Anyways we’re on a tight wedding budget and so I entered a “Win your Dream Wedding Gown” contest thrown by Enzoani.  I had to upload a YouTube video explaining why I was an Enzoani Bride.

Of course, I had to do it the Ami Amour way – amigurumi style!  I created a crochet doll version of me wearing my dream gown by Enzoani from their 2012 collection called Elim.  It’s a beautiful mermaid gown with ruffly detachable strap with beautiful soft ruching details and intricate lace for the bottom of the skirt.  I am in love with it!  You can see the real life version here:

Well guess what?  I’m one of the finalists, hooray!  Now it’s a bit nerve racking because I need to try and get the most votes on their Facebook Page by Feb 27th (less than a month away!).

Here’s my doll, the front and back version.  She’s all hand crocheted except for the bottom part of her dress which is actually lace!  She even has a little small train on the back.  She has hearts for her lips – a signature Ami Amour crochet doll!So please please, all my dear readers, help me win by voting for me!  I think I’m behind at the moment but I hope to be the dark horse of this race and I think I can do it with your help!

You can go to this link here on Enzoani’s facebook page and vote for my video:

https://www.facebook.com/Enzonai?sk=app_190322544333196

I’m the 7th video and I’m wearing my blue shirt and holding the crochet doll.  You can’t miss me!

Just press “like” and let me know what vote number I’m on!

Thank you for your support!!  My fiancee and I really appreciate it and I hope to share more crochet crafty details as my wedding plans unfold.  There’s going to be lots of nice surprises in store!

First up, the Pokemon I was most proud of – Totodile plush.  I love his colors and he totally reminds me of a dinosaur somehow although he’s supposed to be more crocodile.  The most difficult construction was it’s mouth.  But I’m glad I managed to pull off the open mouthed look.  I’m tempted to create one for myself.

Having fun at the Pond.

So you can see him in proportion to a human.

Next up we have, Dratini crochet plush, whom I did a commission for the lovely Yumehi.

Side profile of Dratini:

She later commissioned me to do Dragonair which I actually loved more.  Dragonair is so elegant and I hoped to try and capture that same sleekness.  She reminds me of a dragon/serpent.  I need to get a shot of Dragonair and Dratini together so we can see the maternal instincts in action.

Close-up of her face:

Here’s Marill plush which some of you guys might have seen already as he’s available for purchase in my shop.  I love his tail!  Hey, I’m noticing a trend here with all the blue colors.

And finally something to break the blue trend, here’s the Combee plush.  She’s like a little honeycomb bee flying around.  The expressions on the faces are just too cute.  This plush’s difficulty was getting the structure of the hexagon shape.  But it was fun to do and I got to do something new.  Colors like these make me happy

Back of Combee:

Our Pokemon Friends together along with the Adipose from Doctor Who.

And finally we wouldn’t be Pokemon complete without a Pokeball to capture all these lovely critters.  And note to self: I really need to write out the pattern for the Pokeball.

This episode of Pokemon has been brought to you by Ami Amour!  I hope you enjoyed!

This year at AX it was all about Miku Hatsune of Vocaloid. My only regret this year (well in addition to not stockpiling enough amigurumis) is that I didn’t make a Miku doll this year to add to craze of Mikunopolis. For those of you who don’t know, Miku is an idol from Japan, except for that she’s not real. She’ll hold concerts but she’s like a hologram, but everyone acts like she’s real and she dances and sings like a real idol. You can check out one of her live videos here where she’s singing her famous song: World Is Mine. I was lucky enough to snag a Miku Concert ticket thanks to a friend of mine (thanks, James!).

I will say though that I did cosplay for the very first time. It came sort of as a random accident. I was listening to a Miku playlist on YouTube when a thought came to me, “hmm her outfit doesn’t look that difficult, I have a black short skirt and a vest already,” I also thought madly to myself, “And I’ll just crochet my blue wig!”

And I did. Which you can see here along with free anime eyes from JList, haha. Thanks for posing in it for me, Jamie.

Unfortunately I only had 2 skeins of yarn and ran out so her long hair was cut short. My sister complained so much about that and would not allow me to wear my crochet wig. She actually thought the wig was so bad that at AX she bought me a real Miku wig! Thanks Sis, I owe you one! You can see my new wig here, big improvement ^^.

While at artist alley too, there was a cool balloon guy and on my way back from the bathroom, I saw his booth. He had just completed creating a Miku balloon and they asked me to pose with it! They asked me what I thought of it and I replied jokingly, “It looks like me. Great job!”

Anyways onto my plushies, the real reason you read my blogs ^^. We had the debut of Henry’s Onigiri Bandits! Aren’t they adorable? I also had some Pokeballs that sold out real quick (wish I had made some more!). It was also most difficult to part with Jiji as it was my first sample.

I’ve had an unfinished Squirtle for a while. A girl came up and said I’ll buy it if you put eyes on it. Done! And so I said good bye to Squirtle.

Someone also purchased some “hentai” from me as seen below. More on that story later.

When all was done, we had to pack up and go. Luckily setting up and tearing down was an easy go this year thanks to the wagon I purchased.

Anyways, check out some of my swag I got. A lot of Kitty love.
Got a huge Hello Kitty bag for free. I’ll figure out how to use it later.

Signed Miku poster by talented artist Henry Liao.

And finally one of my purchases at AX, a Nyan cat T-shirt! My cat Mikey seems to like it too!

Thanks goes out to my sis, Jamie, Vincent, missy42 for helping me man the booth! Also more thanks to Sandy and Jamie my makeup stylist for the Miku look. Love you guys!

I’ve already purchased the pattern and I’ve created my amigurumi crane which I’m putting up for sale on my Etsy shop. It’s not much, but hopefully with the combined efforts of everyone in the project, together we will be able to make a sizeable donation to help out Japan.

If you crochet, you can help out in the effort by purchasing the pattern from here, and blogging about it:

Crane Amigurumi Pattern

There’s also a very cute knit pattern available from Survival Knitting, which is also part of the 1000 Amigurumi Crane Movement. It’s even stackable!

Knitted Amigurumi Crane Pattern

Everybody else can help out by purchasing a crane.

Here’s my crane in the making and finally the finished product.

You can purchase mine at my Etsy Shop to help out Japan. It’s available for $15. All proceeds will go directly to Japan Red Cross and I’ll even throw in a free gift – one of my small slimes ^^. Drop me a line and let me know how you guys are helping out.

I’m a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki films and Studio Ghibli. Here’s a gallery of all amigurumi related things to Studio Ghibli I’ve made so far. I hope to keep adding to the mix. Some of your favorites can be found from My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke all in cute plushie form.

Friday was a little slow, but Saturday and Sunday definitely picked up for me. The day before the con I didn’t get any sleep at all because I was frantically trying to finish up some of my crochet plushies. Maybe it’s because I was tired or what not, but I forgot several things at home (my cubes and my eyes for my plushies). You can see my setup on the first day here:

On the second day I remembered to bring my cube box and I think setup began to look a little nicer. I feel like people don’t really know the name of my business though, so I really need to make a banner one of these days soon.

I had the most awesome table partner. Her name is Emy and she has her own web comics called Trying Human that she publishes for free online. It’s based around the love story of an alien who falls in love with his human abductee and is very inventive! So be sure to check it out. She is very talented in her drawings and I was impressed to see her just ramp it out on her original art.

I had a great time meeting all the fabulous people who came through. Thanks everyone for supporting me and my plushies. I did some crochet commissions while I was there as well. I forgot to take pictures of all of them.

One was a poisonous Mario Mushroom for John. I might have to make some for AX.

Another was a Futurama brain slug. I find it so hilarious when people wear them on top of its head. You can see Rosemary and Emy sporting the new brain slug fashion.

I forgot to take a picture of Poo that I made for this cute little girl ^^. Basically a brown version of my slimes.

Oh yes and there were some awesome cosplayers this year as well. There’s plenty of anime cosplayers around so I took photos of more American based comics. Here’s Batman.

An awesome Lolita style Rogue outfit. Rogue’s my favorite character in X-men so I was very impressed.

And this is for my sister, the prince and Rapunzel from Tangled.

Oh and here’s Luigi showing off my 1-Up mushroom. Sorry that it’s a bit blurry.. it was taken on my iphone.

Oh yes, and on the last day, I finally got to do some shopping and for Jose (my fiancee). I got him an Angry Bird plushie (he’s so addicted to that game) and a Doctor Who T-shirt.

I had a commission coming all the way from Singapore, and it was for Sephiroth Sackboy. The challenging part for me would be to create the hair for him and the clothes. Sometimes for hair I like to use many pieces of yarn to simulate hair but this time I knew I wanted it to be crocheted on, similar to like a wig.

You can see the work in progress here as I worked on all the separate pieces of the hair. Basically I was making different sized strips and assembling and sewing them together in one piece. I think the effect came out pretty good in the end. It was my first time doing anime hair in this sort of way. Time-consuming, but fun to do.

Here’s how the hair ended up looking in the end. I had to give him bangs as well as long hair in the back.

One other challenge I was trying to figure out to do was: What should I do for the buckles and straps on his coat? I went to the my local craft stores here and went to the jewelry store, but could not find anything similar to what I wanted. For some reason, though I had some pop tops (you know the tops off of the soda pop cans) lying around and then it hit me.. hmmm… I think these will work fine! So the silver metal that you see are actually recycled pop tops ^^.

If you liked this Sackboy check out the other Sackboys I’ve done in my photo gallery including Kratos and Old Snake.

Here’s a gallery of all the crochet Sackboy amigurumis I’ve made either through commissions or orders.

Price: $5

• Level: Easy
• Finished Size: 11 inches (sitting and not including the antenna)
• Format: PDF (4 pages long) in Amerian Crochet Standard
• Notable Features: Bat-like wings, an antenna (created from pipe cleaners) with a red ball, and a round nose.

Price: $4

• Level: Basic
• Size: For Adults and Teens
• Format: PDF pattern written in standard American Crochet
• Notable features: Funny ears, round eyes, and black whiskers. Upon wearing this hat, you may suddenly have a strong desire to stand in the rain with a leaf on your head.

Don’t forget to share your finished photo with me on my Flickr Ami Amour group just for patterns!