Upcoming Custom Beaver News

Tonight, I started work on a new, limited-edition, customized Happy Beaver that's been in my head for a while - the Hula Beaver!

I bought a bunch of stuff from Michael's to decorate a few of my toys in a way that (hopefully) won't look like a craft project from camp, but a neat, handmade variant! The toughest part, naturally, is the grass skirt.

Since I'm basically lazy, I checked out a bunch of dashboard hula nodders to see if I could simply buy them and use the ready-made skirts, but that wasn't really cost-effective at all. Fortunately, I ran into someone who knew how to make the skirts from scratch. As it turns out, they're not terribly difficult to make - just time-consuming. So I bought the materials and procrastinated.

Anita's out of town right now, so I ran across some time that was too late to photograph toys, too close to bedtime for a movie, and I'd already posted my Toy Of The Day. The perfect time to chill and start on a long grass skirt that I could break up and use for several toys at once! I strung a long piece of twine between two display case door handles, and began to loop thin strips of raffia onto it, packing them together as tightly as I could. It smells pretty good, once you've had it out of the bag for a while.

I didn't get all that far - probably just enough to decorate one or two toys - but I hope to stick with it long enough to fill the string up completely before I cut it up. Regardless, I'm underway at last!