Pink Elephants

After all the fun of making the elephant family from last post, I decided to whip up a trip of pink elephants out of this fabric combo.

There was a reason I hadn't used this last piece of fairy-floss pink faux fur though.... as I was about to discover!

Drawing the mini elephant pieces was fine, cutting was a little tricky, but sewing was horrible!!! After quite a few hours I got there in the end though - and finally had sweet little elephant faces staring back at me!

These are the finished cuties. Three little 7" ladies in the same pattern - but each one has turned out with their own unique look.

Rosie-Belle is now SOLD 

Rosie-May is also now SOLD

but Rosie-Rue is the last pink elephant left available. 

Pink and Green

I had a bit of fun with some experiemental mohair dyeing again recently, and ended up with two pieces of long pile mohair in a soft floral pink and a rather vibrant lime green. 

The pink was lovely. But the green was a little brighter then I had imagined  it would be. But I decided to see  how the two colours would work together. 

This little lady was one of the resulting bears. We've called her 'Sweet Dreams' after a variety of small pink rose. She stands in at 14" tall and is actually made in our 'Lyric' pattern, just reduced down to 85% to give us a slightly smaller bear.

She's currently available in our etsy store.

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And this little lady is 'Hydrangea'. Also named after flowers - this time a little less obscure. I found an example of the flowers that inspired this bear through a google search - I love the way all the individual flowers make the ball shape.

Very much like this bear's head!

Hydrangea is also currently available in our etsy store.

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!

LollyPop

 I didn't actually plan it that way - but the same afternoon as I completed the 'Candy Collection' bears, I also managed to get this sweet girly bear done. She's one of our collaboration bears - and had a little hand written note in her bag of bits with her name 'LollyPop'.

So in keeping with the sugary theme - we kept her name!

She didn't have any paw pads cut out for her, so we designed some that would fit and cut them from a very sweet pink print cotton fabric. There was just enough left to make her a hair-bow at the end as well.

We also gave her one of our 'Lolly Pop' charms - which was also in pink and matched beautifully. This sweet little bear is available in our etsy store currently.

A little more hand-dyeing experimentation

Recently we purchased a small amount of this gorgeous long pile frosted choc mohair for a custom order. I ordered a little more then I actually needed so I could have a play with the left overs.

We dropped the remnant piece into a pot of 'Hermitage' coloured dye, and let it sit for a few hours.

This was the resulting, very rich colour!

This shows the two pink-dyed bears next to the original frosted custom bear. The colouring has made such a huge difference to the fur effect.

The two 10" bears we made from the dyed remnant piece are now listed in our etsy store, and I must say I'm really pleased with the look of the pink on choc. At the moment both Mirielle 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 are available. 

Rainbow Bears (and some BIG news)

It feels like it has been a VERY long week! lol. And in many ways it has. I had been posting progress pics and promising to get this group of bears finished each day this week over on the facebook page - but it just didn't happen. Tuesday Byron has a temp at kindy, so we had to go pick him up early and he just wanted to be cuddled. Then thursday we get another call and Chelsea was vomiting at kindy - so again I head back down and collect them both early (we get her home and she has a miraculous recovery and eats all afternoon!).

Then today (friday) we had them both home because they can't go back to kindy until there has been no vomiting for 24hrs (though I doubt the severity of the original vomiting episode...). So we ran a few errands this morning, then tried to keep them entertained this afternoon while Mark and I ran around like headless chooks trying to get all the last minute parcels out the door, and getting the last touches on these bears finally done.

I JUST squeezed in a photo shoot this afternoon before the sun went down. In the midst of all of this craziness I got a phone call to let me know that the blood test I'd had done first thing this morning had come back positive - I was indeed pregnant. (this is the digital test I'd done yesterday - so I kind of knew what they were going to tell me! lol).

BUT - that's not all. The craziest part about this is that this baby is not my husbands. It's not mine either! lol

I'm currently a gestational surrogate for friends of ours who are physically unable to carry their own baby (this just means the baby is genetically nothing to do with me - I'm just the 'oven'). It's only recently become a legal fertility option in Australia in the last few years, and is only legal if done so altruistically - un-paid. It's still very early days (as in today would be considered 4 weeks pregnant) - so we're just taking it day by day, but I was too excited not to share with someone!

We actually did embryo transfer the day before I started work on the five bears in the top photo - so this has kept me nice and busy while we waited.

Legally I'm not able to share any identifying details about the intended parents, so will keep things anonymous in that department. But I do hope to be able to share this journey with you guys as things progress over the next 9 months :)

But - back to the bears! lol. Little Orchid is actually the only one left available from the batch of 5 at the moment. She can be found in our etsy store, but I'm not sure how long she'll stay available for?!

(if you like her - get in quickly as this was the last of our super long pile german white mohair - and I don't know if I'll be doing my rainbow dyeing in the forseeable future!)

I'll post the close up photos of the other 4 bears over the weekend... right now it's nearly midnight and the buzz from today is giving way to a desperate need to sleep! :)