So I did a quick project for fun. It took me about 2 days to do.
One of my favorite authors is Terry Pratchett who writes the DiscWorld novels.
And one of my favorite characters is Death. He's adorably cute...ya kinda weird to say that about Death but it's true he's cute. His home is in shades of blacks, greys and whites with additions added to it like it was drawn by a five year old. Plus he just loves curry and owns a horse named Binky and is known to use a motorcycle on occasion.
I love him : )
And I love the death of rats who will be my next project for DiscWorld.
How could you not love that????
Now I have a great pattern book for amigurumi and this is where I got the idea for Death. Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden.
But that just makes a basic death.
I loved the pattern look and the idea but I did not like the pattern lay out itself. Um I know that makes no sense ^^; So let me try to explain myself.
The patterns provided for the basic bodies of the amigurumi are given in English written format or in international graph format. As seen in the picture below:
Now the rows of the plush where you single crochet through out I was alright with. The decreases I quite liked because it gave some nice shape to the body. The increases that made the body larger I did not quite agree with. With my amigurumi I like mine to increase something like this.
Make the magic ring do two single crochets in each stitch. Then the next row would be do one single crochet then in the next stitch do 2 single crochet. And then each row the single crochet before the 2 single crochet in one stitch would increase by one.
Example:
R1: 2 sc in each stitch
R2: 1 sc in stitch then 2 sc in next stitch, repeat
R3: do 2 sc one in each stitch then 2 sc in the next stitch
Tends to make it a bit more even.
This pattern on the other hand required a chain one when you started each row which I didn't like the shape it formed too much plus if you crochet loosely it can leave a rather big gap (note amigurumi is one of the only times you should crochet tightly). So I altered it to fit my way of increasing.
Now other than that the body and head patterns were the same. The hood pattern I used exactly as was instructed.
She then tells you to use sculpey to make his eyes and scythe.
Now I'm not a fan of sculpey eyes.
So I used the stuffed animal eyes you can get at the craft store with the safety backs to hold them into place.
If you notice DiscWorld Death has blue flames in his eye sockets. That's not something they put on toy eyes. So I painted them myself with FolkArt Acrylic Paint, I used the type called Shiny and just mixed the colors up.
I painted the flames in and then I wanted him to have shiny eyes because that just makes a chibi look cuter. So I used FolkArts Clearcote Hi-Shine Glaze.
I would like to warn you that spraying this stuff on toy eyes can actually melt them just a tiny bit around the edges. So I had to keep turning them after I sprayed them to make sure it didn't end up too funky looking. After it was coated I lightly sanded around the edges to get rid of some of the roughness.
I put them into the head before I stuffed it. Then for safety sprayed some more glaze onto a soft brush and brushed more on. I let it dry over night.
After everything was done I pieced it together. I stuffed the head with poly-fil I did the same for the body but also used poly pellets to weigh him down. After that all I needed was his scythe which I made out of sculpey. The colors were black and silver. Baked it for 25 minutes. Let it cool then I used embroidery floss to sew it on to my plushie.
And here is my end result. Please ignore my clock and my bottles full of pellets.
By the way though if you need a container for pellets an empty snapple bottle works great : ) Also great when you need to pour it out.
I'm also going to try to make his horse, Binky.
Hope you like him : )
And please try out Creepy Cute Crochet It's a great amigurumi book
Because let's face it those of us who like our amigurumi creepy, morbid and cute at the same time got to have this book. For heaven's sake Cthulhu is cute even!
