit. we started working on other pieces while mulling it over, and settled on using the satin graduation gown for cheek blushies (a favorite design thing, always good), and the white body fur of the bear as a censor for Jesus. it hit us, then- we Would go with KC's suggestion, but with kind of a weird turn that strikes us right in the heart recently. Love Me would work perfect...in the context of this bunnybear, who had escaped two life situations where they were pushed into situations they weren't okay with, and just wanted people to care. maybe a bit dark, but hey, we're doing surgery to a jesus bunny.

we worked on the censor for the jesus chunk and realized it just looked really awkward, and then went "oh shit i could do a full neck ruff"- and THAT worked. unfortunately it's two messy pieces because we cut the solo censor first, but it looked really nice design wise, especially when we added the cheek blushes...and a small heart patch, to cover the S in "loves". all in all, the design came out really fucking clean, and it even has trans flag colors to boot. ...well, the heart looks more like a triangle, but we can pretend it was intentional and say that all love has flaws or Something. we stuffed it with new stuffing, sewed it up, and congrats, a happy surgery had completed.

after we finished the plush- very very pleased with it, mind you, we were talking with rime about the process and the components, which lead us to get curious and look up the companies while contemplating the nature of these two components. these two are thrifted plush from a random mystery Blue Box- you pay 30 bucks, you get 10 dollars of secondhand plush, COMPLETELY random. resellers get fussy about this because "most of them are worthless"....but hey, we are getting these thangs for elective surgeries. the gameplan is to open the box proper when knux gets here for halloween, and do a frankenplush party...hence the practice need. however, i did need practice- so i had como grab some guys for us to work with. he was so fucking happy about revealing the jesus plush, because he is both a bastard and knew we'd be over the moon. but, with that- let's address the natures of the plush.

Dan Dee and HugFun are considered absolutely Dogshit plushes in a lot of ways- more the former than the latter. these are VERY common in thrift stores...because Dan Dee does near exclusive gimmick plush, Especially holidays. now, i guess they made a damn jesus bunny, but my point is that these things end up in thrift stores like crazy because they are created for a Specific Reason, and once that reason is now longer relevant, especially if it's a holiday, where having them out or playing with them no longer feels relevant...well, people donate them. this is a big reason why if you go to a goodwill you will always see a fucking christmas themed creature and it will be cheap material and noooo one will want it. the regrettable truth with both of these plushes is that in the long term scheme of things, they are Unwanted, and would never Ever be fucking sold. getting them like this is the only way they would have survived not going to a landfill- and the main target audience of these blue boxes is resellers, who would see these two and go "wow that's worthless" and send them back to goodwill, where they are either packaged up again or just thrown in a landfill. if you want to think darkly about it- which frankly i do, because i have fucking brain problems- these guys are made to be thrown away. to us, this means death. so...yeah, combined with the fact that one of them is religious and god forbid, one of them is a fucking graduation plush that has never seen the light of day...this was legitimately a rescue mission. they would be gone without us.

hugfun is a little less notorious...but not by a lot. i wasnt able to find a lot of info on them aside from the fact that they have Range, because they are open to working with any designers, and that probably ranges from specialty places to indie creators to arcade machine stuffers and carnival game vendors. regrettably, the graduation bear fits a niche that is just. yeah, you are not selling that and no one is going to keep it. as such, the fabric is equally cheap, and the bear's satin shirt was tearing off of its body- likely not even because of wear and tear, but just, it was attached that badly. the bear had no wear otherwise, and was probably never hugged in its life, while the jesus bunny had a singular stain on the back of its head and a couple small holes around the joints. my speculation says that this was given to a young child (yay religious indoctrination!) who did not care especially well for it, and grew out of it fast. i also speculate from the quality of the soundbox...either this thing is old and abandoned later when found in a closet, or good god this company just fucking sucks. we'll see in the future, because these things are fuuuucking rampant at goodwills...and i am very ready to give them a new life.

there you go, my long winded post mortem about sacrilege- named such as, well...they're definitely going against the religious grain. and good for them! they're fucking free! hooray!