Dinosaur

Dinosaur, Inspired by my Significant Other

Ever since I started gifting, I have always been a fan of making gifts and cards for friends in lieu of buying them. I recently celebrated my 6-year anniversary with my significant other and, though we made an agreement to not buy each other anything, there was never any rule against making something :)

The last time we visited his parents’, we discovered a pink stegosaurus plush from his childhood that was not only pink and ridiculous looking, but was also a wind-up musical toy that played the song ‘Born Free’ while it moved its head in a circular motion. As a purveyor of strange and ridiculous plush objects, I was enamored by this creature and kept it in the back of my mind until the right opportunity presented itself. Fortunately for my significant other, our anniversary was the right opportunity for me to recreate that plush, except with my significant other as the inspiration for the dinosaur.

I unfortunately did not document the manufacturing process as well as I wanted to as I was under a bit of a time crunch to complete this. The dinosaur was constructed in 2 majors parts: the body, and the head. The body took some trial and error with my favorite brown-packing-paper/drafting-paper to get the right thickness. Weighted beads were stuffed into the legs and then a small piece of fabric sewn in on the inside of the dinosaur to keep the beads in place. The head was pretty crudely sketched as a vague oval-like object, and hair was sewn on strand by strand and then styled.

The music box was possibly one of the most vague and fun parts of the process, as I wasn’t sure if what I was ordering online would even sound like the song I was going for until it arrived. Thankfully, it was. The music box is hidden inside the belly of the dinosaur, with the wind-up key accessible through the outside via a grommet installed on the side of the dinosaur.