Thank you for your kind words @lyleberr and @bbobrob . It’s means a lot coming from genuine artists such as yourselves.
I’ve never played the TCG so the attacks are more like what sounds cool or makes sense in the situation. My thoughts were you see an enormous Snorlax blocking your path and you may be paralysed in fear. Especially if you are a 10 year old Youngster Joey or something.
Exactly what I thought and why I think it works but I can also see being very confused about what to do with this massive pokemon blocking your path. Very fun card to see made.
So clean! Really well done. It is very charming and really made for a great SS gift. Awesome job.
Cheers!
Put together this 500-piece Pokemon puzzle. A few hours of fun for <$15!
https://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-Games-Favorites-Challenging-Finished/dp/B0D8JQFGZJ
It looks like they also have a hard mode for dedicated fans (1,500 pieces of the Kanto 151).
Love it! This would have fitted right in with Neo Destiny as a ‘Light’ card imo
Best duck ive seen in a while.
Super cute. Looks great for a felted chicken! 
My wife’s birthday was today! We’ve been playing a lot of Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky together recently (our own carts but in the same room, you know what I mean), so I painted us as our adventuring team “Love Heart”- my wife as Cyndaquil and myself as Piplup- as a gift.
This is super adorable Love the colors being used—looks so soft!
Thanks so much, I appreciate it!
PMD is great. An interesting rpg sub-genre that never really got adopted by us westerners. Not even pokemon made it popular. But I still have a great love for the lore set by these games. Also proved that kecleon is the most powerful pokemon in the universe. Well, at least that particular kecleon and its cohort. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed your playthrough.
Hey everybody, you didnt ask for it but Im back with another round of “How hard can it be?” the recap of a new craft with your host Lyleberr!
This time on the update we have our most recent e4 secret santa gift for the wonderful @canalavecollectibles , a “Punch Needle” Wailord (Which i guess Ive been calling wrong as Needlepunch)! What is Punch needle you ask? Well it is pretty much how some carpet and rugs are made. Thread is punched back and forth through a fabric to make loops on one side. Unlike a carpet, these loops can be cut to leave a soft felt-ish design. Special hollow needles are used to get the thread in and back out, unlike in embroidery or other styles.
So as always Have some photos of what Im talking about and then we’ll jump into it in several steps that you can ignore if you’d like.
Final
Step 1: Concept
As always, a concept goes a long way. I wanted to do something different this year and bumped into an acquaintance buying a punch needle kit and thought that it seemed neat, afterall its just string right? What could go wrong. Next I settled on using the Vivid Voltage pose because, with all the art styled cards recently released, I felt that the pose of Wailord really looked like a massive ship and needed to be done as an old WW2 propaganda style of poster to really bring the focus and colors to Wailord.
Step 2: Materials and Design
Primarily embroidery supplies (fabric, hoop, and floss) and a Punch needle. Simple right?
If youve never been to a place with embroidery floss then youre in for a treat… unless youre undecisive. Since I had the concept, now I needed to get the design down to pick my colors. I went with something striking that used a lot of colors in the art deco style but also matched Wailord. Ultimately this led me the wrong way since it was too dark. I had to eventually come back with my new colors (most of them different) to lighten it up.
Craft store shopping
Design
Step 3: Process
Design and materials are locked in, originally I wanted it a bit more detailed but this is a less detailed craft so I had to nix parts I couldnt have. I started with bordering, this helped me keep things straight and now worry too much about scale. I will say that the kits all have a design that is maybe 3 inches by 2 inches with a pattern to follow, very simple with less than a dozen colors. Unfortunately I enjoy hardmode on crafts and decided to make a 6x7 pattern using about 20+ colors of floss. I did all the color match by sight and memory since I had to match with what was in stock and what would match in theory.
Layout
Thread your punch needle using a loop tool to pull the thread through, then pull it through again from the side so that every time you punch through the fabric, the floss will get caught and pull through the needle when pulling it back out, to make a look on one side and essentially a stitch on the side you are working. Its a bit of a learning curve on how to do this without having the floss pull back out and undo your stitch as well as how to get spacing right. Every punch will make a loop and that fills more space than the side with the stitches.
The process
If youve got it, cool! Now do it a jillion more times! I used about an 18count fabric which is about 18wide and 18 height threads per inch, I did most of the first by punching through between every thread, about 4500 whoops, its actually about 13000 punches (not including any slipped punches). This makes the loops too compacted and is overkill in confined areas.
Ran out of floss in a few spots
I switched through the colors according to the pattern and tried maintaining shadows, highlights, and other details in the splash, while still making a gradient in the background. The colors I chose made a great gradient… unfortunately it was so subtle that it blended many of the places and the details were actually lost. Bet you couldnt tell that over 20 colors were used in this.
Finally after all that punching its time for the detail that I hated the most. In true punch needle, the goal is to make it soft and fuzzy by cutting each loop that was made so that only embroidery floss strings would give a very soft feel when touched. I began this task and realized what I was up against. With so many loops intermixed I tried cutting them with some embroidery scissors but found that each piece of floss has 8 threads wound together, each needed to be cut and if the threads separated it made it difficult to cut the loops. After a couple hours of cutting, cleaning off shavings, and trying to get everything, I found that it would take hours and hours more to truly complete this.
At this point I found that I didnt like the colors and I didnt feel comfortable sending a partially cut up craft, so I filled in the rest after grabbing more floss so I could at least pretend it was done as a prototype and while I was grabbing more floss decided to get enough to start again with different color choices. Another 18ish colors, more fabric, and I was out of time. After forcing time to happen (although late for secret santa), I was able to complete the punch steps (this time I remembered to mirror the image) and do some quick flourishes to add a little to the memory. I threw it into a display pinback frame that opens from the back and frontside and off it went to its recipient.
New color key
Prototype cleaned up:
Overall lessons: Fun to do, very repetitive, follow online suggestions about doing a section and cutting the loops right then before moving on, start small, and maybe dont pick a pose that reminds you of a meme halfway through.
It’s always a good time for a lyleberr craft recap!
I haven’t done punchneedling before, but I have seen it and watched videos on it. Looks like you were also able to enjoy the true bliss that is visiting the embroidery floss section of the store! And trying to match colors to a picture or trying to imagine how the gradient will turn out. I made the same mistake of thinking a range of colors would make a nice-looking gradient and then finding out the changes are much more subtle (or basically impossible to perceive) in the final piece than when you have the bundles of floss together and a certain lighting. I have since learned that the more contrast the better. But the true secret to solving this issue is to just buy all potentially useful floss colors and figure it out later.
An example of many shades of blue (and purple, pink, and beige) I have, and this isn’t even all of them. I really have so many blues that look incredibly similar.
Rug makers usually just use an electric razor to shave the loops off the work, and then a vacuum to clean up. Don’t know if this would have worked for embroidery floss though.
Again, very cool piece, and the WW2 propaganda idea was also very clever. Thanks again for sharing!
I concur with @bbobrob, the WW2 inspiration is brilliant and just hits you immediately. I imagine this is the emblem of some elite marine commando from Hoenn, or maybe one of their famous U-boats or Greyhounds.
I love crafting with @lyleberr ! This was a very good one. It’s always great when you can see the inspiration process. I agree that the WWII propaganda is a strike of genius. The colors in your final piece are so vibrant and alive. Really great job!
It actually should work and i did see an electric razor specifically for it the process (havent checked reviews) and i found tape is the poor mans vacuum. But between the frame and rest of the new supplies, I was very much over my expected budget (those tiny bits of string add up like crazy). The good news is that now i can make a few more things with the many many colors i have 
.
I had wondered if I was bordering a little too close to your crafting territory and that I would post and immediately be corrected by something I got wrong (remembering to call it floss was terrible) so im slightly relieved it passes a once over.
@niece @c0ll3ct0r im glad you like my concept process, its usually random chaos at that point but wailord and zeppelins, wailord and large battleship, too iconic to not run with. I had to merge it together to make something that would make you stop and take a second look if you passed it on the wall at someone house. I love the colors on the prototype, like the dramatic greens, but the shadow on wailord makes it a bit too Axis feeling, sadly this was the first part that was punched and the threads were very intermingled by the end so undoing it wasnt going to be the cleanest option.
This is actually incredible. I am constantly impressed with your many different artistic skills, lyle. If you ever open an Etsy store for your crafts, you should let us know!
Thank you for sharing the details Lyle. It is also super impressive that you have such a wide range and as someone who is not a craft person, I am amazed to see these for the first time. Just awesome job on the SS package and also I got to know and learn about something new. Kudos!
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers!
