What I'm Thinkin'

So last week or the week before, while browsing my blogs, I came across an entry (it was on Cutable.com) for this soft sculpture artist in the UK. Here's some of her stuff:









Cute, right? Well guess how much she charges? 35 pounds! That's $55 usd or $70 sing dollars! This made me really mad. I keep seeing these cute little stuffed things, and you know what I'm thinking: I could do that! I could do BETTER than that!

So I decided to try. I was really approaching this as a money-making thing. I already have an Etsy account, I could easily set up a store, or just sell from my blog. Well, yesterday on my mental health day, I made a prototype. The head was all wrong, so I fixed it this morning after our chat. And this is what I came up with:










Random thoughts:
I want to make cats that look like real breeds; this one is obviously siamese, but I have some sketches of other types of cats. I could do the "points" in a color, tho: green or blue or red. Whatever. This one measures almost 7" tall, but that's pretty small. The UK lady puts her toys in a custom box. I would like to do something like that. Chinese take-out boxes? (kung-pao kitty) or maybe a tea/coffee cup? A soft sculpture one, or a real one. In that case, the size will be dependent on the package. There's also these cute metal lunch boxes at Oriental Trading that could be used. Lunchbox Kitty? I could see miniaturizing the little orange hen for this, too. And maybe a goldfish or something like that.

I have such a hard time being able to tell if my designs are cute. I can tell when someone else's designs are. So I'm really looking for constructive criticism. I know you're not into cute. Think of this a soft sculpture instead of a toy. I would have to market it that way, anyway with the button eyes and all that. Not safe for little kids.


So whaddya think?