Winter

As promised in the last post - we needed to complete our 'Season' of bears with Winter... and here he is!

Winter is made in our Kid mohair - pastel dyed (dye paste was painted onto the backing and allowed to seep/bleed through to the pile). He is 17" tall, but is a long, lanky boy. He's all floppy and lovely to hold too. Just right for cuddle. And he's currently available for adoption.

Autumn, Summer and Spring

Our bear-making week in photos :)  

We were asked to make another big bendy rainbow bear as a special custom order recently. Something like this bear (from quite a few years ago now!)

So we set out cutting off a rather large piece of our 'Polar' kid mohair and drawing up four bears (the fourth will be showcased in a few days - he still needs his ears attached!) 

When all the pieces have been cut and prepped, we lay them out and get to work painting them in cascading rainbow colours. This is incredibly time consuming - but if you keep the colour strips and blending as even as possible, you'll end up with limbs/bodies what look like they were dipped into a rainbow! The photo above shows the pattern pieces still wet with the colour setting. 

Below we can see these same pieces rinsed and laying out flat to dry. We always get a much softer colour then it appears when wet. The backing soaks ups a brighter intensity of colour and the pile stays pastel. It gives a really lovely effect. 

Then there were a few days of work where there wasn't anything too interesting to photograph - just lots of sewing and turning and jointing. This was the end of one of the days of work - three bears lined up in the corner next to a massive new batch of painted eyes with the hope that if I had them pushed to one side of the lounge room the colours wouldn't catch the attention of Master-2-yr-old and Miss-Nearly-4yrs. (Yes - I do need a studio with a close-able door! lol) 

Fast forward another day or so and we have three bears fully stuffed and just awaiting their detailing and seam closing (the most tedious aspect of bear making in my opinion!). 

The bears in their fully finished glory - in natural lighting. That little aspect makes a HUGE difference to the clarity of the photos my little point-and-shoot Canon can take! We asked our Facebook likers to help us with names again - and ended up calling them 'Autumn', 'Summer' and 'Spring'. Our last little dyed-bear from this batch (mentioned earlier) will end up with the name 'Winter'. He can have his own listing in a few days when his head is attached to his body.... :) 

Autumn and Summer have been adopted. 

Only 'Spring' is left looking for his new home. When you meet him in person his light green/blue/lemon eyes don't look quite so intense... I think the natural light hasn't done him a great deal of justice in that department. But he is still a lovely, handsome big boy. 

I love the photo showing the length of his arms and legs. He does look so serious posed like this though! It's a little bit of an optical contrast - my brain goes 'Why so serious, you look like you're dressed for a Mardi Gras!?' 

lol. Poor Spring. 

We had a bit of dye from the rainbow bears left over on dyeing-day, so we decided to use our last piece of longpile white mohair to make a pretty pastel selection of 'Easter Colours'. Each piece is a one of a kind, and only available until I get too tempted and use them for a bear creation of my own!

(they're actually the same pile length/type as the fur I used for little Aoki shown below... you can see why they might not last as pieces of fabric in this house for very long... the temptation to draw out patterns is HIGH! !! lol) 

Aurora and Paradise

I am so excited to introduce you to our latest duo of bears - this stunner is 'Aurora'. She is made in our 'Aurora Borealis' faux fur and has eyes painted to match the kaleidoscope of colours!

She was adopted very quickly - but we do have kits available for her. You will get the same fur, same pattern, nose thread, joints, glass lampwork pendant and your own choice of HUGE painted glass eyes. Every pair of eyes will be different making your Aurora bear unique :)

We took quite a few photos of this lady... 

And this is our second newly completed bear - made using our deluxe faux fur fabrics in 'Island Sunset' and 'Arctic Wolf' - both a very similar pile length/density and feel - only different versions of the tipped effect. I wasn't sure how the colours would work together - but I am pleasantly surprised. 

Paradise is the same height as Aurora, but a much chunkier design. This is actually our BRAND NEW design available as a e-pattern. The pattern itself is called 'Lyric', and we used it a few months ago to showcase the three different bears that are able to be made using the adjustments included in the pattern. Paradise is the 'cheek insert' version. You can also make a 'full' one colour bear, and/or a panda version as well.

At the time of writing, Paradise is available for adoption. She is also available in Kit form.

(these are the three examples of the bears you can make with the adjustments included in the 'Lyric' Pattern)

Seven bears

We've been a busy little bees over the last week or so ... but have neglected this blog a bit. Which makes me a little sad and nostalgic... i think back to the early days of this blog when it was a mix of baby-photos and random daily postings and how much simpler life was back then! :)

Now I try to condense a weeks worth of bear-making updates into one post... which makes for a lot of scrolling for you guys! So to counter that - I'll keep my text short and sweet. Pictures are what we're all here for anyways isn't it! ;)

These are the seven bears we've finished in the last seven days or so. A few are already adopted, but where they're still available I'll link them back to their etsy listings for you guys :)

This sweet girl is Willow. I finished her on the weekend, in the dim light of our lounge room. When I got to see her in daylight the next morning I was pleasantly surprised that she was so whimsical and sweet. She has already found a new home.

These little oddities are 'Apple and Crumble'. We got some special help on our facebook page to name them. Crumble has found her new home now as well, but Apple is still available.

Then there was this little fluff-ball. We made him from a piece of our long-pile white mohair (Cloudland) that we dyed a sweet pastel blue (I literally just dipped this mohair in the pot of dye for about 10 seconds, then pulled it and out rinsed it off! - and we got this awesome pastel shade!).

Aoki has also found a new home already.

Then there was this awesome big bear! He was made as a custom order for a collector's grand-baby. He has big hand-painted green safety eyes and a removable double-bow. I love how innocent and huggable he turned out.  It really, honestly surprised me how the bears end up looking sometimes. Even after using my same designs for year - just a slightly different eye placement, nose size/shape or fabric choice can make such a huge difference to the end result. The part of me that likes control struggles with this aspect of the craft a little bit, but the part of me that likes surprises get's a treat every time a bear is finished!

And last but not least we have the fluffy-belly twins 'Taite' and 'Torrin'. Both of these boys are still available (because I forgot to list them on bearpile! lol). They are made in a faux fur I collected a few years ago. I drew up the patterns back then as well, and had even gotten to the stage of cutting and pinning - but had never finished them. So I decided to breath some life into them...

.... but I misplaced their bodies! lol. So I improvised with two complementing sparkle longpile faux fur pieces. I really love the look actually, and I've stuffed the bellies with lots of beads and squishing filling so they sit beautifully on a shelf or in your hands.

I was actually doing my next round of sewing yesterday (another 7 bears!) when I picked up an odd bag of bear-bits. I opened it up and found two sewn and turned bodies - belonging to these two bears! lol. So now I'm thinking I might build two new bears around those two misplaced bodies and see what happens. Stay tuned for more franken-bears to come! ;)