Recently, one of the community theaters in the area decided to close their season with Little Mermaid

As part of the PR/publicity for the show, I decided to indulge my inner 4 year old self (+ keep my hands busy during rehearsals) and make the amigurumi for a sort of scavenger hunt /ad campaign around town (more info on this below).

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The patterns I’m using for these are by chiacrafts. I’ve followed her for a few years and absolutely love her works (seriously, follow her @chiacrafts IG if you like detailed little amigurumi). Her works and patterns are incredibly detailed and a fun challenge.

I’ve wanted to make them for a while now and this show was the perfect excuse to do so.

For all of these, the yarn I’m using is I Love This Cotton.
Rather than buy a bunch of different large balls of yarn, I bought the sample box that comes with a variety of colors in small quantities. Perfect for amigurumi. I also used scraps of Simply Soft in White for outlining the eyes.

All of the eyes are solid black 9mm safety eyes.

First up: The Little Mermaid

The first one I did was the titular little mermaid herself: Ariel (which is a free pattern that can be found on Ravelry HERE) 

This was fairly straightforward and very similar to dolls I’ve made in the past, just smaller. 

Yarn colors used: peach for her skin, lilac for her bikini bottoms and shells, red for her hair, dark green for the main part of her tail, light green for her fins and then scraps of Simply Soft in white for her sclera

 Hook: ergonomic Boye D/3.25mm crochet hook.  I used solid black 9mm safety eyes. I then added white sclera and eyeliner per the pattern. 

Side note: I love that this pattern has legs. This made me think of the Little Mermaid Polly Pocket set (anyone else have that set in the early 2000’s?)

After I successfully completed Ariel, I moved on to my favorite character in the show and movie:

Sebastian the crab 🦀  

To make him, I used the same red yarn as Ariel’s hair for his shell, dark red yarn for his legs and under shell, and the pink / salmon yarn for his head. I used the same 9mm safety eyes that I used for Ariel with a crocheted white sclera. 

This one was DEFINITELY challenging. As I said earlier, these patterns are incredibly detailed. Sebastian’s pattern alone has 17 pages! I’ve been crocheting for 15 years and this is the first time in a long time that I’ve had to rip out mistakes in my work. It was worth it though, and I think this one is my favorite of the three characters I made. 

Flounder

The third and final one was Ariel’s loyal (totally not a guppy) sidekick – Flounder. 

For this, I went with the bright sunny yellow and teal yarns.
The pattern calls for alternating shaded strips along the back like the cartoon, but I didn’t have a different blue, so I just did the stripes all the same color teal.  The eyes are the same 9mm safety eyes that I used for the other two figures. 

Finishing Touches

All of them were stuffed with poly-fil and I used a knitting needle to get the stuffing into the hard to reach areas

For all of them, I used pearl head sewing pins inserted at angles to create a stand to prop them up. 

Where’s Ariel?

Then it was time to put them around town. The premise for this was similar to Elf on the Shelf; every few days the figures were moved to a different business in town and if people found them, took a picture and shared it to social media along with where they spotted it, they’d be entered in a drawing to win free tickets to the show.
All of the businesses that we contacted agreed to participate and we (incredibly) made it to the end of the campaign with no missing or damaged figures. 

After we finished the social media campaign, Ariel & Flounder were auctioned off at the performances with the proceeds going to the theatre.
I kept Sebastian and gave it to the actor who played him after the final performance (we’ve done multiple shows together)

All in all, this was an incredibly fun project and a fun show to work on and I can’t wait to try more of Chia Crafts’ patterns.