I've also burdened me with some constraints - it should require as little "active chef time" as possible. There are some things you can't change, amongst them that a good broth needs time to simmer. The second was that i've tried to use as few "exotic" ingredients as possible.

The result, which can be seen to our left, is neither great nor bad - but its a good start, not too pricey as well as not too complex.

Another abstract i'm obliged to add is that THIS IS NO "AUTHENTIC" RAMEN. IT ALSO DOESN'T AIM TO BE "AUTHENTIC". I've never been to japan nor have i tasted *really* authentic japanese ramen. I've been to a pair of japanese restaurants selling ramen here in germany. My main reference are tastings and recipe from people who seem to have tasted a great deal of japense ramen - and, of course, my personal taste.

So first we'll go through the basic idea. To get a delicious, "wide" and full-bodied broth you need quite some tastes. To  me it seems as most ramen stocks rely on a kind of "roasted", "caramelized" flavor base, combined with various vegetable-flavors. They also seem to be seasoned with only a few spices, however these need to be chosen and dosed carefully.

So my idea was to get the whole flavor from a very thick chicken stock as well as the braising liquid from braising pork chops.

Here's my ingredients list:

Chicken stock:

• 1 (medium-sized) Chicken, preferably old
• 1/2 (large) Leek
• 3 carrots
• 3 (larger) onlions
• 1/4 celery

Braising liquid / Meat:

• 4 (large) Pork Chops
• Warm/Hot water (as needed)
• 1tbsp Miso
• 1/2 tbsp ginger powder
• ~30ml Shoyu (Kikkoman or similar good brand)

Soup Seasoning:

• 100-150ml Shoyu
• 1/2 Pckg Instant-Dashi (package said to season around 1 litre of soup)
• 2tbsp ginger powder
• 50-75ml mirin
• 1/2 tbsp brown sugar
• 2-3 tbsp Miso

Directions:

First start by washing and (coarsly) chopping onions, carrots, leek and fennel. Put these in a pressure cooker in around 3 litres of water, start to cook. Meanwhile start washing the chicken and cut it in half. Add the chicken to the pressure cooker and bring to a boil. After 4-5 minutes scrape off the skunk that may have shown on the top using a slotted spoon. Close pressure cooker and let cook at maximum pressure for 2:00-2:30h.

After finishing the soup, start the braising. Put around 100-150ml warm water, shoyu and pork chops in a large pan. Make sure the pork chops are almost fully submerged, *almost*. Bring to a boil, then turn the flame down so it'll just show the slightest hint of bubbles/boiling (you can also achieve this by using a pot/pan with fireproof handle and put it into the oven @ ~110*C). Dissolve the miso and ginger powder in a small cup of warm water, add to rest of the mixture. Let sit and *slightly* simmer for around 1:30-2:00h.

When the pork is nice and tender put the meat itself in a plastic wrap in the fridge. Cooling it down makes it possible to carefully slice it using a *sharp* knife.

When the soup finishes release the pressure and add the braising liquid. Pour the soup through a coarse strainer/sieve, boil some water (~500ml) and and pour through the mixture in the sieve to extract the last bits of flavor (this is, e.g., also done when brewing beer).

Then start seasoning the soup. Start with the instant-dashi as this is probably the one powder thingy with the highest level of salinity you've ever encountered in your life. Then slowly start seasoning with Shoyu (don't panic if its a little salty at this point), then mirin, then sugar and the rest. The mirin and miso will eat away a little saltyness, but you can always re-adjust. Add the miso at the very end of the process as it doesn't like to sit for long. Make sure NOT to bring the soup near a boil as soon as the miso is added, when boiled it will spoil your whole effort by becoming unbelievably bitter.

Then slice the meat into small mouth-sized pieces, find some nice somen noodles and various other toppings (i've used silk tofu, a hard-boiled egg and carrot julienne). Other great ideas include chopped spring-onions, various other kinds of vegetables and narutomaki.

The Result looks like this:

I hope you liked this recipe or - at least - got a idea of how you're going to create your own recipe. I must also again note that THIS IS NO FINAL VERSION. It actually kind of sucks compared to what i want to achieve, but this is the best "quick" ramen recipe i've seen so far (maybe i've just searched wrong?).

The Recipe was also reviewed by a friend here: Review

After a long dry season of posts here on blog.kanojo.de i proudly announce yet another garage-tinkering-tutorial: How to print t-shirts yourself. While this may not sound special or new at all, the technique we've chosen required a lot of fine tuning to yield *PROFESSIONAL* (and by that i mean really really REALLY good) results. So i considered it worth sharing.

While i must admit that i make a equipment-assumption that may not be the case for most, you can work your way around it. What i'm talking about is that recently a cutting plotter moved into this household. A cutting-plotter is almost like a normal plotter - except that it doesn't paint or print the paths (read: vector-files) you give it, but cuts. For those who don't know what a plotter is - imagine a printer that is able to print on a infinitely long roll of paper and doesn't print per line, but prints a arbitrary path (e.g. a sphere, bezier curve, etc.) at a time.

This allows to scrounge off so-called "flex film/foil" from professional shirt shops (they always seem to have some oddments to give away) or buy it really kinda cheap on ebay. This can then be cut using that cutting plotter given a nice vector-file you did before (inkscape is great once you learn how to use it by the way!). The trick with cutting plotters is that the foil you use comes on another foil, the "medium". This medium is not cut, but only the "useable" film on top of it. So after cutting you need to take away the excess outset and inset foil.

And this is the point where i like to stress that you can, in fact, do this even without having a cutting machine like this handy! If you have some patience (and we had before we had that machine) you could just print out your motif, trace it to the foil and then cut it by hand using a scalpel or hobby knife. Just be careful only to cut the useable film, not the medium foil!

But it's only after this that the real work begins - everything before was done by machine (or, by hand, in that case that was the most work ). The film needs to be pressed on using quite some force, a defined (short!) time and a defined temperature. For this purpose professionals use "transfer-presses", machines likeseen here on the right...

So, what do we do at home? We hack! After some datasheet reading and one Shirt full of little bits and pieces to try around we've found out how to properly do it. What you'll need is found in (almost) any household:

• a hard, smooth piece of wood
• a regular electric iron
• baking paper
• a stopwatch
• a frind who's doing body-building also comes in handy

Make sure the iron is set to around 170°C (thats ~338°F). The press time is roughly 8 seconds *per point on the film*. As you have to move the iron around you need to guess how long each point was pressed on around 8-12 seconds... but for the pics! And the further explaination of course - it'll be under the pics as always...

finished getting rid of in and outsets. You mag now recognize the famous mahjongg-player akagi

The iron and wooden board...

Now first lay out the shirt as flatly as you can

then iron it where you want to put the motif, just enough to be kinda smooth

This is the setup for fixating the foil on the shirt - you align the film/medium nicely, the baking paper over it (so you can move around nicely without moving the foil) and a stopwatch to time how long you've been pressing...

ready, steady....

GO! Press as hard as you can (or as your bodybuilder buddy to press even harder than you can) while slowly moving the iron around. Moving it has to be done to make shure the film gets fixated evenly!

press more ...

... and even more - until ever point on the foil got hot and was pressed on for about 9-12 seconds

For pictures this size (~14x14cm) this usually takes around 15-20 seconds

Now the film is fixated on the fabric, but the medium also sticks to it quite hard ... the trick here is TO WAIT UNTIL ITS *COMPLETELY* COLD.

You can, by the way, already see whether it worked by looking out for a silky~ gloss on the surface of the film

Then, after its COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY COLD start pulling it off at a angle as sharp as possible - and SLOWLY. Even if the worst case should happen and small parts peel off with the medium you could use your hobby knife to pull them back and fixate them later...

After finishing removing the medium - you can already see the film "burned into" the fabric.

But not enough yet! You need to burn it in a little more - fortuneatly this is possible when using baking paper again... i like to fixate every point for around 1:30min - which seems to be the point where "well fixated film" turns to "burned film"

Everything finished, not yet finally fixated...

closeups from after fixation - you can see the film burned nicely into the fabric

Here it seems i fin-fixated a little too much, the film started to melt and the black fabric comes through a little. Lucky me it isn't too bad!

The final result

With this technique you can achieve a almost professional result from everyday home-use items (except for the cutting plotter maybe...). Some professionals may cry out because of this tutorial - but it really works. Washable too, the first test-shirt didn't break down yet...

I hope you had fun with this tutorial and are now put up to try it yourself. Really, even with hand-cutting easy motifs aren't too bad to make... As always, feel free to ask!

Also look out for our post with tons of vectors for T-Shirt printing .

Here's some half-assed pictures of unpacking Youmu (still trying to figure out how to handle the camera and all). I was in hurry that day which didn't help and I'm not very patient with blogging now (exam and paper deadline in a week! I've tried to push everything behind that date that could be delayed so workload is not gonna stop anytime soon). We actually have been trying out a lot of new things lately but we were mostly too lazy do document everything. Hopefully we can do that later sometime.

Not many extras as always. But I was delighted about her sword collection (didn't think I'd get this many)! She comes with those angry mark stickers which I'll probably never use. 

I thought I'd get an extra stand for Myon.

That's how it's supposed to be assembled (correct me if I'm wrong). 

Pair of swords that go on her back. 

It's not very apparent here but you can either display her with her swords or with Myon.
 

Heyyas there,

here comes part two of the "custom modelkit/figure display" series (or whatever you'd call it). A custom display for figures, modelkits, whatever - you name it! It's a crossover between a glass-case/cabinet and a shelf. It combines the idea of hanging it on the wall with a glass-case so the figures/GKs don't collect too much dust. This time - unfortuneatly - i don't have pictures of the quality and detail of the other tutorials, but i will try to describe the working parts as good as possible.

It first started with the build of that one Tenshi GK - which was paticularly fragile, thus the problem to clean it when/if it collected too much dust. So, as the glass-cabinet was in another room a new shelf had to be built. It would need to be good visible, but protect from dust - so most of it had to be glass. We decided to do the bottom as wood to keep it more simple. So, here's the Pix/Howto:

Materials you need for the basic stuff. Here it's a glass-cutter, three 40x30 picture frames and the wood (already beveled with a router)

Details of the beveling. If you own a router and a few millers you should recognize the pattern . If not, try asking a cabinetmaker near you. If you're nice they might help you with this for little money in the thank-you box(?)

Details of the bevel...

And this one was the trickiest part of the whole process: Cutting glass. I use a regular steel-wheel cutter, place the glass on a surface that won't scratch it, mark the line where it has to be cut, use a ruler to guide the cutter and cut. The cutting speed/strenght is the key to success - you don't want to press so hard you can hear "sand-ish" sound, but hard enough to cut the glass slightly. you'll recognize the right sound if you hear it. then quickly (as glass can flow just a tiny little bit and will close the cut at microscopic level) put it at the edge of a table and break it with in one heavy yank.... use some sanding paper to trim the edges....

Next the glass needs to be glued together - i used pattex glass-glue (which is a kind of superglue), it needs to be applied very very thin, so the edges need to be good. If you cut the glass right no two selfcut edges will need to be glued together. I supported the glass with two rectangular (90* angles, yay!) stones and books....

Detail of the glued glass, note the supports with tape and stones

Also i've already router'ed the notches (4mm, as opposed to 1.5mm for the glass) so while glueing i have a bit of a guide for the glass...

Next, after putting the notch down to 1.5mm (just the width of the glass, i applied oil to the glass, put it in the notches, applied and smoothed the putty and took the glass out again) we need to sand the wood. To do this i used a eccentric grinder, but if such a machine is inavailable, you can just hand-sand it....

Then, after sanding i applied acrylic primer using my paint-gun....

... which needs to be hand-sanded again. I used K220 paper here.

Then the first layer of simple acrylic white. I diluted it with water so i'd be able to spray wet, which gets a better "gloss" effect

Okay, the edges aren't perfect...

Now, to avoid too much dust/dirt sticking to the wet paint i quick-dried it using a infra-red lamp, which is normally used when you catched a cold ... at least here in germany...

Finished! Yay! (yes, it's not straigt, but the poster also isn't!)

So, this is our new figure display case for two medium-size or one large figure. The glossy paint-job turned out quite okay, only a few faults/not-so-nice parts. Mounted on the wall it really looks nice!

I hope this inspired you to try DIY'ing your next display, and not just run to the closest IKEA to buy a ready made one. Selfmade furniture is the best, has a that nice feel of something you yourself made with your own hands to it ...

So, the first part was some design ... we tried to preserve the look and feel of the original design - which was done on many many sheets of scrap paper and ... well, this is somehow alike, but i think the general ideas are made clear:

If you feel like having any question on the plan - or anything is unclear, please do not resist to leave a comment or contact us, we'd like to see mahjongg players all over the world, so we'll gladly help you with your table

Also this project took advantage of our previous build of these mahjongg-counting-sticks!

Now, we took our team of 4 to 5 desperate and eager-to-tinker mahjongg-players and started:

glueing the the border on the baseplate, remember to put some wood or cardboard under those clamps, else you will get nasty pressure marks

after grinding with 60, 120, 240 paper its as smooth as a babies bu... well, the smooth part of a baby

this applies to all the steps ... CHECK THE FIT, RECHECK IT, THEN CHECK AGAIN!

meanwhile, after checking you can start with the point-stick cabinets... make marks for glueing to be sure to do it right...

the seperator for the 3 compartments of the stick cabinet...

for getting the fabric on the base-plates we've chosen not to glue everything but only have a small line of glue (regular wood-glue) along the edges. we achieve this by masking everything but that line with tape, smearing the glue on it, then removing the tape. the lines of glue go only there where the decorative cover goes afterwards....

this is what the drying glue looks like - wouldn't be nice to have that everywhere, no?

using a saw as well as a fine file to get the decorative cover to 45* at the edges (and the right length of course...)

isn't that a nice 45*?

meanwhile the other part of the team tested a way to fasten the point stick cabinets on the table ... this was done using two sizes of regular wood drills

again the glue and masking-tape for getting the fabric on

yay, smearing action!

after removing the masking tape - a nice line of glue

okay, now we get to make the middle-part of the table that will be used to smash discarded tiles against - as well as holding the wind- and riichi-markers. for this purpose i used a dremel (proxxon in this case - smaller and more quiet) to attack a regular thick piece of wood. DO SOME TESTS BEFOREHANDS, YOU WILL NOT GET THIS RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!

the pattern/model for the depressions for the markers

and a first test-piece. as you see you need to develop some technique

... but the general principle seems to work out!

While i was torturing mr dremel the other part of the team made some progress on the stick cabinets...

More Chaos! Now we were cutting the leftover of the fabric mat to fit underneath the decorative covers...

meanwhile i've worked out a technique for dremeling the holes for the point sticks.... you need those tools

then - holding the small drill at a sharper angle - drill out the remains between the holes of the perforation

first perforate the hole, careful not to drill beyond the mark...

then with the large drill/mill take off the rest in the middle of the ring you just made. here you also see the next try for a riichi-stick hole....

aaand, the first glued beta of the stick cabinets...

after two test-pieces i started working on the final version of the middle part - first riichi stick hole drilled and sanded...

looks okay, no?

we also tried around with the corners - this is the idea of holding it on a belt sander and changing the angle rapidly... with a bit of practice it comes out nicely!

okay corner, no?

again working on the stick cabinets - we decided to mask the parts near the glue when glueing to prevent stains...

and with this tools you get a perfect riichi stick hole - first use the conical mill at a sharp angle sliding through the whole shape - then, using the sphere, make it smooth and wider. you need to switch sides to get a good results on both sides, as rotation direction dictates the side where more wood is taken off...

glueing the front bar of the cabinets...

aaand, ladies and gentleman - the finished middle part. its so lovely and smooth after some fine sanding!

okay, back to the base plates where the glue is dry now. put them together and screw on the hinge...

looks okay...

yeah, thats it, nice one!

the gap is smaller than we expected, but quite what we anticipated. fine working pays off after all!

this is a almost perfect fit for the decorative covers, we achieved this by filing then down the last 10th of millimeters. the glueing was hard too as no small drop of glue should touch the fabric

as for mounting the middle part on the table, we decided to use friggin strong magnets, looted from supermagnete.de, a german shop. drill a hole with a tight fit, we used regular UHU glue for fastening

some test bores on reference wood

looks like this...

and here the marks for the mounts...

quality wood drills, hell yeah - notice the little needle at the front. you don't really want to poke this through the wood into your fabric, yet you want to have the magnets as near to to the top as possible.... sub-millimeter-work again!

working...?

... worked! press the magnets in for a test, this image also shows that you should handle them with care, as parts of them come off quite easily

and ... it WORKS!

final holes with magnets glued in...

OUCH! i didn't look at the direction of the magnets ... luckily i only flipped one on both parts, so there is one position in which it fits

speaking of which - nice fit ....

when the box is closed it will house the tiles, stick cabinets and stuff, so you don't want a gap (as produces by the hinge) when closed. we achieve this - as well as protecting the table it will stand on - by using some felt along the edges (each sides only head or side)

for fastening this we use "fixo gum", a kind of glue that will stick nicely, but come off if you really want it - handy if we want to upgrade to a nicer stand sometime...

As for some final pictures - with tiles, cool lighting and all - i promise to add them soon . I hope you enjoyed the idea of this table, and - maybe - build yourself a similar mahjongg table too. We're also always eager to hear suggestions on the design!

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?

This is one of the awaited chrismas present tutorials, a gift we've made for a good friend who happens to like everything thats cat-ish, especially - of course - if it has its origins in otaku-culture, like this:

Nyamo and Miyuki (figure)

We decided to give a Nyamo (the small catish thingy) a try and make it. As a base we used the well known Poring Plushie pattern, attached ears and tail, cut the right face and swoosh, there it was. But step for step for now...

First take a sheet of Cloth thats quadratic if you fold it in half, so 25x50cm for example, add the markings as shown.

Folded cloth with markings

Sew along the markings, fold the cloth over and add the markings once again, this time on the folded side, like this:

After sewing fold over again, mark again, go

After cutting off the excess fabric it should look like this:

Cut off the excess edges

Then we want to cut off a round piece so we can attach a circle which works as a base later:

Mark the bottom cutout

You need to measure the base with a flexible measure to know how large your circle has to be (notice saber lily in the background watching the action!)

Pin the bottom to the bottom cutout

We decided that the tail will be simple sewed from a large piece (27x12cm) of cloth with a double round shape (4cm in heigt) at the end so the end (when sewed together and turned inside out) will look nice and round.

The tail ... mockup

See the markings for the round cutout at the end:

Pin up the tail for sewing

Fill and close the tail now so its ready for attaching.

Tail sewed, mockup (aahhh, don't look at that shape)

Attach the tail, you'll notice you filled it too much .

Fastening the tail to the corpus

Then the most important part, the Neko-Mimi.... i thought i'd not scan the Shapes and provide them as a pattern cause its so dead-simple, everyone can make it. So you also have a bit more of your own.

Yay, Neko Mimi

They consist of 3 parts each, two "main ear" parts and the "inner pink" which will be hand-sewed onto the sewed-together-and-already-turned-inside-out-main-ears

This is how the pink gets on the Nekomimi

Don't make the same mistake as i did...

But sew it on there nicely

XFin

Yay, the ought to look nice

The face, as always is one of the biggest problem, cause it will determin how cute and nice the plushies look will be when finished, so some experimenting needs to be done, first the eyes, with standard-sparkle....

Cut out eyes, glue the sparkle on the eye-black

No Hitler-beard for Nyamo...

Not bad already, the mouth wasn't quite it... also the eyes are not too nice. If you've seen lucky star all that nyamo does is yawning, so a more sleepy face needs to be found...

Better ... not quite

Yay, but too ... awake and lively

Its not nyamos face in that state, but THAT IS IT!

Better, smiling knee

And sleepy eyes on Nyamo

Only the whiskers are missing

And fin, with whiskers!

And yay, with whiskers

Now, i hope this is a nice idea for everyone who loves making things themselves, and loves lucky star. If you have a dear otaku/nerd whose birthday is coming up, or who you want to give this for chrismas (well, planning early ... a bit) or any other occasion, i think nyamo is a nice idea . I hope you enjoyed this tut, and maybe also enjoyed making a Nyamo yourself.

Hope to read you soon again, up for more plushies, tinkering and general nerdism .