Custom Premmie Baby Bear

This little guy is Baby Oscar. I was contacted by his mum a few weeks ago asking if I could make a bear 41cm long and 3lbs 1oz in weight. I was a little surprised by how specific the sizing/weighting needed to be for her custom bear, but then she explained why and I totally understood.

Back in February when I was also pregnant with my surrogate bubba, her little guy was born sleeping at 33wks. He was born weighing 3lbs, 1oz and 41cm long. And his name was Oscar.

So I made some adjustments to my newborn-sized baby bear design to bring the proportions back down to a smaller 'premmie' size, and to make sure the bear would be 41cm long when assembled.

His mum chose from our available mohair, and decided that our 'Oscar' tipped mohair was meant to be. I hadn't made a baby bear from this fur before, but I must say I'm really impressed with how well it makes up in a larger sized bear.

She asked that he be dressed in a little knitted jacket, and have the white body/sleeve 'onesie' look like some of my other baby bears have had (we used our 'Noah' mohair for this - it's seriously soft and perfect for the task).

And so 'Baby Oscar' the bear was completed this morning. His little knitted cream hoodie jacket arrived in the post late friday (and was a perfect fit), and he had his photoshoot earlier today. The photos have been sent to his new mum and I'm so relieved to say she likes him!

I must say that this has been a very touching custom order, and one I was so honoured to be asked to do.

Baby Dragon

This week I've been working on finishing the bears for the Teddies Worldwide Show (which I have! Hurray!), and working on some custom bears, elephants and guinea pig plushies, AND working on a few 'available for sale' critters as well. 

This little cutie was the first to be finished. I didn't plan to complete her yet. I actually have another Dragon in blue/silver sparkle faux fur cut up and ready to sew as well, and meant to finish the pair of them together... but this green girl was begging me to bring her to life. 

Slowly but surely over the last few days she took form. Until earlier this afternoon I actually had a gorgeous little face looking back at me...

... and 'Natsuki' was born. 

Her name means 'Moon' and 'Green' - kind of appropriate for both her funky mohair (of which we have a very limited last few pieces left) and her stunning gold-tone/faux crystal moon shaped forehead talisman.

I didn't want to make her quite as expensive and fragile as my original two baby dragons, so experimented with giving her soft black leather claws instead of clay ones. It actually worked quite well and looks pretty effective.

We also decided to try making our own wings for Natsuki. I made them a little smaller, and in the same fabric as her spikes/belly/ paw pads - coating in golden sparkles and with a sparking clear glass crystal drop on the end of each wing.

Natsuki is a one of a kind, very special little soft sculpture dragon. She is currently available in our etsy store. 

Teddies Worldwide Online Bear show PREVIEW

The Teddies Worldwide online bear show is nearly here!!! (I still have two more bears to finish for it too! Somebody needs to slow down time already!).

The preview bears for all 75 artists were unveiled over the weekend. I think I spent a good 15mins just going through each listing and making all sorts of 'oohhh' and 'ahhh' noises! There are some spectacular entries.

The little bear above is our preview bear for the 'Vacation' themed show. We've called her 'Island Sunset' (and she's made from our faux fur on the same name).

If you want to check out the preview bears and vote for your favourite you can find the preview on the Teddies Worldwide Website.

[You might notice our little Fur Addiction ad on the top right hand side too!] 

Baby's First Bear - kits and patterns ready to go

Our 'Baby's First Bear' design is now available as an instant download PDF pattern, and/or in KIT form as well:

'CHARLIE' KIT

'BLAKE' KIT

'CHESTER' KIT

'HEIDI' KIT

'JULIA' KIT

'SASHA' KIT

Settled (mostly)

Well, THAT was a weekend to remember! We're all moved and settled now though. I have a nice little nook for my sewing machine, the bears and fabric have their display shelf, the fabric rolls are stacked nicely and the kids rooms are all set up with new beds and their favourite toys (the rest of the toys have been boxed and placed in storage. It'll be like Christmas when we move to our final location and they get to unpack them all again!).

The brilliant part about our current temporary location is that we have the business downstairs and the 'house' upstairs, so we will be able to have customers come and touch/see the fabric in person now if they are local. (All the contact details can be found on our 'About Us' page on the FurAddiction website).

I set about working on a lanky bear in some of our hand-dyed mohair this morning. The light isn't great in my little nook, but we'll grab a bigger lamp next time we're out and about to remedy that.

But, despite the light-issue, we still managed to get this vibrant little lady finished. She's an homage to Summer now that we've just clicked over into Winter down here in Australia. She has a sweet summer-dress with dolphin print, franjipani beaded necklace and a little headband. We asked our Facebook likers to help us name her, and they came up with 'Marigold' which suits her nicely.

Marigold is made using a piece of our hand-painted mohair, and our 'Kanoa' pattern.

Who's brilliant idea was THIS!?

Mark and I have been discussing moving house for a while now, but we'd put it off while I was pregnant with the surrogate bub as that really would have been biting off more then we could chew!!

But I'm recovered now (and able to lift again!), and so our conversations got a little more real. And a little more action-based. Until before we knew it we had a plan in place and a whole house (with full mail-order fabric business!) to pack up! We've decided to see if we can move a little more rural - a larger block of land for the kids and the dogs, and space for us to build a proper warehouse for the business. And maybe even a store front (if we don't have to go too far out into the bush to be able to afford a property anyways!).

We have a deadline of next January 2015 to try and be in our new home as this is when Chelsea will start school. And we'd like to be settled somewhere in time for her first day. We move into a rental property this weekend to allow us to renovate our house for sale... then we cross our fingers and hope someone likes this place as much as we did.

It really is amazing how much STUFF you can accumulate over the years. I've been busily moving from room to room trying to cull the things we don't need, don't use or that simply don't add to our lives (we've already delivered a full ute-load full of donated goods to the Red Cross. They were so thankful, but Mark and I were like 'No, thank YOU'! )

We now have little pockets of our house with piles of things we're keeping, but still need to pack.

We have bunk beds in pieces and leaning up against the walls. We have precarious piles of boxes that the kids think we've put there especially for their climbing pleasure! And we still have to sort out the business side of things. We have over 50 different types of fur we sell in our Fur Addiction mail order business, and most of the different lines have 3-4rolls a piece... that equals a LOT of fabric to move! And that's not including all the little bits and pieces like eyes and joints and bead weights and stuffing...

... yeah. Who's idea was this!?

 

(The dogs decided they'd 'help' with the packing by reducing the weight of the dog house. Such thoughtful little critters!) 

So, for the next few days there won't be a lot of bear-making happening. Our packing of fabric orders might be a little delayed as well, though we do hope to be set up by this time next week. 

In the meantime we live around the chaos, and plan for the next stage of both our lives and our business! 

Baby's First Bear

A few days before I was scheduled to be induced to deliver my surro-bub Zander, I sat down to make him a little teddy of his own (the photo above shows Zander at 1-week old with that teddy). I wanted the design to be as childfriendly as possible, so played with an older design of mine to end up with an unjointed floppy bear with safety eyes. The bear is super easy to create (working beautifully in both plush, faux fur and mohair), and we will be releasing the pattern for it shortly as well. 

"Baby's First Bear' is a brand new range of teddies to be released from the Emma's Bears studio. These cute little bears are specifically designed to be safer for children. They have child-like large heads and finer bodies, highset ears, are completely unjointed, have black safety eyes and are fully machine washable (which means they're ready for some hands-on playtime!). We've stuffed them softly with a brand new hypo-alergenic polyfill stuffing, and left the bead weights out so there are minimal small parts."

We've made 10 Baby's First Bears as our starting range, and they can be found in our etsy store. *** Please note that at the time of writing some bears have sold***