thylacines-toybox

[thylacines-toybox]

Yes! I'll be at Dinocon next weekend with Jay, and an assortment of extinct creatures! I'll also have a few things from @palaeoplushies available too, since she wasn't able to attend herself this time.

Hope some of you can make it along too! :D

Hello everyone! I will be tabling at DINOCON this August 16th-17th at the University of Exeter in England!!

My tablemate will be the amazing, illustrious plushie creator @thylacines-toybox! Come over and check out our stuff, and maybe snag some books and merch minus shipping costs from the USA, lol! I've never done an international convention before and if it goes well I hope to return!

I will also be painting up a bunch of watercolor originals of prehistoric creatures to sell! Comment with your favorite dead beast, bug, or plant and I will add it to my list of considerations! The weirder and more obscure, the better :^)

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So I reworked my lifesize Thylacine pattern, and here's the results of my first test. I'm so pleased I don't think I need to change hardly a thing!

This plushie Thylacine is available over on my website; https://www.palaeoplushies.com/shop/thylacinus-cynocephalus-lifesize-11-1

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PLEASE tell us more about the thylacine joey I love it

Ok yes! Joeys!

I've shared this joey before who now resides in Artem's pouch. That one was made without any pattern and had some fiddly details, but I wanted to figure out how to make more of them easily and consistently. Also I really wanted to try printed fabric for nasty meaty details hehe.

I had the idea of making a super simple one with just two pieces! Here are the very silly prototypes, and the first printed attempt.

You can see how I've used thread sculpting to make the fused arms and legs look like two! Neat experiment, but in the end I decided to just make them with a separate tummy piece like a normal plushie lol. The thread sculpting was about as much work as just sewing them with an extra piece anyway. Gave this one to @pixelplushies after the museum trip, who named her Foebe.

Here is my latest joey which I am very pleased with! Increased the contrast of the design so the details print better, much more glossy looking and there's even a subtle little vein.

They're designed to fill little gaps when I order printed fabric, so I should manage to stock a few little foetuses alongside future batches of thylacine beanies!

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I gave the thylacine in dc a visit!

Oooh hello! You are very ears, thylacine.

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The other day I just felt like bringing every single thylacine plushie I have out onto the lawn. Group photo time!

Compared to last April's photo, there are... 19 new plush thylacines, bringing the total to 63!! (if we include puppets, mitts, hidden joeys, and all Jellybeans). That includes 5 that I made or modded from other plushies.

My shelves were due a big rearranging anyway, so I'll probably post another collection update once that's done, because there's a lot of great new non-plush thylacines in there too!

The names! (I am actually starting to have a hard time remembering the genders I originally gave a few of these lol, but the names are all still crystal clear to me. A few of them can get transed, that's okay.)

And all their brands/makers...

And here is the less organised heap, plus Ellis who enjoyed loafing on the blanket I used to carry them all outside.

Oops, between taking these pics and posting them, I may have actually sewn a secret 64th thylacine.

[thylacines-toybox]

Garbage Owl (affectionate) (it/any pronoun)

A snowy owl by Wild Republic, who I found in a pile of rubbish at the side of a road in January 2025! Sad and dirty and soggy! My friends and I didn't have the time to pick it up right away, but later in the evening I made sure to return with a paper bag to rescue the yucky owl before heading home.

Who did this to you, poor Garbage Owl...

Safe and cosy in a paper bag from the burger place. Poked it in there with a stick to avoid touching the yucky...

Garbage Owl went straight in the washing machine the next day, then got to fly! Upside down! They also had quite a lot of tiny leaf fragments still caught in their fur after the wash, which needed plenty of brushing out, but they cleaned up nice eventually.

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Patchouli is helping to brush dirt off some chanterelles...

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When I visit the National Museum of Scotland I usually like to pay a wee visit to the thylacine there, and I often have a thylacine of my own with me when I do... so I have collected quite a few photos like this over the years, hehe. First photo here is from 2017.

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Brought my chimp and little lemur to an exhibition on primates at the museum! Chimp learned how to gather termites, and we filled in some fun stamp cards around the exhibit.

[thylacines-toybox]

okay im sorry if people ask a lot or if this is a dumb question but where did you get artemisia? is she custom made or is there somewhere someone like her can be purchased

I always (usually...) put the brand in the tags, normally the second or third tag after any species tags! So Artemisia is a Charlie Bears plush (aka. 'Pathfinder' the thylacine). Charlie Bears seem to be sold in several countries so you should be able to find one!

[thylacines-toybox]

i found dandelion! he's a Tchibo TCM Theo (aka Timmi? in some listings) Tiger pull-along :3 his little wheels are so cute!

i could only find a few pictures of him specifically, but there are many more pictures online of other plushies that appear to be from the same line of safari-ish baby toys, including a blankie version of theo :3

Oh yeah, there he is! I don't know why this one was so tricky to find.

I like the wheels! If mine had come with his wheels I'd have probably kept them. Also I think they maybe put the wheels on backwards in this pic, hehe...

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Artemesia exploring Kelburn glen with me in June 2025.

Even though it was very warm, I enjoyed carrying her in my arms for most of the walk! We took the longest path around and didn't see another person for most of it. Felt like we had the woods to ourselves and Artem looked right at home there.

I took so many photos so here's some more lol.

Artem rode in my backpack for some of the way too, when my arms were too warm.

There were a lot of old wooden staircases around that were closed due to being obviously hazardous, yet still a bit tempting...

We found a clearing where big parties happen occasionally, but today all was peaceful.

There's all sorts of art and sculptures hidden all around the glen, often just made with natural materials. Somebody had built some cool dens here!

Artem even found a swing!

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Got some new and restocked plushies in my shop just now!

There's Sharovipteryx the silly leg-glider, small-headed friend Cotylorhynchus, fuzzy pastel raptor chicks, and a little heap of Gorgonops, big and small.

[thylacines-toybox]

Tea (they/them)

A mysterious and clearly very well loved little thylacine that my friend Lake found on FB marketplace in February 2025. Their fur is sun faded, and they've been washed so much that their original stripes and fake leather nose have been washed off. The label is also blank, so we have no idea of the brand or age.

Tea came to me entirely stripeless, aside from a couple of incredibly faint wisps of black paint on the fur as the only clue to the stripes' positions. You can slightly see it over the top of their butt here...

Though the stripes were originally black, I really love Tea's pale, faded appearance, so I decided to make their new stripes look faded too.

Using all the faint traces I could spot as a guide, I marked out the positions with some chalk. I used an alcohol marker to apply a little colour at a time, then immediately wiped it away with a tissue to smudge it. I built up the subtle pinky brown colour gradually.

Tea had some dodgy teeth! The old felt was pulled to shreds.

I managed to push a couple of pieces back together to find their original triangle shape, so I had a go at gluing it back into one piece by soaking it in PVA + water and squeezing it as it dried. Looked kinda funny.

Well, in the end it didn't really work... So I just used the tooth as a template to make them two new glue-stiffened felt teeth instead (I decided not to replace the odd middle top tooth).

Here's a closer look at Tea's faded fur! Like with fellow sun-faded thylacine Vanilla, you can see a more sandy brown colour at the bottom of creases in the fur while the rest has faded to a peachy pinkish tone (that looks like milky tea, I think). The white areas even look a little yellower originally. I think their fur is just lovely.

Speaking of fur creases, I found a lot of weird little black specks hiding in Tea's seams, and spent a while brushing and picking them all out. I eventually realised they must've been flecks of the plastic coating from the fake leather material of their nose, which is only a woven fabric backing now (shoutout to Lake for recognising the material, haha). While I was removing the top tooth I had a peek at the inside of the nose seams, and sure enough there was still a hint of black shiny material in there. Anyway, I think their pale grey nose is sweet and matches their faded self very well!

I also feel the need to mention their stuffing. It's just regular soft, fluffy polyester stuffing as far as I can tell, but they feel unusually weighty and dense. It's kind of comforting? Maybe the extra weight is just from all the love they've received over the years.

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Aw yeah! Rayquaza-themed Happy Meal house for Worm and Leech!

(Giant Friend Popplio too big to invite into house, sorry...)

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Yellow-footed rock wallaby and bilby Happy Meal plushies, apparently distributed in Australia in 2008. I like the cute art on the wallaby's tag!

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A tiny kangaroo joey with a bandana promoting, uh... LMT Medical Systems, a company that makes MRI machines for newborn babies. Neat!

This joey is very similar to my Dinki Di wallaby's joey in its pattern, fabric and pastel colours. I wonder if it was produced by Dinki Di for the LMT folks.

Technically possible to fit both joeys in the pouch, but it doesn't look comfy for anyone.