Halloween Collection 2013

Aww, look how sweet these 5 little cuties are. How are they Halloween bears...? 

THIS is how!!! These creepy little guys are the other-side of the bears in the first photo, made from our bizarre and unique 'Flop-About-Bear' design. We've used handmade Russian glass eyes and added droopy layers of sculpted polymer clay eye-lids to help with the effect. Given them 'rotting' embroidered noses, ultra suede fangs, balding patches and repair/stitch effects.

This little guy is 'Raven', made in our 'Forest Dweller' dark matted mohair.

This is 'Salem', made in our crimson/black tipped mohair 'Queen of Hearts'.

This is 'Hades', made in our 'Red Brick' matted mohair.

This is 'Fang', made in our 'Sahara' matted mohair.

And this 'Igor', made in our 'Dried Apricot' matted mohair.

Earth Air Fire and Water!

I was sewing up seams this morning, wondering what on earth I was going to name these 4 bears when I had a moment of inspiration! There were four bears, in appropriate colours... why not use the 4 elements as inspiration!!

And so we have 'Gaia' our earth bear - made in the bright green ('Green-Eyed Monster') and hot pink (Perky Pink) imported luxury faux fur fabrics. I liked the idea of the pink/green symbolising a fertile 'earth' blooming in greenery and flowers.

(The pattern for these guys is NEARLY finished! So as soon as it is I'll link the listings for the kits as well.)

Then we have 'Delaire' our air bear - made in the bright green and sky blue (Wild Blue Yonder) faux fur fabrics. Delaire's name is English in origin and means 'of the air'.

Then there was 'Naida' our water bear. Naida is made in the sky blue faux fur again, but this time paired with our rich purple (Purple Rain) faux fur. The colouring/tone of the purple is a little off in these photos - the contrast has made it look more like an inky indigo blue - but it's definitely purple in person.

And lastly, the rather bright 'Safara', our fire bear - for obvious reasons! Safara is made in our bright orange (Fantango) and hot pink faux fur fabrics which really do pair up beautifully! Her name is African in origin and means 'fire'.

You might need your sunglasses for these bears!

I had this BRILLIANT idea on the weekend just gone that I would make some new kit bears, as I haven't done this in quite a few months.

So I sat down with some of the special designs of mine that I'd been holding back from turning into PDF patterns for our store, and chose a select few to work with. This pattern here is one of my all time favourites. It makes up to a long, bendy/curvy 21" bear with the sweetest little face no matter what you do with it!

I sent the hand drawn pattern off to our graphic designer earlier this week, and we should hopefully have a professional PDF version of the pattern to release for sale by the end of the weekend - all going well! Hopefully in time to release these new brightly coloured bears I've cut from the same pattern.

I've gone with 4 colour mash-ups that I think work really nicely in our imported luxury faux fur lines. We have a lime/pink bear, a blue/purple bear, an orange/pink bear and a lime/blue bear.

There are other combos i think would also work - purple/pink or pink/blue for example - but I was too lazy to make 6 huge bears at once!!!

I've just finished filling each bear with glass beads and stuffing, and will close the seams and add the finishing touches tomorrow! I can't wait to show them off. I think these guys would make a stunning asthetic addition to a child's room (not so much as a play-thing though), or as a mood-brightener in an otherwise more neutral toned collection!

Watch this space for the finished collection! :)

Black, White and Gold

These three little cherubs were under construction earlier this week. Then I got sick.

I don't usually get sick. This was new for me. Everyone else in this house can have temps and coughs, or be vomiting and up all night complaining - but I just don't *usually* seem to succumb.

Until tuesday. I went to bed tuesday night with a slightly sore throat and a bit of a headache, slept really badly and woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. I spent the next few days mostly in my bed dealing with what I'm assuming was just one of the many winter viruses going around brisbane this season, combined with the worst morning sickness I've had in any of my pregnancies. But we all survived (I did ask Mark to put me out of my misery at one stage...  Thankfully he declined! lol).

 He actually stepped up and took on a lot of the things the kids were used to me doing - on top of all the bear fabric order packing and business emails... and we got through! I honestly have never had such an appreciation for my usual good health. I had definitely taken it for granted.

I'm still not better, but I'm bloody well better enough to get back to work. I have some wonderful nausea wafers to help with the morning sickness, and I think the excessive amounts of sleep have just been what my body needed to get on top of the virus.

I managed to get these three cute little cherubs actually finished this afternoon too - just in time to snap some photos before we ran out of light. I've called them 'Sovann' (means 'gold' in Cambodian), 'Sareh' (which means 'pure' in Persian) and 'Sable' which means 'black' in English.


'Sovann': 

All three girls are currently available in our etsy store. If you'd like to adopt all three, this is certainly possible (until one or two get adopted anyway), and postage will be combined.

They've been made in three colours of our kid mohair fabric range. We've sold out of the white, but have a reasonable amount of the gold and black left if you're inspired to make something like these guys yourself. The pink kid mohair would work nicely too.

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'Sable': 

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'Sareh': 

And in the midst of all the illness and craziness of the last week, we had our first ultrasound scan booked to make sure the little surrogate bub was growing like he should, and had implanted in a good spot (and that there was only ONE baby!) - and everything is looking good, nice heartbeat and the perfect size for where he should be. One tiny (1.01cm long) baby at 7wks gestation.

Pink Power!

We've whipped up quite a few pink girly faux fur bears this week. The pink/white/purple girl above is 'Candy Corn' and was finished just this afternoon.

She's made in one of our 13" stocky patterns designed about 4-5yrs ago, and never really used again! I've been re-visiting some of my older designs lately - just getting a bit nostalgic!

Her pink fur is our 'Perky Pink' imported faux fur, and her purple fur is our 'Purple Rain' faux fur. The white fur sadly isn't one of ours! (kicking myself that we didn't order a white in this range! hindsight's a pain in the butt!). It was actually a small scrap piece I found at the bottom of our mountain of scraps that we've been accumulating for years now. So I'm not even sure where it came from - but it worked perfectly with these colours.

(If you're interested in some scraps - we have 'scrap pack' listings available on the website as well to try and move some of the pile! If you're local to Brisbane we can even offer BIGGER volumes than those on the website!)

 I went to google the colour combo in an attempt to find a suitable name for this bear when I found an image of pink, purple and white candy corn lollies. I've never seen them in this colour mix before, only the yellow/orange/white version - so I was suitably impressed!

And 'Candy Corn's' name was born! She's actually still available in our etsy store at the moment if you're quick too :)

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Then we had this big girl... she was finished late last week, and has already found her new home.

She was actually made in one of our very newest patterns - a chunky signature bear -style pattern I designed recently for a custom order. We haven't made a signature bear in a long long time, but I knew the pattern would need to be 'fat' enough to allow the bear to look like a cuddly teddy without the assistance of fur. So this cute little guy below is what we came up with.

I then wanted to see what this bear would look like with fur, so we made 'Zefirah'. She's the first bear we've made in our 'Turkish Delight' faux fur (rich pink with a subtle milk-chocolate fleck through the pile). She turned out nice and fat and chunky and was snapped up very quickly.

You can find the mini roses and ribbon we used for her head band in our store if you're curious to make a similar accessory. I have a basic tutorial on how to put it all together here too.

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And lastly we have this stunning little custom bear made in our purple and yellow sparkle faux fur range. I fell in love with this little one as soon as her face was finished! She's actually our 'Lyric' pattern reduced by about 55% (easily done as the pattern is a PDF, so you just select to print it out smaller when in the printer settings). The result is a petite 9" bear that really is the perfect size to slip into a collection.

I'm really happy with the colour combo too - requested by her new mum! I think I might have a go at mixing and matching a few more of our sparkle faux fur fabrics to see what other cool combos we can make!