If your kids are crafty and they love stuffed animals, check out Loopies by Alex Brands available at Walmart! Create your own stuffed animal with Loopies! Great for the holidays!
Thank you Alex Toys for sponsoring this post.
Create Your Own Stuffed Animals with Loopies
When I was younger, I was obsessed with attempting to knit, crochet, and sew with my mom. Something about that one on one time with her while being creative and making things side by side – it’s something I will always treasure. I strive to make those same memories with my own children, especially as I watch their natural creativity shine through! As someone who has also been naturally creative all my life, I aim to replicate what my mom did for me – create crafts with my kids. It’s a big thing for me, and I’m always excited about that one on one time with them!
DIY Fun with Loopies
ALEX Brands has brought to life a DIY stuffed animal plush set of characters called Loopies! Loopies are pre-sewn characters that feature mesh pockets that you and your child/ren fill with soft chenille yarn. Using the enclosed crochet hook, you pull out loops through the mesh creating your own personalized look for your new fluffy friend! Available in many different characters, this craft is perfect for creative kids who like or want to learn how to knit, crochet, sew, or hook.
With Loopies, you’re pulling loops of the super soft chenille yarn through the holes in the presewn mesh pockets to create your new stuffed animal. We received the Lion and Penguin to loop and create, but there are more additional animals available, such as Panda and Unicorn. Included in each of the Loopies kits are faces, hands, ears, feet and other features for each animal to be attached with the loops.
What’s in the Loopies Box?
Once you open the Loopies Kit, you’ll find the following items:
- The pre-sewn stuffed animal of your choosing
- Looping hook
- Super soft chenille yarn
- Directions
- Face and other body parts to be attached
Make Your Own Soft Stuffed Animal with Loopies
The directions help guide you on how to create your Loopies stuffed animal, but it might help you to visually see it, too! While this isn’t the same animal as the ones we received and crafted, it gives you guidance on how to make your Loopies stuffed animal craft.
Tips to Make Loopies
- If you’re familiar with crocheting, treat your loop hook like a crochet hook and loop the yarn over the non-hooking finger to be able to loop easier with this craft.
- When beginning, slide your hand with yarn under the mesh, it helps to be able to control the yarn going onto the hook.
- The directions state to cut the yarn into smaller sections to prevent tangling, but we didn’t. We kept the yarn long and created one long loop chain in rows with the Loopies Lion and the Loopies Penguin and had no tangles.
- For the Loopies Lion, the directions stated to use three loops to braid for the tail. We decided to leave a strand of yarn (about 1.5 inches long) dangling at the end for the tail. We braided our own tail and tied it on using that strand, but that was our personal preference, we wanted a dual colored braided tail.
- We tied the yarn off at the beginning and the end and “hid” it within the animal. The directions didn’t state how to tie it off, so that’s what we did.
- If you’re having trouble looping the thick chenille yarn onto the hook, double wrap it around the hook to pull it out.
The directions state that, because of the thick chenille yarn, you can skip holes in the mesh. That’s what we did when starting, we seemingly alternated going row to row.
Once we got a few rows going, you can see how it turns out with skipping holes. It’s okay, it actually makes crafting the Loopies easier by giving you more room to maneuver.
You can get a good idea here on just how thick the loop is!
My kiddos love the final product! My daughter has a thing for penguins, so she is absolutely smitten with her softy new stuffed animal.
Here’s both of our stuffed animals finished!
Check out all the Loopies characters in stores now at Walmart! They sure are cuddly! My daughter fell asleep holding the Loopies Lion while watching TV with me, though also loves her Loopies Penguin.
Final Thoughts and Tips
Alex Toys recommends this yarn craft for children ages 7 or older. My pre-teen and teens found it easy to do this craft and created a system of their own to loop and decorate the animals. My suggestion for parents – if you’re going to be creating this with your child, standby for looping help or take turns. Anyone less than 10 will need assistance in getting started too.
