Doctor Who Chibi Pillow

In a continuation from the Sherlock Chibi Pillow, here's the pillow that that was the prototype for:

For those of you who don't immediately recognize this awesome pillow of epicness, here is the reference:

 Of course, my pillow's suit is the wrong color, but this doctor often/sometimes wears a blue suit. About half the time. In any case, it looks cool, and that's the real point. For those of you who want to be more canonically accurate, go for the brown suit.

In any case, on to directions. I started this pillow out much the same as I did the other one. I used cloth of the same dimensions (~11"x11"), and set to research. Luckily, a rather awesome Etsy shop-owner saved me a lot of time and effort by giving me some awesome pictures on which to base my pillow. I made some minor tweaks, but essentially copied her, so anyone wanting one, but not wanting to spend the time to make it, head over here to buy one for yourself. On a side note, had I looked a bit harder/farther, I would have also found a good pattern base for my Sherlock pillow, but oh well. Live and learn.

 I laid out a few of my pieces of scrap cloth, and found these two almost-symmetric pieces that were rather nicely sized/shaped for a suit, so I used them.

 I pretty much just shopped those pieces off, then folded the edges over after cutting a suit shape out of them. And then, of course, came pins.

(insert gasp here)

Yes, I know that I don't use them very often, but in this context they were necessary, as the cloth for the suit was somewhat thick and rather stiff.

 This is a close-up on how I did the suit shape. I very seriously just folded it over and nocked the top like so.

 And repeat for the second side.

 I then cut out a rectangle that would fit underneath both sides completely.

 At this point, I realized that I should have done that in the first place, as I had to unpin and repin the lapels, but there we go.

 Next, I cut out a piece of red cloth for the tie.

 Again with the pinning.

 I then cut out the hair, and.. you guessed it! I pinned it in place. Pins on hair not featured, but they were there at one point.

 Then with the eyes. I liked how this looked, but it didn't seem distinctly doctor-ish yet. I fix that later.

 I then sewed everything on. Order: white rectangle (again with the unpinning...), blue rectangles, red tie, hair, eyes.

The only part I folded over to hem was the top of the blue parts, white part and tie. The lapels, hair, tie edges and eyes were all left as they were, so after a few washed, this doctor will probably turn into the raggedy doctor, but who uses a pillow as cute as this for anything that would get it dirty enough to really need to wash?
...on second thought, don't answer that...

 I then sewed it together. This pillow's hair was considerably shorter on the edges than my last one, so stuffing it was somewhat more difficult.

 It looked cute when I was done, but partially due to the aforementioned small hole, this pillow required quite a bit more beating at to get the stuffing even.

 On the upside, the smaller hole presents less opportunity for me to make an eyesore.

 Also a plus, my stitching on this one looked much neater than the last one.

Please, also take time to note that unfinished, unsurged flippy of hair. Remember what I said about not hemming.

 And tadaa! One pillow done. I thought he should look more doctor-ish, though, so I deccided to grab some inspiration from the aforementioned Etsy-shop-owner, and made some 3D glasses.

 Unlike hers, though, mine are removable, and wrap around the pillow, allowing them to seem somewhat more glasses-like. I took extra cloth from the lapels, and extra cloth from the tie, sewed them on a strip of white cloth, then notched out holes around the nose area. This one I did hem, but I realized afterwards that I should have done this first, as I almost ran out of room, and once again my colors were unhemmed.

 Example of how extremely glasses-like these 3D glasses are.

And voila! Your very own 10th Doctor Chibi pilow!

Newspaper Block Wall Art

I rather like this particular little project. It wasn't very time consuming, and it filled an empty spot on my wall that was just begging for for embellishment.

I really like this particular project because it's super customizable, and it makes minimal supplies- a block of scrap wood, newspaper, mod podge, and Sharpies.

 I started with this piece of scrap wood that I found out in the garage. the clementine is in the picture to show you just how small it really is. In all, it was about 7"x3.5".

 I cut it in half very imprecisely, then sanded off the edges and corners.

 As you can see, on the other sides of these blocks are imperfections, but they don't matter much, as these sides will end up against the wall.

 I grabbed a random sheet of newspaper we had sitting around- one that had mostly words, not pictures, as I like the look of words in the background.
I had orignally intended to use a page from a favorite book that was falling apart, but I couldn't find one, and I have a thing about destroying books that aren't coming apart/already apart in the first place. It just feels wrong. Especially one I like. So I stuck with the newspaper.

 I started by cutting out rough squares that covered the fronts of the blocks with extra to spare. If I had thought about it a bit longer, they would have been big enough to fold around the edges of the block, too, but I didn't. Maybe you will.

 This stuff is pretty much the most important part of the project. I think you might be able to use white elmer's glue, but it will be harder, and probably won't look as pretty. I was lucky, and found this in my craft drawer, but for those of you who don't have any, I'm sorry, but I didn't come up with a work-around for this one.

One thing you need to remember: follow the instructions for this stuff. It is very easy to make a mess with, and will ruin clothes if you're not careful.

Also, wash your brush every time you finish. Each coat of mod podge needs to dry for 15-20 minutes, so wash your brush between each coat, dry it off with a towel, and let it air-dry until you need to use it again. This will save you a lot of pain in the long run.

 I painted a thin layer o.f mod podge onto the front of each block, then pressed the newspaper onto them. Because this is a liquid glue, and partly because it's water-based, if you leave this to dry on its own, you will get rather ugly bumps and ripples in the paper, so I pressed mine with the nearest large and heavy book- my Chem textbook.

 This is how the two blocks came out. It was at this point that I realized what I had done with the edges, and considered getting my EXACT-O knife to the edges, and just leaving the fronts covered, but ultimately decided against it, just because I like the wrap-around look.

 I then cut the rest of the article into strips, being careful to leave out any graphics or images.

 I put thin layers of mod podge on the block front where I wanted the strips to go, laid them on, and then re-pressed them under the textbook. The thing to remember in this is that mod podge is a glue, so if you have any left on the block front that isn't covered by paper, you will be gluing the block to the table. Unfortunately, I did that on this block, which is what those two empty spots are. I left it, because I didn't think it looked terrible, but you should still be careful.

 When the fronts were glued, I decided to move on to the edges. The paper hanging over the edges was a bit too much on some areas, so I trimmed it.

 This is a rather fuzzy picture of how much mod podge you should want to use for gluing. You can't  really even tell that it's there, which is the perfect amount.

 To get crisp edges, the best method that I came up with was to lean the front edge on the table, then roll it back until the side rested fully on the table, then sit there, applying as much force as you can, for a few minutes. These won't be fully dried by then, but they'll be dry enough that they'll stay as you work on the other edges.

 When you've finished with two opposite edges, you will end up with two corners sticking up like this.

 Mod podge that edge, then fold in the corners as if you were wrapping a present.

 Then, again like wrapping a present, fold the remaining flap down. Use the same method as before for keeping that flat and smooth.

Repeat for the last edge.

 When your two blocks are done, they should look like this, more or less. Try to line them up like they were when you first cut them.

 Here comes the art... collect a big sharpie, a fine-point sharpie, and a pencil. I have two fine-points because one of them doesn't work well, and I can never remember which one.

This is hard to see, but I started out by drawing a tree branch and two birds onto the blocks, being careful to draw the branch continuing onto the second block, so that it all looks like one piece of art, not two put right next to each other.

 I then used the fine-point sharpie to outline the branch, adding a few embellishments where I thought it could use them

 I then outlined the birds. These were a bit more difficult, because they were somewhat more detailed, but it was still pretty easy.

 I then filled in with the big sharpie. I had a bit of a bleeding problem where the words had been ripped off earlier, but I just added a bit more sharpie an fixed it.

You could just leave these block like this, but I wanted to finish them and waterproof them.

 Luckily, Mod Podge works perfectly for that, as well. I painted on a rather thick coat- thicker than I had for any of the gluing layers- and let it dry.

And ta-daa! These could be left like this, for dest artwork, but I made them for the wall, so on the wall they went!

 I decided that I liked them a little better separated a little bit, like so.

 I had this package of post wall-mounting strips that are supposed to not damage the wall, so I decided to try them.

 Unfortunately, this particular method showed with wooden blocks, since you can't just peel back a piece of paper to get at the fasteners, but you can minimize the effect, and it's not a big deal in the end.

 And there we have it! Your finished wall art! This could also be done with bigger blocks if you wanted, and/or more intricate drawings.

This is where they ended up on my wall. They aren't very big, especially as compared to my other art work, but I feel like they fit.