Bring on 2014!

Just a quick post this morning as we're technically still on 'holiday' ( - we're still at home, just decided to close the Fur Addiction and Emma's Bears businesses and not check emails for the Christmas/New Year period to have a little break! So if you have emailed us over the last week or so we will be back up and running again on the 2nd Jan).

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We ended up doing two celebrations due to the size of our family! The photo above was taken at the first gathering with my mum, step dad and siblings. It's cute, but was bloody itchy on that grass! lol

We spent Christmas day at my dad's property about an hours drive from our house. The kids spent the day in a little blow up pool while the adults made use of the 100m slope from the house to the dam to try out a new slip and slide!

We're having a quiet day today, and will probably no doubt all fall asleep way before midnight tonight too! Hope you're all keeping safe and enjoying the time off with your family and friends.

Happy New Year!

The bunny with the longest ears...

I had a little piece of one of our newest imported Limited Edition German mohair lines that was an odd shape, and too small to sell on our website - so decided to make up a duo of bear and bunny to see how it would look made up. I didn't expect much to be honest. I don't usually go for the super dense short pile mohair. I naturally gravitate towards long and wavy and luxurious... but I must say I was pleasantly surprised by how neat this mohair ended up looking.

The bear and bunny are cut from one of our un-released patterns that was actually just for a bear. I improvised some bunny ears for the second critter as I had just enough fabric to fit them in. I think my original plan had been to make them long and floppy... but as I sewed them I realised they were not going to be the droopy kind at all!

So bunny ended up with rather comically long, sticky-uppy ears! Which are actually really quite cute! lol

This is the little bear. We've called him 'Seren', and he's actually available in our etsy store at present.

And this is our little bunny, 'Shakila'. We also gave her a kid-mohair white bunny-tail to complete her look. She too is available in our etsy store.

This is the fabric we used to make Seren and Shakila. It's actually a mohair/wool/alpaca blend. We have a few pieces left on our website, but I don't think they'll last long.

My chubby Triplets

A week or so ago I was back out on the patio dyeing up yet another batch of rainbow goodness. This was due mostly to my wanting to finish a special project for the surrogate bub growing in my belly, but I decided to make the most of having the dye pots out and dye a few more meters of fur fabric too. The photo above shows some of the pieces catching a few rays of sun before it was time to rinse them off. 

We ended up with some really bright bits, and some less bright/more pastel toned pieces. I've always been attracted to BRIGHT colours... so couldn't help myself but steal one of the bright rainbow fat 1/4m pieces for an experimental trio of bears. The pieces were quite small, so I didn't know how the colours would look... but we decided to just jump right in. 

I managed to cut two full bears using our Willa/Attila pattern in the rainbow fur, then finished the last bear using some of the raw white mohair (called 'Lucy' and available in our store). This was the work-in-progress photo once the bodies had been jointed, the heads stuffed and the eyes set. They do look a little strange at this stage.

But they quickly came together with the edition of ears and a nose. The little white cutie got the most attention on our facebook page - she was pretty darn cute! lol

These were the two full-rainbow bears as I finished their faces. It's amazing how the different placement of colour makes such a difference to the overall look.

When they were finished, we decided they needed epic names to suit their big personalities. And thus, 'Nefertiti', 'Horus' and 'Ramses' were born!

We have a very limited amount of our hand-dyed super bright rainbow mohair left available in our store. If you do miss out however, you could certainly have a go at dyeing the plain white mohair 'Lucy' yourself  - it's a pleasure to work with!

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'Nefertiti' 

(NOW SOLD)

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'Horus'

(available in our etsy store)

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'Ramses'

(NOW SOLD)

Pigs!

These two pigs have been sitting in my 'to-be-finished' bucket for quite a few months now. I had planned to have them finished in time for releasing our pig pattern as a PDF that our customers can download and create themselves... but I haven't been proactive enough and the pattern is still sitting in the draft form! I WILL send it off to our graphic designer next week though. So all going well we will have it ready to release in early 2014.

For now, we just have these two cuties available for adoption. 'Boden' is made from a slightly fluffier hand-dyed mohair in limes, blues and aqua greens. He does have the more appealing face in my eyes - which is bizarre because I wasn't totally convinced the longer mohair would work for this design. He is currently available in our etsy store.

And this is 'Britta'. She is made from a piece of the original type of mohair we designed this pattern for - a nice antiqued/matted mohair. We hand-dyed this piece is a rich pink. Britta is also available in our etsy store. 

We've been quite busy this week dyeing up our last batch of rainbow mohair for 2013 as well. I've just posted the photos of the available pieces on our Fur Addiction Facebook page, but will do a blog post and link to the actual Fur Addiction website listings once we have them up in a few days. If you would like first choice on any of the new hand-dyed rainbow pieces feel free to check out the photos - all prices and sizes are stated there too :)

Blues and Yellows

These two bears are our lastest creations. They were totally inspired by the gorgeous sunflower-ish applique you can just make out on 'Addae's' paws. Mark and I pulled down all of the faux fur and mohair we thought might look best with the applique, and discussed which ones we thought were best. Mark really wanted the blue/yellow mix put together in some way, so we decided to make two bears!

This little guy is 'Hani' - and is the result of the blue/yellow idea. We've used our 'Zesty Lemon Sparkle' fur for the body, limbs and ears, and our 'Wild Blue Yonder' fur for the head. To tie the colours together a bit further, we then chose a blue-print cotton fabric for the paw pads, and saved enough to make a ruffle collar at the end. The result is this little cutie!

Hani is currently available in our etsy store. We used our 'Osias' pattern to create her, which is also available as an instant e-download.

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Then there's 'Addae'. A very large, chunky big bear made using one of our original Emma's Bears patterns from many many years ago with the centre-seam part on the head. We used the 'Wild Blue Yonder' light blue fur his head and lower belly, and our darker 'Starlight Sparkle' fur for his limbs, ears and upper body.

We wanted to make sure all the colours tied in with the paw pad applique, so we specifically went shopping for a new pedant to match (and surprisingly found one that looks like it was made for him!). We also gave him a pair of our OOAK hand painted eyes in matching gold/aqua colouring. And the big hand-embroidered mid-blue nose just brings it all together! Truely a bear for a blue-loving collector!

Addae is currently available in our etsy store.

RAINBOWS!!!

We had a lot of fun (and made a lot of mess) dyeing up a couple of batches of rainbow mohair last fortnight. The photo above shows the fabric freshly painted, and below shows it washed and drying. 

We have the last few unsold  fat 1/8m and 1/4m pieces available on our website if you'd like to have a play too :) 

With some of the pieces I kept aside to use, I made these guys. 'Arcobaleno' is the BIG 18" very fluffy bear. We used our newly imported 'Eddie' range of white mohair to make this boy - which has a long 45mm wavy pile. It dyed up a lot nicer than I expected being so long - and this bear is one of my favourited. I've taken a few photos of him (shown below), and he is still available for adoption.

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This little girl is 'Nalani', and was made in a shorter dense and wavy mohair that soaked up the colours beautifully - resulting in a very pretty little miss. She has since found her new home.

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Then today we have just finished these little cuties made in a softer pastel version of our rainbow fur. We used our very dense, plush newly imported white 'Noah' mohair to make these two (the raw white can be seen on Synclair's head).

Synclair is 9" tall, and is currently available. 

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And this is 'Sydney'. He is a bit taller, standing in at 15" tall. He has an unusual darker pair of our hand-painted glass eyes that give him a really cute wide-eyed look. Sydney is also currently available. 

(We also have one last piece of our 'Noah' mohair dyed in similar colours to these bears left on our website)