Elizabeth Ruffing, Author at Ruffing’s Artist Dolls and Toys

Posted on May 24, 2016June 6, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing — 1 Comment

Wonder Bunnies and Super Slugs

Wonder Bunnies and Super Slugs!

This is my first Wonder Bunny plush rabbit, the superhero version of my Hug Me Bunnies. He (or she) has my pretty new custom-printed eyeballs and a “B” for bunny emblem.

He also has a fancy cape, yellow with polka dots on one side, and red with planets on the other. I found some nice planet and star fabrics for capes for my Wonder Bunnies and Super Slugs.

I made a couple of versions of this cape before I decided I liked this size the best on him.

I made a special hang tag for my Wonder Bunnies.

Now he’s ready to fly. I need to make some Wonder Bunnies in different colors. I will post them in our Ruffing’s shop.

I made these twin Super Slugs as a custom order. This was one version of the cape I tried. It was round on the sides and fuller.

Mid-Wonder-Bunny, I ran into an issue which made me panic. My new emblems and eyeballs were shedding at their edges when I cut them out. Luckily, my mom suggested I coat them with Liquitex Fabric Medium, to seal the surface. It worked very well, thank goodness. The fabric medium is nontoxic and keeps everything in place. I didn’t encounter this with my monster eyeballs, because they had white around the colors. Any edge shedding wasn’t noticeable. Now I just need to paint my eight gazillion eyeballs and emblems with fabric medium. No problem. Ha.

I ordered all my fleece eyeballs, and emblems for my Wonder Bunnies and Super Slugs, from Fabric on Demand. They did a great job. Since then, Spoonflower came out with fleece as well. I had a problem with their black not being black enough on their faux suede fabric. I ordered a sample of their fleece (shown above), and was happy to find the black did print as black this time. The colors aren’t exactly the same from both companies, and so I would still recommend printing a color map if you need to match color.

I was inspired to go out and get some rainbow fleece yesterday after seeing a rainbow display online at Target. Walmart (above left) and Jo-Ann’s (above right) both had some. I thought I might need some equality slugs or bunnies or kitties, or some of each, because the news and comments here in NC, and now across the country, are driving me right up the wall.

I’ve collected some cotton prints from both stores too. Walmart now has Waverly prints, and they have a lot of pretty ones. I’m sure I have too many. I’ve been saying I’ll have to give up toy making because I can’t fit myself into the workroom.

I’ve been redrafting all my templates for my toy characters. I experimented with my Gumdrop Baby, but I have a feeling I will end up going back to the original pattern. I can’t decide on a face, and whether I should go with a cartoonish more modern face, like the prototype above, or a more detailed antique dolly face. The original Gumdrop Babies are here on my blog. An example of a more detailed antique dolly face is here on Leah.

Most of the crew here outside my workroom door doesn’t seem to have an opinion. They like anything they can play with, cuddle with, or in Oliver Bunny’s case, lick.

The crew outside doesn’t seem to have an interest either, unless a toy is filled with catnip. Trouble thinks Santana makes a good toy, and likes to sneak up on him while he is sleeping. Santana has no sense of humor about this. This photo was taking shortly before the yowling began. It was short lived. Trouble likes me to escort him home, where he falls over for pets.

Pets are important. Trouble comes looking for me if I don’t make an early appearance outside. Recently, he went all the way to my bedroom window, looking for me.

Trouble comes running when he sees me come out in the morning.

Santana wants the porch and the deck to himself, and takes his guard duty seriously. They really both want me to pay attention to them and they don’t want to share. Eventually, they should get used to the idea. I hope.

Oh, I almost forgot…I keep going to doctors, and getting blood tests and biopsies. My circular rash turned out to be granuloma annulare, which is harmless, with no sure cause. My white blood cell count is consistently high, four times in a row now. We don’t know why. I don’t know if it is linked to the fatigue I have had. I have more appointments and tests, but we may only find out that I am weird. Or my blood is weird? I don’t know. It could be anything or nothing at all. I try not to think about it. I did pretty well, since I forgot to mention it through this whole blog post.

Got to go do stuff. Take care, all.

Posted on April 8, 2016June 6, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Custom fabric, with a special side order of Amoxicillin

Custom fabric printed eyeballs and emblems

I got some more custom fabric printed with my eyeballs and emblems.

Since I last wrote about getting eyeballs for my toys printed on custom fabric from Fabric on Demand, which came out great, I went a bit berserko and decided I needed about eight billion varieties.

I contacted Oliver Bunny’s veterinarian and asked what shaped pupils he thought various animals would have, round or oval, and if the oval pupils would be vertical or horizontal. I am lucky he and his colleagues enjoy questions.

Then I went about designing an exhausting array of colored eyeballs, most of which don’t exist in nature, with both round and oval pupils, along with emblems for my superhero stuffed animals, my Super Slugs and Wonder Bunnies.

It took a while to get my custom fabric back from the printer, but my eyeballs and emblems look pretty awesome.

They came out of the washer and dryer a little softer looking, which is no surprise with fleece, since it has a fuzzy texture. I am trying to decide if I want to pre-wash my fleece custom fabric. If I do, I will do it by hand, by gently dunking it in the sink, and hang it to dry next time, to preserve the sharpness. The blacks came out nice and black too.

Update: I decided not to pre-wash the eyes and emblems, because I needed to coat them with some Liquitex fabric medium, to make sure the edges didn’t fray when I cut them out, which sealed the surface and made pre-washing unnecessary.

I downloaded a color map with the hex code numbers for a rainbow of colors, from the popular custom fabric printing business, Spoonflower. I moved the row of blacks and grays to the bottom so I could make the color map a little wider, since fleece fabric is wider than cotton. It still fit on a yard, and I printed that as well.

If you would like to use this wider color map file for custom fabric, I saved it here. It is 42 inches wide and 36 inches long. So, it will fit on one yard of fabric. It was printed at 150dpi, which is what Fabric on Demand recommended. It is good to have, so you can see what the colors you are picking in Photoshop will look like when printed on fabric.

I am working on revising my Super Slug stuffed animal superhero pattern. I ordered some special cape fabrics. I’m going to make a Wonder Bunny plush rabbit superhero cohort for him.

I’m also going to make some Hug Me Lambs stuffed animals, and I think, some lop-earred bunnies similar to the lambs, with fleece faces and ears, and either cotton print or fleece bodies.

I just received a group of really pretty planet and star fabrics, to use for capes for my superhero plush toys, from Brooklyn Fabric Company in Iowa. They have a sale until tomorrow, and they shipped them very quickly.

In other news…I’ve been feeling so tired! I know it seems like I’ve been doing a lot, but I have had so much fatigue.

The other night, I was saying to my mom that I thought something had to be wrong with me. At first, I thought it was sleep deprivation, and it may be, but I have also had this strange circular rash under my arm for at least a couple of months, maybe even four months, after my lymph nodes under my arm were swollen, assuming I would have seen it then.

I was concerned it was Lyme disease. My mom was sure that kind of rash always had a red center. I got worried and looked online. Looking online is a good way to get more worried! I found that, with a Lyme disease rash, sometimes the red center disappears, because your immune system attacks the bite area first.

After a lot of rigamarole sorting out my insurance in regard to where I was allowed to go, I ended up at an Urgent Care. Since the tests they have for Lyme are unreliable, and they don’t do them at Urgent Care anyway, if you present for Lyme, they usually go ahead and treat you for it. The doctor didn’t think it was Lyme, but we treated me for it just in case. I picked up my giant horse pills, three weeks of Amoxicillin, three times a day. Whoopee. I started taking them last night. My mom cheerfully said, “Only 59 to go!” Ick.

Update: After testing and biopsies, we found out my circular rash was granuloma annulare, which is harmless, with no clear cause. My white blood cell count however keeps coming back high. We’re still trying to figure that out along with the cause of my fatigue.

I have bushes and trees to plant and a certain little furry man to take for his checkup. I’ll see how I do. I’ve been warned to expect some side effects from the Amoxicillin.

Psychologically, I felt better last night, since I was blaming myself for feeling so tired. I’ve had a couple of inquiries about custom toys, and one night this past week, I felt so overwhelmed, I thought I would have to say I couldn’t do them. I felt like I couldn’t make any toys at all. I’ve had trouble even thinking straight lately, although I am feeling better and more rested now. I felt like I needed to go to the rest home and take a long, long nap.

I have been feeling guilty too, that I haven’t gotten my toys done. I’ve had the same nine monsters in progress since the beginning of January. I am hoping the antibiotic and some sleep will turn me around.

Posted on April 4, 2016November 15, 2020 by Elizabeth Ruffing — 1 Comment

Mr Zoomie

After I last wrote, our nearly nineteen year old kitty, Zoomie, had a couple of stokes, one after the other, at the beginning of February. We didn’t think he would pull through, but he miraculously rebounded, even though he had some mobility issues and needed help with his basic needs. We did our best for him, and he got surprisingly better, only with less energy and unable to jump up on counters. He was also very thin. The photo above was taken then. He was looking like his old self.

In mid-March, he had another stroke, which left him weaker. We hoped for another recovery, but, in spite of his great determination, it wasn’t to be. Before I went to bed one night, he insisted on getting into the biggest cat bed in the house, the one with the highest walls. I helped get him comfortably situated, cleaned his face, kissed him on the forehead, and went to bed. In the morning, on the 23rd, he was in the exactly the same spot, as I had left him. I believe he went peacefully in his sleep, which is the best we could have hoped for.

I found him as a kitten, running around in our back yard. He was a very handsome boy. He had a beautifully plush coat. We used to say he was squishy, like a teddy bear.

The first thing he did, when I met him, was run up to me and hit me on the leg.

He then climbed one tree after another, before sitting in front of the kitchen window, where he growled at the cats inside.

I brought him in, and he really never wanted to go outside again, except for the occasional times he stepped out the door while we brought groceries inside, and the one time the back door accidentally blew open, and we found him, with Henrietta, sitting under the bush by the back door.

He used to carry Henrietta around in his mouth, when she was a baby, until she got too bossy. He was good at taking care of babies.

Later in his life, he ended up with two much younger tabby girlfriends, Phoebe and Bertie, who adored him.

They competed for his attention. Every time they heard him giving himself a bath, they would run to him and ask for a bath for themselves, pushing their heads under his chin. He patiently obliged. He took good care of them too.

We’re all going to miss our boy.

Posted on March 24, 2016April 6, 2016 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Geraldine, miniature tabby Maine Coon cat art doll, handmade original, one-of-a-kind kitten by artist Max Bailey

Geraldine is a handmade miniature original, one-of-a-kind cat art doll, hand painted and hand sculpted in paperclay by artist Max Bailey.

Geraldine is a tabby Maine Coon kitten with big golden eyes. She’s a country girl and lives on a farm just outside of town.

One of Geraldine’s daily chores is to take her metal basket and go down the hill to the chicken coop to gather the eggs.

She’s fond of the chickens, and they are quite used to seeing her. Sometimes they even help her to find the eggs, if they can remember where they put them.

This morning Geraldine is wearing her gold pinafore. It has a big blue flower in the front, and lots of little blue flowers around the bottom. She wears it over a blue skirt and a pale yellow shirt with blue polka dots.

She’s managed to collect eight lovely brown eggs, and there will be a big breakfast back at the farmhouse.

Geraldine is a one-of-a-kind work of art, and is meant for display only. She was sculpted from paperclay in multiple stages, to allow for drying and detailing.

Geraldine was painted under a magnifying light, with tiny brushes, one hair at a time. She is signed and sealed with matte varnish for protection and preservation, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

Geraldine is 1:12 scale. (One inch equals one foot.) She is 2 and 1/8 inches tall.

Update: Geraldine has been adopted. Thank you!