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! ;)

The latest import (almost 1.5tonne worth of fur!)

Behind the scenes here at Emma's Bears and Fur Addiction we've been busily checking fur samples and choosing colours for our newest import of deluxe faux fur. The factory we've chosen to work with are amazing, and make each of our fabrics to specification (pile,colour,backing etc) - fresh from the looms once we've finally decided on what we want!

This time around was both trickier - because we knew how much storage space 1 tonne + of fur fabric takes up!, but easier as well - because we also knew we wanted brighter colours and lush piles. So we placed our order for 14 new lines, and waited.
And waited.

And waited!

And a lot of you were waiting patiently alongside us! (It takes a long time to send a shipping container half way around the world!).

Then on the Thursday we got the phone call we were waiting for - the container had cleared customs and was ours to unload the following day. But we only had ONE day to get it empty! (and the holding yard owners wanted to leave after lunch time. It was Friday after all!).

The photo above shows the container as we first arrived and opened it up. Each one of those rolls holds about 25-35m of fabric, and weighs about 30-40kg! They are LONG, and awkward and didn't quite fit in the back of our ute (as you can see in the photo below!). It just made it an extra challenge to load as many rolls as safely possible with each trip. We used a lot of tie-down straps! We also had the extra challenge of working against the weather which was threatening to pour down at any minute. We had the weather radar images on our phones as we were travelling. It was quite a mission! But so much fun at the same time.

Nothing beats cutting back those hessian sacks to reveal the array of gorgeous fabrics underneath. Seriously better than christmas for someone addicted to fur ;)

We managed to unload the whole container by 1pm. We were feeling very proud of ourselves but we still needed to cut, photograph and name each of our new fabrics. The photo above shows the storage area getting more and more colourful with each load we were packing away.

The photo below shows each of the 14 new pieces cut and stacked. (photos taken on my iphone - so not the greatest quality!).

It's an interesting position to be in, being a bear maker as well as a fabric importer. We have quite literally have TONNES of fabric at our disposal, and I have so many ideas whizzing around my head that it's a bit of an art to keep it all in balance and not get too overwhelmed. But I must say, every time I look at this picture the ideas kick off again, and the whizzing doesn't want to be contained. You guys will just have to stay tuned for some very bright bears and critters coming up over the next few months I think!

We decided to do another 'name the fur, win a 1/4m' game on our facebook page again shortly after we'd gotten all the pieces photographed. You guys came up with some amazing names - names that Mark and I would never have thought of ourselves, so thank you so much.

We now have each of the new fabrics available on our website www.furaddiction.com. The new pieces are also available in etsy - but the sizes are a little more limited as we've been prioritizing the website. Each of the individual photos of the fabrics are available below, along with their listing links. Sizes are available from 1/8m pieces all the way up to bulk orders of 10m+.

'Bright Ice Sparkle'

'Purple Rain'

'Clown's Colar' 

'Red Riot Sparkle'

'Turkish Delight'

'Amethyst Sparkle'

'Fantango'

'Aurora Borealis' 

'Green-Eyed Monster'

'Perky Pink'

'Starlight Sparkle'

'Island Sunset'

'Wild Blue Yonder'

'Zesty Lemon Sparkle'

And the two main colour ranges together to show contrast. Please note that these colours will look different on different computers. Use the images as a guide only.

Three new HUGE bears, a Birthday Party (and a bear show!)

In the last few weeks we have been CRAZY busy! Firstly, I decided (in my infinite wisdom) to create three more HUGE 21" bears in the same pattern as Samson (see last post). But this time using a few different faux furs. The two bears shown below are made in some fur I had lying around in my personal stash - something a little different to the fabrics I have been working with from our Fur Addiction store for the last year or so. They've come together quite nicely in panda form - see Sequin above and below, and in dark-head, light body form - see 'Schubert' far below.

We gave Sequin some shimmery green glitter detail to match in with her vibrant hand-painted and sculptured eyes. The crazy-green bow helps to bring it all together too. Sequin is currently available in our etsy store. 

This is Schubert. He got over-sized eyes to give him a different look again. He is actually quite soulful, and it's hard to take your gaze from him when you're in the same room.

Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.... lol

And this is Hazel. I hadn't made a bear example in our 'Toasted Marshmallow' faux fur yet - so thought I'd take on the challenge of a bigger bear. It's actually turned out quite well too. It's not as fluffy of a look as the previous fur fabrics, but just gives her a neater over-all appearance.

Hazel also has hand painted eyes in a hazel green-gold (hence the namesake! lol), and big detailed and shaded paws. Hazel is also available in our etsy store. 

And because it's always so hard to see how big bears actually are in photos - I decided to brave a photo of myself with Schubert. These bears are big. And chunky!

The three bears together. 

So, the other part of the reason that we've been so busy over the last few weeks was that we were prepping for a doll and bear show again. We don't tend to do a lot of these, mostly because we aren't brave enough to take Byron and Chelsea with us (and babysitters can be a little hard to come by). But this show was 2mins down to road from Nonna's house - so it was like it was meant to be! The kids got a day with one of their most favourite people in the world, and we got a day meeting and greeting fellow bear crafters. 

It turned out to be quite a rainy day (again! The rain hasn't really stopped here in Brisbane since I last posted!) - so we didn't get a heap of visitors. But we were still kept very busy with lots of questions about the bears, patterns and fur fabrics.

We actually only just collected our latest shipment of faux fur from the port of Brisbane two days earlier as well! You can see some of the new colours in the photo below. But THAT is a whole other post that I'll put together for you guys in a few days. Watch this space for lots of photos of some VERY colourful fabrics!

The OTHER big reason we've been so busy since our last post was that we've been celebrating our 'baby's' 2nd birthday! Byron turned TWO on the 1st Feb. It doesn't seem like 2 years ago that he made his way into the world... but it is. He's a big boy now to prove it!

I attempted to make him a sponge cake in the shape of a car.... it ended up more like an eggy chunk of pudding slathered in icing and sprinkles. Byron still ate it. Well... he ate the icing anyways! lol

(and yes - it does look like he has three candles! One of them was supposed to be a sparkler candle... but it didn't work. So we lit him two normal candles as well. I realised AFTER the photos that this is probably going to be really confusing for him when he looks back on these photos as a grown up! lol)

Big sister Chelsea watching on while Daddy (Mark) cuts the first piece. And below we have the aftermath... 'let me wipe my hands on your dress mummy'!