Finishing a bear

I was recently contacted by a collector who had a partially finished bear she was wondering if I could complete for her. Her mum had been making this amazing hot pink sparkle bear for her before she passed away. The photo below shows how far her mum had gotten. The body was sewn and jointed - it was just some stuffing, a face, ears attached and head jointed to the body that needed doing.

It was a pleasure to be able to finish this gorgeous bear off. She had been so well made that my job was very easy. And the fur was just divine. These photos really don't do the colour justice.

We gave her a pair of our hand painted glass eyes in a violet/pink tone, and scissor sculptured big puffy cheeks. She really is a gorgeous bear, and it was such an honour to be able to give her the last little bit of life she needed, and to finish the work that sadly was unfinished.

Another trio of bears - Sawyer, Eloise and Belarius

This little colour-ball came about after a collector asked if we could make one of our previous blue/purple tipped large bears in a smaller size. I knew we could, but also knew the look would change dramatically - but was curious to see this fur made up in our 10" Osias pattern, so whipped this boy up. We called him Sawyer, and while he wasn't adopted by the original collector (he was too different!), he quickly found a new home!

I had planned to offer some kits for Sawyer, but realised that I only had a small amount of the gorgeous cotton-print butterfly fabric used for his paw pads - so can only offer TWO! The kits are currently available in our etsy store until sold out.

Then, while we were on the roll of trying things for the hell of it, we thought we'd try using one of our plush lines to make a small-ish 9" bunny. Chubby Eloise is the result! I actually was SO motivated to make this girl that I started her (ie. got my pattern out and found a piece of this fur) at 9:30pm on friday night. She was completely finished - toes, shading, accessories, whiskers, seams closed etc, but 12:30am saturday morning. THREE HOURS! I have no idea how I managed that - I usually take at least 5 hours per critter.

I'm going to put it down to the gorgeous fur.

It is quite a silky/slippery pile to work with, but the trick i found was that if i made sure my seam allowances weren't stingy, i didn't have a problem. Stuff gently to give the softness of the pile a chance to really shine, and you'll end up with a gorgeous little plushie!

Eloise is currently available for adoption, and you can also purchase her pattern, her fabric (and her lollypop pendant!). We haven't made up kits for her yet because we're running seriously low on paw pad materials though! :P

And lastly, this big boy is 'Belarius'. He is another bear made up in one of our fabrics, just to see how it would work. The fur is 'Baby Owl' and is from our original import back in 2012. Surprisingly I hadn't used it on a bear like this yet. I wasn't sure how it would go being sculptured for the face - would it be too dark to see any detail, or would the cheeks be too full - but it worked beautifully and was a delight to play with! It's a long pile, but not over the top. And the length is quite uniform so you don't get wispy fly-away bits that tangle in your sewing thread.

Belarius is currently available for adoption. He will be a one of a kind, even though I did enjoy making him so much - I just have too many other ideas to try (and too little time to try them all!).

We don't have a kit for him either, as his pattern is one we haven't released yet. And may not ever release... it's one of my favourites. And a girl's gotta have some mystery! ;)

Bear Crafters Challenge 2013

We've decided to do something a little different this year in place of our usual 'annual giveaway' bear... so I am proposing a Bear Crafters Challenge!

The Challenge will be open to EVERYONE who'd like to join in, not just the bear-artist likers/followers on our page. We're just looking for the MOST CREATIVE version of this plain white bear!

Step 1 - choose your kit. We will offer two discounted kits for sale in our furaddiction.com store, one will contain the pattern for the challenge bear (our 'Jonas' design), the white faux fur, black glass eyes, T-pin joint set, nose thread and white paw pad material. The second option will be the same kit minus fur.

Step 2 - make up your bear. For those using their own fur, the only rule is that it must be white (can be faux fur, mohair, alpaca, wool, viscose, cotton - any fur fabric you like). 

Step 3 - detail and decorate your bear in YOUR style. You might like to use a colourful paw pad print, or give your bear some clothing, or add shading/highlighting, pull toes, use coloured eyes, a sculptured nose, give your bear claws, antique it... anything you can imagine. 

Step 4 - email a photo of your finished bear to us by the 1st July. 

We will choose an overall Challenge winner (who will receive a $150 gift voucher to spend at furaddiction.com) and we'll upload all the entered photos to an album and let you guys choose a 'People's Choice' winner who will receive a $50 gift voucher.

{All four bears are just slightly different variations of the same, original plain white bear. I think you guys can do even better than this and am So excited to see what you all come up with! }

Free Postage

We don't do this very often. But we wanted to say a huge thankyou to our amazing customers. It was officially 1 year last month since we launched Fur Addiction, and even we're surprised at how many wonderful new people we've met and what a crazy journey running a small business as your sole form of family income can be!

Bubble, Clementine and Yue - plus some Piggy Panties!

This little sweetheart is our very latest bear 'Bubble' - finished about 3hrs ago this afternoon! She is something a little different, and a little anime/cartoon. Despite not really liking how she looked when I first finished her face, I'm actually quite proud of her now. All of her accessories and shading have pulled the look together.

She was made with a small piece of this stunning tipped mohair I had saved in my personal stash from some years ago. So she is most definitely a one off. We used our 'Booth' pattern, but reduced it by 50% (ie. print two pages of the pattern document onto one A4 page). You can check out all of her details in her etsy listing currently. 

And this fluffy boy was made yesterday. This is Clementine, so named due to his citrus coloured fur. I have used this fur some time ago for a trio of bears, but decided to use up the last of it for this big guy. He's made using our 'Booth' pattern, but we've placed the eyes a lot closer to the front of the face then is called for in the original design. The longer-pile fur helps give a more modern teddy look as well.

And lastly little 'Yue' - also made in the 'Booth' pattern reduced by 50%. He is made in our matted mohair range with a ribbon ruffle made from our new cross-grain spotted ribbons. 

Tiny Yue is currently available in our etsy store.

~ * ~

Amidst all of the bear making and general life, we adopted a new guinea pig that is just Chelsea's pet. She has been named 'Kobe' and is the most chilled out, relaxed little pig I've ever met. Chelsea was doing the whole 'watching TV while feeding Kobe grass on the couch' thing she likes to do most days, when we got the idea to see if one of her Cabbage Patch doll nappies would fit on Kobe.

This was the result!

So after posting this picture on our guinea pig facebook page, we got lots of questions about the possibility of making some of these for other people's pets. I set about drawing up a pattern that would fit a piggy a little better. The end result is shown below:

 We also made up some 'Ruffle' Piggy Panties for the more feminine pigs out there. These are especially cute! They are a little bizarre, but if you're interested you can also find cavy related goodies on our website too. 

Englebert

This brilliantly colourful big bear is 'Englebert. I asked for some name suggestions over at our Emma's Bears FaceBook page and we had over 100 comments! SO many names to pick from.

One suggestions really tickled my fancy though, and so this big boy was christened 'Englebert'! He has since found his new home, but you can check out his unusual fur in our store if you'd like to have a go working with it - it really comes up a treat!

Kosta, Skittles, Ace, Avalon, Aristos, and 'Sneeze' meet the world!

We had another big week/fortnight here at Emma's Bears. It always amazes me when I pop on over to Blogger to do another post, and look back at all the new faces I need to show off - and see just how many have emerged since I last chatted to you guys.

This week we had a lot of bears.

And a rat. And a rat pattern.

And some more bears! lol

This little cherub was 'Kosta'. He was made in our Lyric pattern (the one that includes pieces to make three very different bears) using our black and tan faux fur fabrics. Because the backings on our faux fur lines have been chosen for their lack of stretch, they're very easy to work with and allow us to do face-inserts and tricks like that with the bears without warping of the shape. I actually really like the colour combo of the black/brown here too. But I choose Kosta's bright blue eyes late one night while I was working on his face, and found them a touch too pale in the light of the morning.

Kosta has left home to meet his new family, but we do have kits available for him. And you can choose whatever coloured eye you'd prefer from our eye listings. He would look completely different with gold eyes, or green eyes or even basic solid black eyes.

The other new, exciting product we've added to our bear supplies section of our Emma's Bears/Fur Addiction store is the addition of our 'Rat Pattern'. These were my initial sketches of Mr Rat back in 2012 when I first got the bright idea to see how one would turn out. The prototypes were made in rainbow dyed LouBear mohair, and worked out beautifully (see below).

But I hadn't tried the design in a more natural colour-way, so decided to use our shortpile/antiqued line of mohair to see how it would look. The result was 'Skittles':

Skittles is so sweet - as far as rodents go - and I love the big, droopy ears. His tail/rear legs are wired for posing, and his front legs are jointed. He's a really interesting, easy pattern for a beginner-to-intermediate bear maker to try out. Something a little different to bears.

The biggest challenge with him would be turning out his tail, but my advice to anyone embarking on the 'Rat Pattern' journey is to only sew one side of the tail, then turn it out and ladder stitch it over the wire frame rather than attempting to turn out out fully sewn (which is what I did - and 30mins later and lots of choice words, I finally managed to get that little bugger turned! Why do I always end up making things harder for myself due to laziness! In this situation, a little hand stitching will save a lot of pain!).

'Skittles' is available for adoption if you're looking at adding a rat to your collection ;)

We also had the 'A' triplets - 'Avalon', 'Aristos' and 'Ace'. These guys were made from our 'Willa/Attila Bear/Bunny' pattern (using the bear pieces, not the bunny pieces).

Avalon was made in some left over mohair pieces I had from my personal stash. She has found her new home.

Ace was made from our 'Latte' tipped, distressed mohair. He has also found his new home, but you can purchase his Kit if you'd like to try making one yourself.

And Aristos was made in our 'Milk Chocolate' Kid Mohair. He too has found a new home, but is available in Kit form.

Then we switched pace a bit and ended up with this crazy big guy. My initial plans for this bear were that he was going to be a sweet little lady-bear with maybe a pink hair bow... but when I'd finished with that face I knew this was no girl-bear!

And so 'Sneeze' was born - a gorgeous, unusual bear in luxury green faux fur and floral print pads. Sneeze has now found his own home as well.

And to leave you guys with a sneak peek - this is our latest work-in-progress. He will be a big, chunky boy and is made in our 'Island Sunset' faux fur. We'll upload his finalised pics as soon as he's done!