Custom spots are now closed

Just wanted to do a little post to let you guys know that our custom-bear spots are now officially closed for the next few months. (The photo explains a little as to why that might be!)

I'm currently 29wks into a surrogate pregnancy for friends of ours. Their little boy is due late March/early April, and previous experience with my own two pregnancies tells me that my motivation/energy levels will continue to get worse as the next few weeks pass by! (Until I no longer fit behind the sewing machine at all!). I started a blog about the surrogacy process for those who are curious:http://aussiesurrogatejourney.blogspot.com.au/

Mark and I will still be making a variety of our 'available for adoption' bears during this time, and the fabric supply business Fur Addiction will be in full swing so you can still order your fur, kits, patterns etc. The only restriction will be on custom orders.

If you have custom requests in mind, you're welcome to still contact us, but there will be a decent delay on them. Just wanted to be open about that 

So, on the topic of custom bears - I thought I'd show off the last 4 custom placements we completed before closing the books. These two were made in our 'Lyric' pattern using our 'Arctic Wolf' and 'Coconut Ice' faux furs. (Just a heads up that we're down to our very last few pieces of Arctic Wolf - it has been our most popular line. If you'd like some before it's sold out I'd suggest getting in asap. It has a gorgeous long, dense pile and looks lovely with the face trimmed back).

The photo above shows the faces in the raw. All we've done here is stuff, close the neck seam and trim back the fur on the face area roughly. I like to do this before I set the eyes so I can get a better idea of where to sink the eye-sockets.

Once I have the eye-placement worked out, its then a matter of choosing the best eyes for the bear. The mum of these guys wanted hand painted eyes for both - sparkly blue/green for the white bear and pinky/purple with sculptured lids for the pink bear. Both pairs of eyes selected were the same size - but the addition of the sculptured lids for the pink bear makes them look so much bigger. She has the cutest cartoon-like expression.

The noses were also embroidered and the cheeks were re-trimmed to neaten them up and make them more symmetrical. The photo below shows the head finally attached to the white bear's body. They're so cute at this stage with their saggy, floppy bodies!

Stuffing can take a little while for bigger bears, and so by the end of the afternoon this was all I'd achieved. But they were ready for seam-closing. (another of the more tedious tasks!).

The next day was all about shading and accessorising. I'd used a matching pink felt for the paws on the pink bear, but discovered that felt doesn't shade very nicely - or at least not this particular piece! So to solve the problem we shaded around the felt, drawing the silk-dye through the pile of the fur on the hands and feet. It really gave quite a nice contrast with the depth behind her eyes.

And then, all of a sudden I had two finished bears looking back at me. We gave the white bear a matching sparkly blue bow and the pink bear got a black/white beaded necklace. Both bears are no on their way to their new mum in the USA.

~*~

The other two custom creations we had lined up to complete were these gorgeous little piggies. They were commissioned as a wedding present for a couple with the last name of 'Ham'. (How perfect is that!). The girly-pig is hand-dyed in a soft multi-tonal lilac/purple shade, while the boy pig is a handsome sky-blue. (We used our new 'Emmett' short pile matted white mohair as the fabric base - it works so beautifully on bears/critters like this, and can be dyed in any colour you can imagine).

The girl pig was given some very flirty eyelashes and rosey cheeks. She is going to be accessorised a bit more once she arrives at her commisioning mum's place. I can't wait to hear how they were received at the wedding!