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! :)

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.