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! ;)