Dearest readers, we have found ourselves here, in a situation where a joke I made may have finally gotten out of hand. You see, the idea of a Furby version of a scary, forbidden grimoire has amused me for a while. It amused me so much that I ended up making a sticker of it–much to the chagrin of my Furby-hating partner.

The people loved it. It was one of my best-selling stickers when I was doing regular in-person vending events. So I figured I should go a little further. And that is where the Furby Bags (or Furbceptions) came from.

While the Furby bags don’t move very quickly, they have remained a mainstay for the truly dedicated Furby fans in my in-person and online store. It got to the point where I had to find a better source of the 3D printed faceplates, because I was not happy with my current supplier.

A local 3D printing company gave me a large number of face-plates in two sizes and 2x different eye amounts on a condition–they wanted me to make a collaboration between their faceplates and my Nonsense for their shop. After plenty of discussion, we settled on the Big Daddy of All Furby Jokes — The Dread Grimoire itself! The interior of the prop would be a birthday astrology book I picked up from Half-Price Books. That way it could be a guest book for the vendor at all of the events they went to. I was quite thrilled with the concept.

At the same time, this was also the very first time I was going to work with many of the materials I would end up using. I watched a bunch of tutorials, and then drew up a concept for approval.

You will note, this is very different from what the final product ended up looking like. First, the smaller faceplates that I wanted to use did not like paint–no matter how much or little or many tiny and very thin layers of primer I used. So we had to move to Plan B: a bigger faceplate. And that meant we had to nix a lot of the details I wanted to put in.

Then, everything that could have gone wrong DID go wrong. The EVA foam company was sold out for a week, then took much longer than usual to ship my materials. Then, they shipped to the wrong address, so I had to paypal my friend a $20 to re-package and mail it over to me from their house. Then, I had to find a different source for the primer for the EVA foam before painting–because the first two sources were sold out. Then, THAT took nearly 3 weeks to ship.

In addition, my partner (who was positive he knew where the dremel was) could not find the dremel. And then we could only find the tool itself, not the various tips we had for it–but just somewhere we couldn’t find. Then we took a trip to the hardware store–then a second hardware store–before finally sourcing the tips I needed.

I also had to fight with every fiber of my being to go slowly and carefully in regards to gluing the foam pieces, and then priming them. Because everything needed at least 2 coats of primer–and then 12 hours minimum drying time between each coat. So this questionable item was on the covered porch, scaring off raccoons for nearly 2 weeks to avoid fuming up the house.

Then, FINALLY, I could paint it. I used 3 layers of paint–a base color, a drybrushed detail, and then a very fine wash for shadows. The book was not supposed to look pristine, but a little grimy. Hence, I chose to do the wash at the very end before sealing everything with a transparent top coat.

Then, it had to dry another night, haunting the neighborhood.

You will note I had to omit a TON of details. If I had the ability to take another month to do this, I would have included more of them. But, at this point, the client needed their scary book and they needed it in time for summer vending events.

So here is a question for you, dear readers, what do you think this thing eats?