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! :)

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!

The pig and the bear

We decided to test our pig design from a week or so ago on a different fabric. Nothing is quite as perfect as the rhubarb mohair - but I was too curious to see the pig in a non-piggy colouring!

So we grabbed a piece of our hand dyed sparkle mohair, and got to work. 'Bluebell' is the result!

She's pretty sweet  (and has already found her new home), but I still think I liked the soft pink of the original pig best. We want to try the design in a few more fabrics, then we'll probably get it ready for sale as a PDF pattern.

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We also got a request for a custom bear in pink and purple - and this was the end result! We ended up calling her 'Jelly Bean' and she's made in 'Perky Pink' and 'Amethyst Sparkle' faux fur lines from our store. This was the first time we've used these fabrics, and put them together - and I'm really impressed with how well they've worked considering they have completely different textures/densities!

(The necklace has now become a favourite with Chelsea (nearly 4yrs) too. She was eyeing off the one I made for Jelly Bean, so I told her I'd make her one just for her. It's just a heap of our tiny coloured bells strung onto a cord, then tied into a ball. Chelsea wore hers all day - I just had to bargain with her to take it away for the night!)

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.