Cotswolds Crochet – Animal Crossing Cookie Amigurumi

Today’s post is one that has been a long time coming on my blog and I’ve been a mixture of excited and nervous to write it. Don’t have a clue about why I’m so nervous to write it however… I think due to how big a purchase it was, I’ve been in that frame of mind, maybe?

That being said, I really hope you enjoy this weeks blog post! If you’re an Animal Crossing and plushie fan then I have a feeling you’ll love this post. 😛

First of all, some of you may be asking, “What’s an amigurumi?”. Well, amigurumi is Japanese for crocheted or knitted stuffed toy, so basically an amigurumi is just that… A plush/stuffed toy crocheted. It’s something that seems to have blown up on the internet lately, more so since COVID in my opinion. I mean, I’ve even had a go myself at making Biskit from Animal Crossing.

As many of my regular readers and friends know, I LOVE Animal Crossing as well as Japanese culture and plushies, so for all three to come together really does make me smile.

I can’t quite remember how I discovered Harriet and her amazing amigurumi business Cotswolds Crochet, but as it was through Instagram it was more than likely through someone sharing her work on their stories. I fell in love with it instantly and gave her a follow. I continued to be in awe of her work and when Harriet announced she would be opening up slots for commissions towards the end of January this year, I KNEW I had to snag a slot.

I set an alarm on my phone and everything ready for the commission slots opening, but due to a busy day I COMPLETELY forgot and a few hours initially after her slots had opened, I dropped her a frantic DM on Instagram asking if I’d missed out. Thankfully I hadn’t and I got my request in to Harriet, as well as my deposit.

I knew exactly what I wanted and how I wanted it… Her to be. I requested for Cookie the dog villager from Animal Crossing, my favourite villager and my bae to boot. 😛 Four months later Cookie would finally arrive at my home and a month on she’s definitely fitted in well with my Pokemon plushies. 😛

I wanted to share my experience of requesting a commission through Harriet and Cotswolds Crochet with you guys today as Harriet is an amazing business owner and one of my favourites to work alongside for a commission. I know Harriet faced a few issues when creating Cookie for me, but this wasn’t a bad thing. I know it was a massive learning curve for Harriet and if anything it showed how hard working she is to make sure both she and her customer are happy with their purchase. I already cannot wait to commission Harriet again later this year and I already have an idea of what I’d like. 😛

Getting a commission slot with Harriet wasn’t too bad to be honest. I dropped her a DM on Instagram, told her exactly what I wanted and paid my deposit. Harriet keeps a commission progress board (hosted on Trello) visible via her biography on her Instagram page, so anyone who has commissioned her can see the progress of their piece. This being said though, Harriet does post often on her Instagram page stories of her progress on a piece she’s working on.

Harriet did this when it came down to Cookie and I was constantly excited to see updates on my cutie over on her stories, whether it be just starting off with the design, random updates through tags of what she was currently up to and even eventually seeing Cookie’s toe beans… Plus an up skirt shot. 😛

Throughout the process of creating Cookie for me, Harriet was a star and made sure to message me to keep me updated too or ask any questions. An example of this being to ask if I was happy with the colours she’d chosen for Cookie’s pink markings. I was more than happy and 100% trusted Harriet in regards to this.

Towards the end of April Harriet messaged me some pictures and stated she had finished Cookie! I was so excited to see the final result, however, I wasn’t 100% happy with how Cookie’s face was looking, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something felt… Off. Harriet agreed and she decided she actually wasn’t happy with how Cookie’s head had turned out and decided to rework it for me. Harriet apologised so much in regards, but I wasn’t fazed at all. I was more than happy to wait to ensure both me and Harriet were happy with the final product of Cookie. I knew that this was the first Animal Crossing dog villager that Harriet had worked on, hence why she wasn’t feeling the head shape 100%.

A couple of weeks later and Harriet made sure to keep me updated again, as always with how Cookie was coming along. Harriet had complete changed Cookie’s head, as well as removed the pink markings on her head from crocheted pieces to fabric, which personally I found looked a lot better and not as… Chunky.

A month had passed since Harriet had decided to rework Cookie’s head and she messaged me again with updated images of Cookie with a brand new head and looking amazing! Cookie looked like how I imagined her to be and with less weight on her head, she just looked better to me.

@cotswoldscrochet

Cookie 🍪 My hardest commission yet 😰 #animalcrossing #acnh #crochetiktok #amigurumi #fyp

♬ Bubblegum K.K. – DIMSVM

Also, how cool is his TikTok video that Harriet created to show off the creative process behind Cookie?! It made me smile so much when she sent it to me to watch!

I was happy with the changes Harriet had made and paid the remainder of the commission fee. A couple of days later, Cookie arrived at her new home with me and has settled in really well!

As I’ve only ever owned tiny keychain/keyring sized amigurumi’s, I wasn’t sure whether Cookie would be okay to cuddle and squish, so she lived in the box she arrived in for a week before moving into the plushie shelf that I have next to my side of the bed in our bedroom. Cookie has really fit in with my Pokemon plushies and is very much loved! I try and get her in selfies I take but my selfie game is usually happening in my office.

One thing I didn’t want to discuss/address on this post was how much I paid for Cookie as this doesn’t reflect on the overall piece. This commission was not cheap but fuck me it was worth every penny and I was more than happy to pay it! So much thought, love and hard work from Harriet went into creating Cookie and quite frankly I’m happy to support a small business, especially with the way the world is right now due to COVID. If you are really interested in how much I paid for Cookie, drop me a DM on Instagram or Twitter.

In the future I would love to commission Harriet again, whether it be to create a smaller dog villager such as Bones or Cherry, or maybe even Puppycat from Bee & Puppycat!

Speaking of commissions, Harriet’s commissions are currently closed, however Harriet did inform me that she’s hoping to reopen her commissions in September! I’ll definitely be in line to snag a commission from her.

If you’re interested in snagging a commission yourself later this year then make sure to go and check out Harriet’s Instagram page for Cotswolds Crochet, which is linked below, as well as at the start of this post.

I have also linked Harriet’s Etsy store as she does sell amigurumi patterns (Pokemon, Animal Crossing etc), as well as amigurumi plushies!

I have also linked Harriet’s blog, where she posts free patterns and her TikTok too where she posts videos of commissions she’s worked on, including Cookie!

Instagram

Etsy Store

Blog – access free patterns!!!

TikTok

What do you guys think of Cookie that Harriet over at Cotswolds Crochet created for me? I honestly love it so much and I’m so happy to finally have a Cookie plushie of some form in my collection.

If you were to commission Harriet for an amigurumi what would you ask for and why? Make sure to let me know in the comments below!

Until next time guys, take care and have an amazing weekend!

April Favourites ‘21

How is it May already? I can’t believe how quick 2021 is going and it’s making me feel old in a way! At the same time, as much as I’ve enjoyed April it’s been bloody cold this week. We are meant to be in spring, I need me some sunshine and warmer weather now.

I think the most I’m excited about for May is some pre-ordered goodies I have arriving, making my new desk look cute as fuck and playing lots of New Pokemon Snap.

April has been such a strange month. It’s the month I really started to get into Twitch and I even bought a brand new Animal Crossing edition Switch, which I LOVE. You can read more about that here. I’m excited for the future of my Twitch channel and by the end of May I hope to have made affiliate.

For the time being however, I’m going to get cracking with my favourites and what I loved in April.

Beauty.

• Bodyform Intimawear Period Underwear – (link).

I know this isn’t a typical beauty product to talk about but I REALLY wanted to share these period underwear this month after trying them in April. Three words – They are amazing and I’ll never look back. I’d been thinking about buying reusable pads for a while now, but was feeling a bit lost of where to look, start, etc. Whilst doing my monthly shop at the end of March I found these in Tesco on offer and decided to pick up a pack. I gave them a go on day two of my period and they were amazing. I could tell I had them on at first, but the longer I wore them the more I got used to and comfortable with wearing them. I felt anxious throughout the day but at the same time I felt confident of no leaks. I wore them to bed and woke up with no issues… If you know what I mean. 😉

From memory they last 50 washes and are as easy to wash as they are to wear. You rinse them with cold water until the water runs clear and then throw into the washing machine. Simple! I clean them with cold water when I jump into the shower in the morning, run under the cold tap and when I’m out of the shower I throw them into the machine.

There are loads of brands you can buy and try, my reason for picking the Bodyform underwear up is the price I snagged them for and more. Again, I highly recommend these, they’re amazing!

So… Now it’s time to talk about the miscellaneous favourites of the month! If there isn’t anything I’ve done I’m not going to mention.

Favourite Movie – Midsommar.

This is a film I’ve seen a few times now and recently I had the urge to watch it again. It’s a horror film by Ari Aster (also directed Hereditary) who has seemingly come out of nowhere. Aster’s horror films are eerie and will leave you with questions and an unfamiliar feeling, which is exactly what Midsommar did to me. Midsommar is a film about a group of friends who travel to Sweden to visit their friends home. A festival is taking place during their stay and they end up finding themselves in part of a cult that they aren’t 100% sure about. Amongst the group of friends there is also a couple whose relationship is being held together by a tragedy that occurred years prior. The film is overall just eerie and the things that happen are strange and odd to say the least. I’ve watched so many videos analysing the film, which is what fuelled me to watch it again. Watching it for a second time has really opened my eyes to the film and if you don’t get upset easily (there are a lot of sensitive subjects such as suicide and gore) I highly recommend watching it!

Favourite TV Show – Invincible.

This is a new TV show I’ve literally finished just before writing my favourites and I LOVED it! It was a recommendation from my colleagues and when I mentioned it to Dane we decided to start watching it that evening. It’s based off of a comic book of the same name and is about Mark, son of superhero Omni-Man, who eventually becomes superhero Invincible. We see Mark juggling being a superhero and trying to finish high school. There’s more to the story, but I don’t want to worry whatever I share may spoil. I highly recommend watching! This is an Amazon Prime Video exclusive show by the way.

Favourite Song – Lil Nas X – “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)”.

This song. I don’t feel like I need to write anything about it because I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like this song at the moment. I kept hearing this song on a Logitech advert on Twitch and I started to really like it, so Googled. This song came up on YouTube and it has literally JUST come out. I fell in love with it and I’ve not been able to stop listening to it since. I play it at least once a day in the week whilst working and maybe once or twice throughout the weekend. It’s blowing up the internet though and before hearing this song I’d never heard of Lil Nas X before. Now I’m quite excited for his new album to drop this year. I don’t know if it’ll be my sort of music, but I’ll definitely check it out.

Image taken from Twitter

Favourite Game – Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX.

I’ve owned the remake of the original Pokemon mystery dungeon games since it came out at the start of March 2020, but I’d only played it for a short amount of time before Animal Crossing came out. Why? Because I got bloody stuck and gave up on it. At the start of April I decided to start streaming me playing it on Twitch and it’s been really fun. I decided to restart the game as I hadn’t played a lot anyway when I got stuck. So far it’s going okay, but I’m yet to get to the point I was stuck at before… I just forgot how much I like this game and it’s one I can see me playing outside of stream in the future. I highly recommend picking it up to play if you’ve never played the mystery dungeon games before, or if you want the nostalgia from the games back in the day!

Just a few of my favourite things.

Gel Nails.

As the salons were able to open back up in April I was booked in to get my nails done and it was WELL overdue! I decided to go for a duck egg blue colour with glitter. They’re still lasting now and I do love them. If there’s one thing I have really missed during the second and third lockdowns it’s getting my nails done. I feel like every three weeks it’s my time to get pampered, not have to do or think about much for an hour and I can just have a good natter with my nail technician. I’ve been going to her for over a year now, but due to COVID I’ve only had my nails done by her sixteen times, which isn’t as many as it should have been by now. I’m already excited to get a new set of gels done next week, but I do not have a clue what I’m going to get yet! maybe something pastel for spring? 😛

New Desk.

Me and Dane decided in April that it was time for me to get my own desk in our office. I’ve wanted my own space for a while to work at for both work and personal. I’ve had a few of my items dotted on Dane’s desk but I have to always move them at the end of the working day and put them back at the start and the same happened with my work laptop too. I’d put it away at the end of the day and set it up at the start. The desk Dane bought me wasn’t the one I’d thought he was ordering, so I was worried at first that it would be too small. However, this being said we’ve made it work and I’ve had it and been working at it for a week now. It’s amazing! I got my office chair from work so I didn’t need to buy a new one (although I may eventually) and we already had an old monitor that I could use. All that was left to do was decorate the desk and the area really!

As you can see from the above photo I have started to make it my own with my Danbo Nendoroid, Smoko ramen cup lamp, a Tokidoki plush and fox coaster that my friend Sarah (Raiin Monkey) sent to me, my raccoon planter from Tesco and finally my Razer quartz headset and headset stand. I have a lot more work to do to my desk including making use of the white space above the desk and more. I’ll be showing it off more in my monthly favourites I’m sure!

Pokemon and Disney purchases.

I made some cute purchases during April and they’re all featuring towards the end of my monthly favourites. The first group I want to talk about are Pokemon and Disney themed.

I picked up this Loungefly bag second hand from someone via a Loungefly Facebook group (who I’ve since befriended) and I’ve been using it since. After I discovered this bag existed at the start of the year it fast became one of my holy grain and sought after bags. One weekend around February I searched all over for this and could only find it for around $200-$400 which I was NOT willing to pay. I gave up on the search eventually and had the frame of mind, “If it turns up at a decent price… So be it…” so when I saw it for a decent price, I snatched it up! I love it so much. The first shopping trip I wore it out I heard people commenting on it which was awesome. It’s my go to bag at the moment and one I’ll definitely use when I return back to working in the office. I have taken it into a work a few times now, which is good. Would you guys like to see a blog post about my Loungefly bags? I have one coming soon and I’ve bought a couple of new ones in 2021 so yes, let me know!

I picked up some Disney goodies from Fox Leap and alongside the two items I bought, Sophie sent me LOADS of extra goodies too which made me smile! She’s such an amazing seller and lovely person to talk to. I decided to finally pick up the Angel enamel pin and Lady and the Tramp print that I’ve had saved in my favourites on Etsy for the longest time. As regular readers will know, Lady and the Tramp is my favourite Disney film and I have fond memories of the sequel when it came out too. Alongside my purchases I also received a Scar print (which I’d been eyeing up for a while), Fennekin enamel pin, Bambi and Faline enamel pin, an Angel sticker and some Disney horse stickers. I don’t feel like I can thank Sophie enough for sending me so many lovely extras.

I’m giving Sophie a bit of a plug here (because she bloody deserves it!) but if you like watching streamers, make sure to check out her Twitch channel. Sophie’s streams are great to relax to and she’s even come to mine before, which is always lovely and supportive. I’m also part of her Discord which is so friendly. 🙂 I’m looking to join her Patreon in the near future.

Finally I ordered the Nickit plush from the Pokemon Center via YY Kawaii and it arrived in April. Nickit was my favourite Pokemon in Sword and Shield and as soon as I could catch one in the game, it stayed in my party for as long as possible! This plush is bigger than I thought it was going to be, which was great! It now lives on my plushie cabinet alongside my Dragonite, Eevee, Morgana and more. It’s just a nice plush to add to my collection. Don’t forget by the way that if you would like to save 10% off of the YY Kawaii website, make sure to use the code YYCOFFEE10 – which is my brand affiliate code with YY Kawaii!

Animal Crossing Cookie.

April appears to have been a month where I have been slightly obsessed with Cookie from Animal Crossing. Why? I don’t know but I’ve either bought items, received items or found and finished things with her featured.

As you may have seen from my last blog post, my Quirkory pre-order arrived for some Animal Crossing enamel pins, one of the pins was Cookie. It’s such an adorable enamel pin and it’s by far one of my favourites in my collection now! If you want to read a bit more about this enamel pin AND the latest Animal Crossing collection from Quirkory please make sure to check out the latest post all about it. 🙂 If you like the look of the Cookie enamel pin and would like to save 10% off of Quirkory’s store then make sure to use the code TMBQUIRKORY!

Alongside the enamel pin arriving, I decided to finally order myself something from Nooks Needles Co as I’d wanted to for a while. I noticed the store had started to stock Cookie designs, so I decided to reach out to potentially buy a custom order. I wanted Cookie on a light purple sweater, but I wanted the image of Cookie to be larger and in the middle of the chest area of the sweater, instead of smaller and on the left hand side of the chest. Laur the person behind Nooks Needles Co was happy to oblige and ordered a sweater in shade orchid for me. It arrived over a week later and I’ve worn it loads so far, as you’ll see from the image above, as well as my new picture on my blog too. I’m looking to review this store and sweater in the future, so please keep eyes peeled for this in May/June. 😉

Finally I want to share this Cookie cross stitch I FINALLY finished after owning it since March 2020. I don’t know why it took so long as it was practically finished when I picked it up again towards the end of this month. This cross stitch kit is from diyCrossing and although I bought this last year, they still have plenty of cross stitch kits available to buy! They’re really easy to follow, whether you’re new to cross stitch or not. I’ve been cross stitching since I was about ten why my mom first got me into it, so to be able to do this kit of a villager I adore, it’s been lovely. I’ve since ordered two more, Lucky and Bones, two more of my favourite villagers. I plan to buy and work on all the dog cross stitch kits from diyCrossing in the future and display them.

There we have it guys, those are my favourites from April! As I said at the start of the post, I can’t quite believe it’s May already! I don’t know what May brings, but I feel like it’s going to be good. I have some time off work in June so I feel May is going to be a month of planning what me and Dane are going to do.

What were your favourites from April? What do you think of my favourites? Make sure to let me know in the comments below!

Until next time guys, take care and have a lovely bank holiday weekend!

Quirkory Animal Crossing Gimme My Joy-Con 2 Enamel Pins – Review

I have been so excited to write and share this blog post with all my readers since the start of 2021, but I’ve been eagerly and patiently waiting for these kawaii as fuck goodies to arrive!

I’m here to throw some much needed love around about Quirkory and why their designs make me so happy!

Towards the end of 2020 Quirkory announced via their social media and Patreon that they would be making another Gimme My Joy-Con collection after how popular the first one had been. They brought out a TON of villagers in the collection, twenty-four designs in total! A lot in comparison to the nine designs from their first Gimme My Joy-Con Collection, which you can read all about here by the way.

Here is a list of all the villager (and special characters) that Quirkory designs for the second collection!

Skye, Ankha, Beau and Fauna.

Maple, Goldie, Poppy and Pietro.

Coco, Audie, C.J. and Flick.

Roald, Raymond, K.K. Slider and Sherb.

Julian, Molly, Zucker and Marina.

Cookie, Diana, Rosie and Flurry.

I was so excited as Quirkory began to roll out and show off all the designs and I was starting to prepare myself for which designs I would order. I knew I wanted all of the dog characters in the collection – K.K. Slider, Goldie and I definitely had to order Cookie. However, I also ended up ordering Maple too, as she was a villager I had many moons ago on New Leaf, plus she’s cute. How could I NOT have her?

As these were pre-orders from Quirkory’s store I eagerly awaited snippets of them being made by their manufacturer. These were show both through Patreon (which you can find here) and their Instagram page too. I always love when you get to see the molds being filled with colour.

Then a month or so ago Quirkory announced that ALL the pins had arrived with them and were being ready to be shipped out! I was so excited and couldn’t wait to have them in my hands. They arrived earlier this week and I wanted to share my new enamel pins with you all as soon as possible.

Quirkory were kind enough to send me four free enamel pins too as gifts – Audie, Poppy, Julian and Diane. I’ll be sharing and talking about these on this post too.

Before I go into the designs one by one, one thing I noticed that was done differently with the second collection is the colour variants with the joy controllers. Not only did the overall colour of the controllers get designed based around the villagers in question, but the buttons on the joy cons and more got changed in colour too!

I know when I spoke before about the first collection I was able to go into detail about ALL the design joy con colours, but due to the amount this time, I won’t be able to do that. However, I will for the ones I’ve got to show today!

Cookie with a right handed lilac controller, which has white buttons and a darker purple side.

Goldie with a left handed light green controller, which has grey buttons and side.

Maple with a right handed dark green controller.

K.K. Slider with a right handed light orange controller.

Audie with a left handed yellow controller, which has white buttons and side.

Poppy with a right handed light purple controller, which has light pink buttons and side.

Julian with a right handed light blue controller, which has white buttons and side.

Diana with a left handed dark purple controller, which has teal buttons and side.

All the enamel pins are made out gold enamel and have twin backs to them. On the back of the enamel pins they all say have, “Quirkory Gimme My Joy-Con” which is something Quirkory did with the first collection, so I’m glad they kept this consistency and brought it to the second collection too.

I’ll be reviewing all the pins separately as always and want to state here that these enamel pins launch for sale again on Saturday 8th May! I’ll update the post as and when they’re for sale on Quirkory’s Etsy store, but make sure to keep eyes peeled on both Quirkory’s and my Instagram pages for updates when the enamel pins are available to buy!

Cookie Enamel Pin (Coming Soon)

This is by far my favourite design from the whole collection and that’s purely because since New Horizons Cookie has become my favourite villager. Cookie is the pop princess of Animal Crossing and she’s stolen my heart. I mentioned to Quirkory that I would love to see Cookie become a part of the second collection, so when they announced that they’d drawn her design, I was over the moon! The design has turned out perfect and it’s fast become my actual favourite enamel pin in my collection.

Cookie is wearing her blue and white dress that she’s now known for in New Horizons. The lilac controller works really well with the pink of her fur and the blue dress. I really hope Quirkory bring out some stickers and prints with Cookie on soon. I definitely need them.

Goldie Enamel Pin (Coming Soon)

Another dog villager to add to my collection and it’s a villager I have LONGED to add to my game since New Leaf. I feel alongside Lucky, Goldie is a dog villager everyone loves as she’s such a cutie and is perfect in everyway. I have Goldie on my island and she’s precious! Again, like Cookie, Goldie is wearing her New Horizons dress which looks exactly like the one in game! The details of the dress are amazing, something Quirkory is amazing with as always! The controller Goldie is holding is light green which compliments her yellow colour, as well as the dress she’s wearing.

I honestly would love for a third collection to come out with more dog villagers, especially Bones who is another of my favourite dog villagers.

Maple Enamel Pin (Coming Soon)

This wasn’t a design I was going to purchase, even though I loved it. Purely because at the time it was coming up to Christmas and I wanted to make sure I had monies for anymore presents I needed to buy, etc. However, when I ordered myself the Mostari mystery pack I decided to snag the Maple design too. Maple is a cub I had back in New Leaf so she definitely holds a small place in my heart, plus her design is adorable! She has her cream jumper on from New Horizons and is cuddling a dark green controller which looks a similar colour to the three that is on her jumper. I know for a fact this wasn’t a coincide and was once again Quirkory showing off how much detail they put into their designs.

K.K. Slider Enamel Pin (Coming Soon)

This is the only none villager design that I picked up from this collection and of course it’s our favourite singing dog, K.K. Slider. I really love his design, it’s not over the top and is different. I like how on his light orange controller has little musical notes on it! This is something unique to K.K. Slider’s design as the other villagers have stars. I know when they announced this design and the first sketches of it, I was waiting for a guitar to appear somewhere, but I’m actually glad it never did. He’s known for his guitar, yes, but it doesn’t mean he has to have it ALL the time! He’s cuddling the controller instead. 😉

Audie Enamel Pin (Coming Soon)

Audie is a new villager to come to New Horizons and is said to be named after one of Nintendo’s oldest fans! She’s a cute wolf character who just shouts summer vibes. She wears a blue dress covered in pineapples and some fabulous shades on her head. Audie is definitely ready for a summer party or a beach BBQ, that’s for sure! I love that Quirkory decided to go for a yellow and white controller for Audie as this definitely works with the summer vibes! I feel out of all of the enamel pins I’m showing on the post, Audie is probably one that would get a conversation going with someone who doesn’t know about Animal Crossing. Purely for how bright the colours are!

Poppy Enamel Pin (Coming Soon)

Poppy is such a cute squirrel who I had at one point on New Leaf. She always reminded me of an old friend of mine due to her name and personality, so when I saw that Quirkory had sent me her, it definitely brought back some memories. Poppy’s design is really cute and I think the colours for her fur are GORGEOUS! They’re perfect to say the least and match the character so well. Alongside with the light pink and purple controller, it just works so well. I especially love her little dress, which reminds me of lederhosen a little!

Julian Enamel Pin (Coming Soon)

I’ll be honest, Julian isn’t a design I would have picked up for myself but after receiving him in the post, I haven’t been able to stop staring at him. This is in no way against Quirkory by the way! Horse villagers just aren’t ones I’m overly fussed about! However, the way Quirkory have designed Julian makes him look so pretty and fabulous! I love that his eyes are closed to reveal his purple eyelids/shadow and his cute little galaxy hoodie really make the purple colours pop against his blue body and mane. I like that Quirkory went for a teal and white controller too as I feel it works really well with his bodies colours.

Diana Enamel Pin (Coming Soon)

Finally we have Diana, who not only moved into my island not long after all the designs had been shown off on Quirkory’s Instagram page, but I also shared this design on my Instagram page too! Diana is a snobby little white deer who a lot of people told me to avoid, but I really love her! The enamel pin is gorgeous and the colours all pop and look amazing! I love the purple swirl on Diana’s forehead, it just looks really cool as it doesn’t have an outline to it or anything! It just looks cool. Alongside that I LOVE her controller colours! The dark purple and teal work so well together and I’d love a joy-con colour like this for real!

So there we have it guys! The collection will launch again on Saturday 8th May, so if you’re after any of the pins I’ve shown you today make sure to set your calendars for in a couple of weeks!

If there is one design I semi regret not picking up it’s Pietro. He’s so adorable and I just overall love how colourful his design is! I’ll definitely look to getting him in the future.

Overall, I would love ALL of the Gimme My Joy-Con designs, from both the first and second collections. I love Animal Crossing so much, it’s helped me over the past thirteen years I’ve been playing it, especially the past year with COVID. Not only do I want more Animal Crossing merchandise in my home, but I want to be able to support my favourite independent stores/artists whilst I’m at it!

As always I want to say a massive thank you to Quirkory! Not just for sending me my extra enamel pins and not for making me their brand rep, but for making such amazing designs that make me and others happy. Their designs make me smile whenever I look at them. I’ve not been very well mentally lately and whenever I’ve felt stressed or crappy I’ve looked at these enamel pins, which make me smile ear to ear every time.

As always I will of course link below to their store and social media platforms:

Store (Etsy)

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

So, what do you guys think of Quirkory and their second collection of Animal Crossing enamel pins? Will you be picking up any of them when they come out in a few weeks time? If you are which one(s) will you be picking up?

Don’t forget if you do decide to make an order with Quirkory to use my exclusive discount code “TMBQUIRKORY” on the Etsy store to bag yourself 10% your order!

Make sure to check out my previous posts about Quirkory below:

Quirkory – Mostari Mystery Pack Review AND An Exciting Announcement!

Quirkory Lunar Plushie Spookies Enamel Pins – Review

Quirkory Animal Crossing Gimme My Joy-Con Enamel Pins – Review

Quirkory Eeveelution Greek Gods Enamel Pins – Review

Why I Started Streaming On Twitch

I hope everyone had an amazing Easter, can you already believe Easter was a week ago? Let’s not even talk about how crazy the weather is and the fact I haven’t eaten my Easter egg yet… 😛

The past couple of weeks have been a mixture of crazy and chaotic, as well as pretty cool and awesome. I wanted to share the latter with you and this includes me starting to stream on Twitch.

Yep, I’m a Twitch streamer now! I know I’ve spoken on and off about it on my blog and social media pages in the past but I’ve finally started it and have been at it for two weeks now!

I’ve wanted to stream on Twitch for a long time now, well over a year in fact and in March I finally decided to bite the bullet one evening and have a play around. It was whilst Dane was away working from home that I did a test stream on Dane’s Xbox playing Super Lucky’s Tale. I only played for half an hour to test the waters and see how it went and it was amazing! Some of my friends joined to see what I was up to and I had a few comments. I fondly remember Vikki (Cuteek) joining and rooting me on, which was amazing!

I then decided later on that week that I would officially start streaming on Twitch! I opened up with Persona 5: Strikers and not only did some of my friends join, a lot of my online friends and friends of friends did too and it was amazing! I was so happy and felt more confident with my decision to finally stream.

However… Streaming has come with some “tough” decisions, alongside juggling my personal life and blogging around when I stream. I want to just chat with you all about my experiences and thoughts since I started streaming two weeks ago, as well as a semi funny story along the way.

First of all I want to mention how I played Persona 5: Strikers on two streams and decided it wasn’t a game I wanted to stream and stopped. As regular readers and friends of mine know, I LOVE Persona 5. It’s one of my favourite games and is definitely up there with Pokemon and Animal Crossing. I was so excited to have Persona 5: Strikers as a streaming game of choice and that it would be a first playthrough too. However, during my second stream playing it, I didn’t “enjoy” it. Persona 5: Strikers isn’t the same style of gameplay as Persona 5 and Persona 5: Royal in the sense of it’s a hack and slash style game instead of turn based. I’ve not really played hack and slash games before so this was new to me. Not just that, I wanted to invest myself into the story but that was proving hard to do when I wanted to talk to my viewers at the same time. So, it was with a heavy heart that I decided to discontinue playing Persona 5: Strikers for the foreseeable future.

Alongside playing Persona 5: Strikers I’ve started playing Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage! from the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. I’m playing a brand new save, as I’ve 100% completed this game on my own save years ago when it first came out. These streams are chilled and fun! I mean, who doesn’t love Spyro, eh?

I was mainly playing games on my Xbox after the first week of streaming and on Monday Dane turned to me and said, “Nat? Why don’t you look into buying yourself a Switch so you can start streaming Nintendo games?” The idea had already been swirling around my head since Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out in March 2020 and especially since I’d started streaming. However, due to money and buying a capture card too the idea just didn’t seem doable at the present time.

This being said I thought about the idea quite a bit that morning and it didn’t take me long before I was Googling for the Animal Crossing switch console. I regret not buying this switch back in March 2020 when it came out alongside Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s not a console that is easy to get hold of new these days as it’s pretty limited and I ended up settling on buying a second hand one from CeX, which we ordered and collected on Monday. I wasn’t exactly happy with how much I paid but at least I had 24 months warranty against it. When I got the switch home I was anxious I’d made a bad decision with the price I paid. The switch wasn’t exactly in the best quality considering how much I paid and this anxious feeling didn’t really pass. The screen was scratched quite badly in the bottom right hand corner, inside the box was filthy (dust/fluff) and the joy cons and switch overall was covered in scuffs and dust. I gave it a clean and turned it on to play and it worked fine! Dane popped on a spare screen protector he had from when he bought his switch and we ordered a capture card and a new micro SD card.

Come Wednesday evening and I streamed Animal Crossing on my stream and it did REALLY well! I was chuffed as fuck and came off the stream feeling great. I’d popped the micro SD into my switch earlier that day and during the stream I’d taken a lot of snapshots and wanted to make sure they’d save to the micro SD okay. They hadn’t saved because the switch hadn’t even acknowledged the micro SD… Which was strange. I did loads of troubleshooting that I knew, as well as via the Nintendo UK website and nothing worked. I started to worry I’d bought a switch that didn’t work and the more I tested, the more this worry became a reality. I went to bed miserable.

I woke up miserable too but determined to find a brand new Animal Crossing switch. I did a Google search and found one BRAND NEW and for less than I paid for the second hand one from CeX. I did a bit of research about the online store in question as I’d never heard of them before and honestly, the price of the switch seemed too good to be true… The reviews were mostly good, but mixed nonetheless. As we could pay through PayPal we took a chance and ordered. Just over 24 hours later, the switch arrived. It was indeed the real deal. Legit, brand new and perfect.

I streamed on Friday using it and faced no issues. The second hand CeX switch was packed away and returned yesterday with an refund issued yesterday too.

Now we have that bit of the story out of the way, I want to share my Twitch experience(s) so far.

I’ve been streaming on Twitch for two weeks now and it’s definitely been a learning curve and a fun one at that! I’ve streamed various games so far and I’m slowly starting to get a firm schedule in place. I have to keep reminding myself that it has only been two/three weeks (seven streams in total) so it’s technically still very early days.

So far I’ve streamed Persona 5: Strikers, Spyro Reignited Trilogy (Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage), Ark: Survival Evolved, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX.
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I would honestly say the most popular game I’ve played to date is by far Animal Crossing: New Horizons which gained me a lot of followers as well as a chatty audience to boot. I’m really excited to be playing Animal Crossing again on my stream.

Speaking of playing this on my stream I think for the time being I have finally settled on a schedule that I’m really happy with for now. All streams run between 7pm-9pm GMT. Monday I play Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage (once this is completed I’ll move onto Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon), Wednesday I play Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX (however, this stream didn’t seem to do very well on Friday so this is subject to change if this continues) and finally on Friday I play Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

I’m not going to share 100% what happens/will happen in these streams, especially the Animal Crossing one. You’ll have to come and see for yourself. 😉

In the future I’m looking to add New Pokémon Snap into the mix, which will be really cool to play! I’d also love to play the newly announced Pokemon games – Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl and Pokémon Legends: Arceus. These both look amazing and it would be so much fun to play them with my Twitch audience! Maybe not 100%, but when it comes to searching for new Pokemon to find and catch/breed that’s where I could host a “chill and fill my Pokedex” type stream.

The one thing that I haven’t declared yet is that I’m not affiliate or anything like that, I’m just your regular streamer… Hoping to make affiliate some day! I do have my goals set for the future of Twitch but if I don’t make those goals, it’s not the end of the world. This is just a bit of fun and something new for me to do as COVID and lockdowns have really shown me how creative I love being and how I want to do it as much as I can. This being said – I would love to make affiliate by the end of May ready for the summer.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love writing on my blog, but sometimes it’s really nice to add to that with chatting and playing games on stream three nights a week. 🙂

If you would love to check out my stream please click on the link below and make sure to follow if you’re interested in future streams! I do have all my previous streams on the channel so you can watch previous streams back if you’ve missed out on any. 🙂

There Might Be Coffee Twitch channel

Please bear in mind I am still new to this, I don’t have hundreds of followers, viewers or comments/chat so this is still a learning curve and early days for me. Every view, comment, share and follow means the world to me. 🙂

Thank you for reading me waffle about my Twitch stream and how excited I am about it! I hope you can follow me on my little gaming stream journey and I really hope you enjoy my content if you come and check me out!

I want to finally finish this post by saying a massive thank you to my boyfriend Dane for helping me out with Twitch. He’s been the one who has guided me in what I need to do in regards to OBS, Stream Labs and more. He sat with me the whole evening before I did my first official Nintendo stream and went through how OBS works, how capture cards work and more. He even paid for my capture card and Animal Crossing switch, which I will be paying him back the next couple of pay days.

So Dane, thank you for not only being my rock, thank you for being my admin and technical guy too when it comes down to Twitch. It would be wrong of me to take credit for the behind the scenes work when it’s been Dane learning how to do it and teaching me. 🙂

Please let me a comment down below of what you think, as well as any game suggestions you’d love to see me play!

Until next time guys, take care and I hope you’ve had a lovely weekend.

Black Milk Clothing x Animal Crossing

This has been a blog post I’ve been pretty excited to write and share with you considering it contains Animal Crossing related goodies!

If you don’t know by now I LOVE Animal Crossing and with the release Animal Crossing: New Horizons back in March I have been even more obsessed than usual.

I’ve also rediscovered my love of Black Milk Clothing in 2020 thanks to the Pokemon collection that came out in the summer. You can read about all the goodies I picked up from that collection here.

October 5th and less than a month after my Pokemon goodies arrived, Black Milk Clothing announced they were releasing an Animal Crossing collection and it would be released just over a week later on 13th October! I was all over it and watching my Instagram page daily for sneak peaks and reveals of what the pieces looked like that were going to be part of the collection.

I’m not going to sugar coat it… I was incredibly disappointed by the Animal Crossing collection and I know I’m not the only one either. Some of my friends and people on social media gathered to express their disappointment. It just felt like Animal Crossing was cheated, as the Pokemon collection was amazing.

At the same time though I was kind of pleased due to how much money I’d already spent on the Pokemon collection, as well as one piece I picked up from the Halloween collection as well.

I won’t moan too much about the pieces I didn’t like, but I want to be honest, which I know you guys appreciate!

The one piece that everyone commented on is the Pocket Skater Skirt that is literally the box art for New Horizons. This was in very poor taste and felt kind of… Lazy. They could have done so much more than just slapping the box art on the skirt. It reminds me of something you would buy from a knock off of Black Milk Clothing from Wish or AliExpress.

Another complaint myself and others said on social media is how the fossil stand alone design was missing from this collection, as well as constellation designs for Celeste. The latter would have been gorgeous as a skater skirt and or skater dress design. I just felt like a lot of the collection was the same prints wise and the styles they were put against was strange. One in particular being the Villagers Tie The Knot Jumpsuit. It’s just… Ugly and random and just a big ball of no from me.

I decided on three pieces I was going to buy from the collection and was super nervous when it came to the time to put my orders in. As we all know, the Pokemon collection sold out stupidly quick the first time and even the restocks sold out after a while. I prepared myself for this collection to sell out… But I didn’t need to at all. The collection is still in really good stock with only two pieces being sold out at the time of writing this post (12/12/2020).

I ordered my pieces and waited for them to arrive. I think it took a little longer for my goods to be sent out to me (and others) due to a printer breaking. I was offered a 10% discount code, which I used to buy the Sporty Stripes Hosiery 2.0. These are amazing, but I won’t be showing them off in this post.

After I ordered my pieces, I’d heard about some issues with a piece from the Halloween collection, that was similar to one of the Animal Crossing pieces I’d bought. I’ll go into that a little more later, but let’s put it this way… I was gutted to find out that one of my pieces would arrive and after being worn would have issues with it… >.<

My pieces FINALLY arrived on the 27th November and I couldn’t wait to try them on and feel a little like an Animal Crossing character! 😀

As I stated on the Pokemon post the tracking was really good! I was able to keep up with where my parcel was and more. It did give an estimated arrival, but my goods arrived a little earlier than what was suggested, which was good!

Like when I bought from the Pokemon collection, I don’t know why I wasn’t charged customs. I don’t know if it’s due to Royal Mail delivering my parcel or what. I was very lucky and I’m grateful I wasn’t stung. I find it odd though when I spent less money on my Halloween piece I was stung for £20 customs and I only bought one piece! :S

I didn’t take any photos, but the pieces I ordered arrived in perfect condition! All the pieces I bought were made in Australia and arrived in a special bag you can throw away in your compost bin and it’ll decompose. I love this idea and more brands need to do this.

Finally the time has come to share with you the pieces I picked up… But if you were aware of the collection and all the pieces that released with it, you may have realised by now just which pieces I picked up… Seeing as I posted a photo of them all together at the start of this post! xD

I just want to add here by the way that all the pieces I bought are not sold out, but may be limited in sizes OR may have sold out by the time this post goes live. As far as I’m aware the pieces I bought, once they do sell out, they aren’t making a return. There are some pieces under the Pokemon collection that WILL return (which you can see here), so make sure to sign up for restock alerts if items that aren’t LIMITED. 🙂

Sadly there are no pictures of me in the dresses as at the time of writing this post I’ve actually really badly pulled my shoulder and if I’m not in a world of pain, I’m smothered in deep heat to try and help the pain go away. I have tried my best to show off the pieces. Not going to lie, the photos aren’t the best. 😦

• K.K. Long Sleeve Oversized BFT (link)

I’ve never owned a BFT (boyfriend tee) from Black Milk Clothing and I’m not going to lie, you can definitely size down for these as they’re oversized (as it states in the name). I bought an L, which is my go to size to order from Black Milk Clothing. It’s really big but at the same time I like how baggy it is. I could get away with wearing this with leggings and tucked into mom jeans with no worries.

It’s a black tee with a massive image of K.K. Slider on the back, on his stool and with his guitar, ready to jam on a Saturday night. On the right sleeve there are yellow musical notes and on the left it says, “Animal Crossing: New Horizons“. I do wonder if they could have instead of putting the name of the game, maybe some of the pictures of the songs in the game by K.K Slider? Then on the front on the left hand side there is another image of K.K. Slider.

I do love the BFT and I know I’ll wear it loads, especially whilst working from home. The quality feels great and I know this will be loved throughout the autumn and winter and chillier days in spring and summer.

•   Nook Gingham Evil Skater Dress (link)

I love skater dresses from Black Milk Clothing and the Nook gingham one is no exception! The only thing I don’t like about it, is it doesn’t have pockets like my Eeveelution dress. The skater dresses from Black Milk Clothing are my favourite thing to buy from them. I can wear them all the time, later them up if need be and more! I can already see me wearing this dress on Christmas Eve/Day because it’s just shouting Christmassy colours to me.

As you can see the skater dress is red gingham with images of Tom, Timmy and Tommy Nook all over, as well as money bags and DIY recipe cards. I do love this, it’s such a simple but perfect design. If you know about Animal Crossing and who these characters and items are, of course you would get this straight away. However, if people don’t happen to know about Animal Crossing, it can just look like some cute raccoon/tanuki animals. I also feel like this dress would be a conversation starter for nerds alike!

Not going to lie… I’m wondering if I can get away with wearing this dress to work when I’m eventually back in the office again. I feel it would look lovely with a cream t-shirt underneath or a cream jumper over the top for colder days. I know I really want to get a new black/navy/cream boyfriend cardigan to wear with my Black Milk Clothing pieces.

There are quite a few pieces in the collection with this pattern, including short overalls and cuffed pants. I would love the latter to wear with geeky t-shirts but I don’t know if they would suit me… At the same time, I would love to grab some cuffed pants in different designs to mix up my Black Milk Collection a little too.

• Isabelle Gingham Apron Dress (link)

This is the final piece I picked up from the Animal Crossing collection and it’s one I want to talk about in a lot more detail than the other two pieces. You know I mentioned earlier in the post that one of the pieces might come with issues? It’s this piece…

So let me get the issue out of the way first. So the material the apron dresses are made out of are rubbish. If anything catches onto them, it can make a mar on he pieces and make them look frizzy/fuzzy. I’ve heard people report that wearing a seat belt causes issues, wearing a bag with a chain strap, but with the strap adjusters on the apron dresses that causes issues too, which is what has already happened to mine. I was expecting it, so I’m not too gutted, but I am at the same time too. I just really wanted a dress with this design on it. The Isabelle tartan design is my favourite from the whole collection. They did release a Pilgrim Dress and some Cuffed Shorts but I didn’t really want either (eventually I do want the cuffed shorts…). I could have cancelled my order and reordered but… Why should I?

The main issue here is that the material used for the apron dresses is a problem and Sharkies (name for Black Milk Clothing fans) have been raising it for a while now. Not only are the apron dresses affected but I know I heard of someone who faced issues with the Rainbow Garden Long Sleeve Scoop Skater Dress from the Animal Crossing collection, which is a massive shame! I thought about buying this dress as it has some of my favourite villagers on (including Cookie!) but I’m glad I didn’t know. I can deal with buying one dodgy piece, but not two.

I’ve not raised this issue with Black Milk Clothing yet, but I fully intend to soon. I wanted to raise it on my blog post because word needs to get out. There is a material that is SHITE and you should avoid it if you can. I could have cancelled my Black Milk Clothing order and just not bought the dress, but I wanted it. Why shouldn’t I have something I want because of some dodgy material?

Anyhoo, I’m FINALLY going to talk more about the dress, because it’s gorgeous and it needs to be spoken about highly too like it deserves.

I’ve never owned one of the apron dresses before and they’re… Interesting. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not used to them or what, but I’ve found it a tad awkward to wear. I have big boobs and a big bum, so trying to balance both of those factors with this dress is tricky. Plus I didn’t want to keep playing with the strap adjusters in case it damaged the dress anymore than it already has. The chest doesn’t feel covered enough for me, but then my bum won’t feel covered enough. When I eventually wear this properly I think I’m going to wear a long sleeved top underneath, or maybe even a shirt or jumper and instead of tights, I’d wear leggings due to the length of the dress.

The design on the dress is gorgeous and as I’ve already said, my favourite from the collection! It’s a green gingham with images of Isabelle, a white daisy (cosmos in Animal Crossing) and the classic Animal Crossing leaf. It’s just so perfect! In Animal Crossing: New Leaf Isabelle would wear a green gingham dress (as shown above) so this is perfect in every way, shape and form! If anything I wish they’d brought out a skater dress with this design on it! One thing I love is that this has pockets too! Pockets on dresses is definitely a way forward.

I feel like I won’t properly wear this dress until a special occasion. I could wear it New Years Eve around the house, my birthday in January or maybe anniversary in June. It’s a dress I’ll be cautious about wearing… But I won’t NOT wear it. Otherwise it’s a waste. I get why people have stopped buying the material in question that is having issues and I don’t know if I’ll buy it again.

So, those are all the pieces I picked up from the Animal Crossing collection! Although pieces are mostly limited, there are some limited and permanent pieces that I would love to pick up in the future, including – Isabelle Gingham Cuffed Shorts and Collectibles Cuffed Shorts. I’d love to wear these with sweaters and thick tights!

Overall I am really happy with the pieces I picked up from the Animal Crossing collection I do wish they’d been a bit more creative in regards to the pieces they released.

It’s a real shame to have seen the Pokemon collection do so well (it’s not on it’s SECOND restock!) and the Animal Crossing collection do so poor… It just goes to show the designs really didn’t do as well as they could have.

What do you guys think of Black Milk Clothing? Do you own any pieces by them? Are there any pieces you like the look of? In the New Year I might do a massive post showing off all of my Black Milk Clothing pieces! Make sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Until next time, stay safe, take care and enjoy the rest of the weekend!