The kit that got me into building GKs, it's such a cute one (especially with her dolls Shanghai and Hourai). T's System has a lovely Touhou GK line and they're still releasing more. Most of the painting is done with the airbrush, details were hand-brushed (I love doing details!).

She's on display for quite a while now, I forgot when I actually finished her but she had been the reason for much frustration and headache. Every part of her decided to break off spontaneously until I had enough and pinned everything I could! One should still be careful with the dolls but other than that I think she shouldn't be prone to falling apart anymore.

[View with PicLens]

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"A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have."

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy writes

Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta;  use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat;

Or so it goes on...

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Now what am i trying to tell you by this? HELL, theres something that really ROCKS! You know what it is? Right, TOWELS!

And for that one and very reason we made one. A very epic one.

(also note, i know i've missed towel day :{)

As a friend of ours is a real sauna-freak and there are decent things named "sauna-towel" out there ... we thought we'd give modding on of those -- which are only super-sized towels by the way -- a try as a present for his birthday... This is what we've made

For cutting out the stencils from *thick*paperboard* you want a metal-ruler and a hobby knife / cutter / etc handy - make sure it's sharp, your hands and wrist will hurt less!

A pretty boring detail of what's going to get cut. You may notice the bit-special-null - it's so we don't need to align a negative of the inner part of the 0, and no, every font editing software was HELL for a non-typographer

To see whether everything you cut is (somehow) correct you might to switch to the backside view of your stencil - corrections and fixes if you didn't cut deep enought are easier to happen here

Ouch! My wrist hurts! But hey, almost everything of the first line of the stencil is cut.

It's important to test everything in your setup is going to work before attacking the actual target of your work ... we've sprayed two test-lines on this old but long-serving towel...

Cutting is finished, now we're about to attach our stencils to the actual sauna-towel.

The testing failed, we weren't able to align the lines of the stencil correctly, so now we're taping them together to one large stencil...

This is what a aligned and taped line of the stencil looks like...

As you finished aliging the stencils fasten them to your towel and go somewhere you can spray - as we didn't know how bad the cloth-paint would smell we chose outdoors

The next important thing - even if you spray really really close - is masking. just one little mistake and you've got overspray next to your stencil, you really wanna avoid that!

Now the preps are finished, stencil is aligned, fastened to the towel, masked all around... let's get to the spraying part!

It's - as always - handy to have some helpers around, in this case to press down the individual characters of the stencil to get a sharper and more crips outline... those gloves^Wmittens^Wgloves from the pharmacy (or other sources) are also really handy - less hand-washing action afterwards, better for your skin too....

By the way, this is the paint we used ;-0, it's sourced from boesner.com, a large arts-supply store in germany (and europe?). You wanna mix it with some distilled water so it will spray smoother with your brush. We used a .2mm nozzle-brush so we thinned it down quite a bit...

spraying finished. We were suprised how good the paint flowed through the brush... - be sure to let this dry a bit before removing the stencil or you risk ugly marks on the cloth...

The post-processing for this type of cloth paint is quite simple - but another (not so thick) cloth/towel over the sprayed region and take your iron and iron the whole think for a few minutes, that affixes the paint to the cloth and makes it washable.

After the first side of the towel was finished we decided to do a symmetric application on the other side too - which gave opportunity to shoot some details

... is fun by the way - more details.

and this is the finished product. Lovely^Wtowely, isn't it?

Notice the stain there ... we haven't got ourselves to wash it before giving it away, so they'll just stay on...

By the way - whoever is able to decode what's on there may win ... uuuhm .. as many washing-machines as that person can catch!

So, bottomline of this post: Spraying cloth with a nice stencil isn't that hard. Actually if you see plain white t-shirts selling on Ebay for 2 Euros you come to think of those text-only-nerd-tshirts ... and that it's quite simple and cheap to make them yourself for only a few bucks. If you're good with the airbrush -- or the cutter, in case of complex stencils -- you can do even more custom, more nerdy stuff.

You'll see first samples of that soon -- i hope.

Ookay, i think this was it for this "tutorial", i hope you enjoyed the idea, and i hope your friends will get decent towels soon too, cause, you know, what's more important in live than having your towel always with you? J/K

Flavors are listed in no particular order. Unfortunately, I can't claim this review to be complete. Glico has released so many different Pocky and it's even harder to get everything outside Japan. Nevertheless, I've got quite a bunch and pretty pictures too (And I'll make sure I add future Pocky additions to this review if I should ever get my hands on more.)

Pocky Chocolate

Ah.. the classic Pocky! If you don't live in Japan, maybe you can find those around your place anyway (like we have them called "Mikado" in Germany). The Japanese ones feature slightly bitter chocolate (I personally like bitter chocolate more than milk chocolate) and is probably sweeter than anywhere else in the world. But if your chances of trying Pocky are limited, you should go for more extraordinary flavors

Pocky Chocolate Super Thin

Okay, I don't know how they really call this one but the heading pretty much discribes it. When you're used to the normal Pocky size, these are super thin (and thus tend to break easily while inside the package). My insensitive taste fails to understand how this affects the flavor. It also features bitter chocolate.

Pocky Tropical

And again I don't know with which name this flavor is actually promoted (maybe I should stop this, just assume I'm making up product names except for those who actually have English names). They have a bunch of fruit drawn on their package (cantaloupe, bananas, grapes, apple, orange, strawberry, raspberry.. and more) but the most distinct one is pineapple. You can surely taste more when you put up an effort. Let's just say I like the overall fruity taste and the chocolate cover is especially thick!

Pocky Dessert Double Chocolate

The Pocky Dessert line-up have a thicker biscuit core and a (even thicker) chocolate cover. Double chocolate is its best example. It's super chocolaty and crispy and you'll notice how it melts in your mouth. As far as I can judge it, it's pretty good chocolate. Yum!

Strawberry Pocky

Yay, artifical strawberry flavor! They use it everywhere so you most probably came across it. I like it but they have a different strawberry one in their line-up which is better. It's pretty sweet also. Did I mention it's pink?

Chocolate Banana Pocky

If you like bananas, you'll love them (like me!). Chocolate matches every fruit but in my opinion it matches bananas especially well. It chocolate taste isn't too strong while the banana flavor is pretty intense.

Pocky Milk Coffee

The best thing about this one is the cute cow on the front. I don't like coffee but really, the coffee taste doesn't stand out at all (ok, it's supposed to be milk coffee anyway... milk with a generous dose of sugar and a single drop of coffee).

Pocky Men's Bitter Chocolate

I don't get what's especially manly about these Pocky. Whatever.. They have a pretty bitter taste (they must've used some very dark chocolate), not my favorite but I'm not very manly either. The biscuit stands out a little too much.

Pocky Chocolate Crush Cocoa Cookie Crunch

Don't they look yummy? Yes, I love those. They have cookies printed on the package but they don't really remind me of cookies. It's pretty good nevertheless! Aren't too sweet, are slightly bitter and have that awesome crispy stuff thrown in. One of my favorites.

Pocky Strawberry (Revised?)

This second stawberry Pocky flavor is the leveled up one. Maybe it's supposed to be strawberry milk or something because they taste very much alike. It must be the artifical strawberry flavor again but they have the added crispy things (those little darker dots) ! Whatever they might be made of they're pretty good!

Milk Pocky

Tastes very much like milk coffee without the coffee part. I do like them although (again) they're very sweet. Somehow I'm getting more and more lost for words in this review...

Pocky Dessert Tiramisu

Wait, I only have one picture of this one? Uh.. something went wrong. Anyways..

It's a bit bitter and tastes pretty much like Tiramisu. It lacks a bit flavor on the cocoa side. Definitely a good choice.

Pocky Chocolate Crush Almond

Has a slight oily taste to it (what's to expect from Pocky with almonds?). I do like the cookie one better but this has a decent amount of almonds thrown into milk chocolate which make it crunchy.

Pocky Dessert Hazelnut (?)

I can only guess they mean hazelnut (from the package) but they remind me more of coffee than of hazelnut. My least favorite of the dessert line-up but that's not exactly bad.

Oh no!

It happens we forgot the Winter Pocky What a pity.. this review it one entry too short. But I hope you still enjoyed this review

As you can imagine our friend was flabbergasted (i somehow like that word) to the last. Read on for more details on how to build it!

So, there we are for detailed build instructions. As for materials and tools you'll need ... this could be somehow hard to get depending on where you live. We're lucky to have a *good* shop for metall stuff around, so we had a cheap go on a remaining stock Aluminum-sheet-metal. We went for quite thick material as we wanted to bend it, 1.8mm for reference. That descision might sound a bit too much, but it simply looks better, more sturdy and has less risk of breaking when bending it into the final form.

Aside of that you'll need a printer, a hobby-knife for cutting out the template and some transparent film for protecting the metal as well as pinning the template to the metal. For cutting out we used a Dremel (not original, but by Proxxon) and for the final finishing you'll need some fine/small files.

If you want to give the Aluminum a brushed look you'd need a thick (and straight) piece of wood, a F-clamp as well as some 600-sandpaper.

Again, only IF you want to seal it - we recommend a airbrush/spraygin and proper clearcoat, we used something slightly different - worked nice nonetheless.

Okay, off we go for the actual work. Print out your template, cut out the outlines with your hobbyknife and pin in to the sheetmetal. Then put the protective mask/film over it to protect the metal from scraches and hold the template properly.

What you'll need - and how to use

Start cutting out the outlines very slowly (the thick material may take you a long time...)

Slowly (any normal dremel won't allow you anything else) cut along your mark. Be carefull not to make your cut too long for "inside" corners - so you don't harm the actual shape.

Remember to flip your sheet metal from time to time - the backside is wonderful for refining the edges - especially for "inside corners"

As a little note: Really really be careful not to grind too far at "inside corners", it'll look really bad. A nice fix for "too small" edges is to turn over the sheetmetal and cut a bit from the backside, then turn to front again, and so on. Also, if one of your grinding discs got too small - save it for those jobs!

The first (easy) piece comes off ... huge success!

Back view of the next, more complicated cut

Skipped forward a bit. After cutting you want a good fine and small file to smoothen up the edges and corners. Remember to keep the protection layer so you don't make any unwanted scratches - which happens easily with files.

Detail of the head-section - this was the hardest cutting-work.

Okay, so for the brushing. First off - this is a picture of our first try, please note that it is a bad idea to first bend the deer, then brush it. But as for the general method - you need a straight piece of wood (here: the triangle) and push your sheetmetal against it so to straighten it. Then take another (smaller) piece of wood and wrap the sandpaper around it. If you now grind using the triangle as a guidance so all your "streaks" and scratches are exactly in the same direction you'll get that nice brushed look. You'll need to grind forth and back about 4-5 times, if you want a finer brushed look more often using a finer (800) sandpaper.

Brushing *after* bending is no nice idea . Remember to do it before.

Details of the brushed look.

Yay, finished (almost)!

Detail before cleaning/sealing.

The two finished deers (uncleaned/sealed)

For sealing we'll use our airbrush (0.2mm nozzle)...

... and lascaux transparent matte varnish/sealer. Wasn't made for this usecase, works like a charm nontheless. Remember to use this only thinned at least 1:1.

After spraying quite some of that stuff on the two deers they need to dry at least 30minutes.

And finished they are - holding our stack of University and Nerd books

Check out that DIY brushed alu - nice, isn't it?

Nice, isn't it? You may consider a different cutting technique for the rough outlines as normal dremels take *ages* (litterally, we've been grinding and cutting almost 16hours for those two deers here). Nonetheless this brithday-present was a rock-on gift, and the ability to custom-make any pixel-art into a bookstand is *THE* idea for a decent gift.

I hope you enjoyed this a bit picture-centered tutorial. If you have any questions, feel free to use the comment system, i'll answer as soon as i can.

General info

The other thing that makes life hard for collectors are limited figures. For example Touhou merchandise has to be limited in some way or another and very few international shops carry those (usually for a little more than the retail price in Japan but that's nothing compared to the trouble of using a proxy). Limited figures are very common and subject of rage for even the most dedicated (non-Japanese) collectors. Limited usually means: limited to certain Japanese online shops that will only ship to Japan, magazine mail-order exclusives (which are even more elusive), limited quantities (usually also limited to Japanese only) or one time convention only releases (only sold at a certain convention, rare for PVC figures but common for garage kits). Using a proxy means to let the shop send the items to a person in Japan and this person will then ship the items to you. I haven't used one so far and it's also possible to use a proxy for Yahoo Auctions! (eBay is not popular with the Japanese). See Rinkya, ShoppingMallJapan or Tenso.

You won't be able to avoid to plan ahead either. Preorder figures is easier than polling the shop site at the release date and it happens a lot that supply is sold before it's released (preorder closed) speaking you won't have the chance to buy it when it is released. I'd avoid shops that need you to pay beforehand if possible. If you tend to get yourself in the red for ordering too much, you might me interested whether your shop of choice allows order cancellations but you shouldn't do that often either case. You are sure to get the item when you preorder. Backordered items are cumulated orders your shop will send out sometime later (you have to wait just as if you're preordering) to ask the manufacturer if they're available. So you're not guranteed to get it.

Shipping fee is a heartbreaking topic. The item is already pricey enough and you will have to pay half the price for getting it shipped to your doorstep. But most shops will leave the choice to you how to ship them. SAL (Surface Air Lifted) (500 yen or more) is the economy version, there's no tracking (outside Japan) and your parcel has to be lighter than 2kg. It's a lot cheaper than EMS and it is my shipping method of choice but some collectors have made bad experiences with parcels getting lost and so on. SAL takes about a month to Germany, usually a little less but not less than two weeks. I don't mind waiting but if it's really important to you, use EMS (Express Mail Service) and pay more (like 1500 yen or more). If your country doesn't hate you and confines your package in customs (depending on how nice they are, it can take ages) it should arrive in less than a week. The package is being tracked and is being covered for should it get lost. People say your package is sure to get in customs when using EMS but I don't really know. So far almost *every* of my orders were held in customs but that depends on your country. Look for how much you're supposed to pay to customs as well. If it's a lot, it may be better to buy from local shops (or online shops of your own country).

Consider joining Tsuki-Board.net (aka MyFigureCollection). It's a nice community and their monitoring feature is worth a lot when you've missed the first wave of preorders. They have active users that'll comment as soon as figures are available again somewhere.

Get news about new figures

Older figures are hard to get, it doesn't really matter if they were popular or not, so prevent missing releases of new ones is a good way to go. I'm following a dozen of figure blogs but that's not necessary. However, I recommend these:

Nekomagic is an awesome source. I don't know of any other English speaking blog that is so well informed or covers conventions so throughoutly. Nekomagic will inform you about which things to look forward to but mostly you'll have to wait another few months for them to be released (or even announced). They also provide garage kit info! (And are about to open a new site for garage kits only.)

Wcloudx (kumo)'s blog posts release dates and provides summaries of upcoming figures. Most figures also get a "XYZ Reservation Starts!!" post to make sure you won't be missing them.

Figures Plus is a very useful site also. I find the Spanish (it's a bilingual blog) a bit confusing but the blog presents releases in a very clean way, including also links to shops so you don't even have to search for yourself.

Recommended Shops

So you've found your most wanted figures but are clueless where to buy? Beware of eBay as there are many bootlegs out there. See Tsuki-Board.net and look up whether there are bootlegs of the figure you're about to buy (they're very up to date which is convenient). If not it's safer, if yes you should be careful. Even if you're not wasting much money, it is still wasted. Bigger shops are usually okay. Oh, and get yourself a Paypal account if you don't have one already. So far I've bought from:

Otacute: The shop I buy most frequently from.

• + Has limited items! (With little extra fee)
• + Reasonably priced
• + SAL shipping available (good priced too)
• - Allow (only) one order cancellation per customer

AmiAmi: They went international not so long ago. It's a huge shop so they get offer good prices to customers too.

• + Lowest prices
• + SAL shipping available
• + Accept order cancellation when you really need it and will split bigger orders ito smaller packages if you ask them
• - No limited items
• - Order handling fee of 700 yen (you should always keep that in mind!)

HobbySearch: Good prices, usually on par with AmiAmi (well, a little more). They sometimes have nice stuff for sale and only recently started offering SAL shipping.

• + Reasonably priced
• + SAL shipping available
• + Restock often (and there's a RSS feed for it!)
• - Credit Card only (NO Paypal, which is the biggest downside for me)
• - No limited items

HobbyLinkJapan:

• + Sales happen a lot
• + Early Bird preorders give you a discount
• + Order cancellation are handled automatically (there's a button for it, you don't have to write them an apology mail)
• - Somewhat more expensive

e2046: Sells mostly garage kits but has quite a few PVC figures too.

• + There are almost always discounts
• + For being a VIP you get an extra discount (when you've ordered more than 250 $ worth of stuff over the time)
• Okay priced
• - Short preorder times (they close too fast)
• - Very few items in stock

YesAsia: Only bought from them once.

• + Free SAL shipping for orders exceeding 50 $
• + You always get discount coupons for ordering
• - Expensive (and I really mean it)
• - You have to pay when you order (not when the item arrives)

If you happen to have experiences from other shops, please inform me so I can add them.

Not really looking for something specific? Anime figure sales is like a goldmine when you're hunting sales. Recent figures are usually put up for sale in shops for clearance after some time and here's the info who's selling what. The website hasn't been active at all times but you're only looking for bargains anyway, aren't you?

Anyways, we've (as in Eefi and NebuK ) tried our first garage kit, Mina, from the Densha Otoko opening:

Mina, our first modelkit, finished

As we've run into many problems, gear and methode wise, we thought we'd publish a small "buildlog" or "modelkit diary". Mind you, this is by no means a guide or tutorial as we've only tried to find our way into the Resin Kit World . Still if you're preparing to do your first kit this post may give you some kind of idea what you're diving into.

So, we're about to start. As those modelkits are casted from resin, which is basically 2 Components Epoxy on steroids, they have quite some casting leftovers, nipples, rough edges and the like. So you have to get rid of those, fill some gaps or holes, and give everything a nice polish so the color sticks well.

What you'll need is bascically this:

- a set of *small*, fine files, for the rough work on the model

- a cutter/scalpel for cutting of big leftover nipples - also handy for cutting tape for masking

- a set of K600, K800 and K1500 sanding paper

- some plastic glue / superglue

- a putty (note, do *not* use the putty shown here, it sucks. Appearantly tamiya green putty is nice, Mr. putty also gets recommended quite often)

- acrylic water-thinnable colors - also don't use the revell aqua shown here, better go for vallejo or - if a gamesworkshop is around the corner - citadell seems cool too. Only get the basic colors as we're gonna mix everything as needed ... cheaper that way

- not shown here, some brushes. Do yourself a favor and use good ones, it's way more fun that way.

- a small pliers as used for electronics

Materials Needed

AAAAAnd this is what mina looks like when unpacked. Quite a mess you may think at first.

Mina in pieces...

The you look in detail, and whaaat? This is rediculous, so much to do and fix.

Casting leftover on arm

Some more casting leftovers

Ears again

Check those looong edges

Everywhere! Leftovers, nipples, casting residue, everywhere!

Okay, let's calm down, we're gonna start by example. Take that ear for example, I've cut that nipple with the scalpel and filed the rest down roughly with the round-ish flat file.

IMPORTANT NOTE: ONLY FILE AND GRIND UNDER WATER OR USING A *GOOD* PARTICLE FILTER MASK. CLEAN WORKSPACE *THOROUGHLY* AFTER FINISH. SMALL RESIN PARTICLES STAY IN YOUR LUNGS AND ARE KNOWN FOR CAUSING CANCER. DO NOT RISK YOUR HEALTH FOR A MODELKIT!

Anyways, after filing the ear looks like this:

After rough filing

Of course, if you out paint on that it'll look horrible. So lets go for the K600 sanding paper, grind with a circular movement all the way back and forth over this area:

Aaaand, woohoo, looks nice. Again, the tools used to achieve this:

This is used for refining the casting nipples

So, next example, the left arm - looks horrible!

The arm was quite bad

After filing and grinding... perfect almost more smooth than the original!

K200 ... grinding ... nice!

You remember the pictures of the carrot-rocket-...thingies earlier? Well, this one was quite hard filing and grinding, but this seem sufficent.

Filing + Grinding = ... okay

Cutting! Watch out, fingers in danger

Sooo, time to get the paint on your table and make the first tries. Remember to always use clean distilled water with a tiny tiny drop of soap for thinning. That way you won't get a ugly lime-edge on your brushstrokes and the surface tension of the water is lowered so the paint will distribute itself nicely.

First paint

As you may see here, the paint-job isn't perfect. Yours probably also won't be. Its just hard brushing. When thinning properly and applying the paint in more and more and more steps, each with only little paint at a time you can reduce the problem.

Carrot paint detail after 1x 100%, 1x thinned

If you're not putting soap in your water ... this is what will happen!

Over-Thinning paint...

But after getting to know that trick the paintjobs get better and better.

By the way, another nice trick if you gotta mix your colors yourself is a so called "wet palette". It basically works by putting sandwitch paper or baking paper on top of a shitload of soaking wet cleenex into a closeable box. That way your colors will stay nice wet even overnight and over the term of days.

The painting gets better..

And on we go to the next subject, applying putty. Here its used to make the head a bit rounder and also to fix that gap between the two halves of the head.

Apply it by taking some on a knive, putting it on the subject and pressing it into the holes/gaps with the knive. It's better to use a bit more putty than you need so you can press it in there nicely. Here it's not everything in the gap and the rest taken away cause' i want to model the head a bit more round.

dried rough putty on the head

detailed rough putty

After some filing and sanding action the back of the head is in a nice state, ready to be painted!

filed and grinded

isn't that bad

the top still needs to be done

putty on the head

putty on the head

This is what the putty looks like after filing and grinding with K600, be sure to sand it again with finer K's... the paint won't look nice on that.

The paintjob somehow is the worst part of the whole build-process - i already mentioned thinning the paint and adding soap. If you made your first try without those you feel like those will solve all of your problems. Still, its unbelievable hard to make large uniform areas look good.

Here some examples (those small speckles are sensor-dust on my camera. Note to self: don't use bellows too often )

arm painted

carrots painted

ears painted

As you see it's ... okay - from a larger distance. You ought not to get too close . If you want a way better result the only thing you can resort to is using a airbrush, which is what we'll do for the next model.

Anyways, some more putty action. The back of the neck wasn't aligned nicely and the edge to the collar wasn't visible nicely. So first mask everything not to harm the already nicely painted face.

masking for applying putty

Apply putty, a bit more again to re-model the edge of the collar.

More putty action!

By the way, masking is really really important. Here you can see how we masked the arms for painting the gloves - the little cutout at the palm / inner hand was tricky .

Masked arms

Masking the gloves of the arm

And what does the finished model look like? you may ask.... here comes the gallery:

[View with PicLens]

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Last hint, a cheap good source for modelkits, not original japanese, but also not as worse as "thai" kits is e2046.com - which is where mina is from. They have reasonable prices and reaaally fast shipping. Great!

If you're about to start with a modelkit i hope we could give you some rough guidance. This is - once again - by no means a attempt to a complete guide or anything - sadly something like that's still missing on the net. After we've gained more experience with more kits we'll attempt to put together a nice guide for you .

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and seeing the Mina-Pics ...

Cakes, everyone LOVES Cakes.

"Uuuhm, sure, okay" - but hey, everyone does! So we made a few Schwarzwaelder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Gateau?) Mini-Cakes. For the ones who don't know, this is a German cake, actually, the most german of all Cakes. Coming from a  mountain-region in the south-west it has whipped cream, some more whipped cream on some whipped cream with some whipped cream, cherries, some more whipped cream, a few cherries on top aaaand ... MORE whipped cream.

What we've done with that cake, which is supposedly the one (beeing a lie) in Portal is breaking it down into small Cake-lets, while still in the make they looked like this:

The real magic, smearing everything with even MORE Whipped Cream is only about to start. When the cakelets are ready to leave for the hungry crowd they're rouuughly like this:

Some more work required to get here:

Aaaand, served nicely chilled and super sweet, everyone moans a deep "Mmhhmmmm!"

The recipe isn't ours, just the form-factor, so we probably won't publish the recipe. If you want it nonetheless, please leave a comment with some contact-information, and we'll hand it over .

Have a nice time eating some cake, it really makes life better!

While everyone's busy with V-Day and all: Happy Chinese New Year!

Gong xi fa cai!

We've made two Porings and two Poporings already and this is a wonderful plushie for beginners. Having seen Ragnarok cosplayers run around with Porings at a convention, I was determined to buy one too until they told me the ones they were carrying were self-made. I wanted one myself at first but all Porings I've made so far have been given away and this one also had a home before it was made.  If you want one as well, drop me a comment (or a mail) xD. I love making those and they come in green, dark blue, light blue or orange if pink doesn't suit you ~

From left to right: Pouring, Marin, Drops, Poporing, Poring

You'll find a lot of Poring plush tutorials on the net and I already forgot which inspired me. This is how it works best for me:

What you'll need: pink fluffy fabric, a bit white and black felt, (matching) pink thread. Now you're good to go! Here's the pattern .

Cut out everything. These are the bottom and the top ball pieces.

How the face will look like.

Cut out a 25 (height) x 54 (width) cm piece from your pink fabric, fold once (right sides facing). Between the white dots drawn, draw a curve, not too close to the edge because that's where you'll be sewing next. Do that for the left and right sides. Use pins or don't.

The top one shows how it's supposed to turn out, already turned inside out and stuffed. Start like shown and sew along the edge (just how a tennis ball is made).

I forgot: don't sew *all* along the edge. Leave a little bit open so you can turn it inside out. Stuff it but don't close it yet!

You may close this thing (no need for leaving it open since we'll cut it anyway).

Measure 8 cm from the bottom tip and draw a curve like shown above.

Cut along this line.

Pinning the bottom part onto the body. Don't be too precise because the bottom piece is somewhat too big.
Sewing on the botton is the most annoying part (remember to leave a bit open!). Look how crappy it turned out here Luckily, it won't be too apparent on the finished product.

Turn it inside out, stuff it (take your time until it looks good) and close the body with the ladder stitch. Sew on the top ball with a few stitches so it won't come off. Start inside the ball so you can make the knot on the end of your thread as big as you like. Close the ball afterwards.

All that's left is glueing on the face! Arrange it before you try to glue so you can be sure to like how it turns out.  The mouth is very fragile. Be careful or you have to cut it out again (which is a pain too!).

Pudding!