Christmas Kit 2016 - Snowball

We decided that it was the PERFECT time to put together a Christmas bear kit for 2016! In past years we've either completely missed the lead-up to Christmas in our busyness, or have gone for really big Christmas bear kits that are way more complicated then they need to be!

 This year we were inspired to create a more petite, simple little ted, made in a very underrated faux fur of ours - the gorgeous 'Blanc de blanc' faux mongolian fur. We used our 12" Sugar pattern, which would have to be one of our easiest and most economical designs - needing only a fat 1/8m piece of fur to complete. And we gave her one of our brand new flocked safety noses, which means no pesky nose-embroidery - instructions for inserting can be found further down the page.

We called this little puff of fluff 'Snowball' (quite appropriate don't you think!?) 

                     Here she is without any accessories, freshly finished and looking super cute. 

And below you'll see the four different accessory-options you can choose from if you'd like to have a go at making up one of her kits. We have decorated her with a strand of fluffy gold tinsel as a pretty Christmasy collar and a 3D matt-finish star pendant in either olive green, aqua blue, pale pink or dark pink. All four colours work wonderfully, and you can choose what colour suits your holiday decorating theme. 

When making this bear, you'll simply follow the instructions included with the Sugar pattern until you get to step 12. 

-       From there, you continue to follow the process described for stuffing and trimming the head/face – but DON’T close up the base of the neck just yet. This kit comes with the time saving step of inserting a safety nose, rather than embroidering one, so you’ll just need to lightly stuff the head and roughly trim back the fur around the muzzle/cheeks so you can mark out where you’d like the nose to sit before inserting it. (see example below – I marked the spot at the top of the nose where I planed to make a TINY hole to insert the back rod of the safety nose. Literally only cut one or two threads when making any hole in a faux fur fabric. You don’t want the hole to spread out of control!). Once you have a position marked for the nose, you can un-stuff the head and make the hole for the nose. 

-          Once you have this tiny hole for the nose – push the back rod of the safety nose through the hole, stretching it to fit the rod (it will give way without needing to cut more threads, this is the benefit of using a knit-back faux fur). Secure the rod in place using the locking disc. Press down as tightly as you can once you have the nose sitting in position. Once the nose is secure you can re-stuff the head again and close the neck joint into the base of the head as per instruction no. 12 in the SUGAR pattern. 

These noses are just perfect for Snowball bear - perfect size and shape, and they have a soft, flocked feel to them rather then being plain hard plastic. They're a great alternative to embroidering a nose. 

And they just look cute!