Turi the Polar Bear

*** Turi has been adopted ***


This is my latest little bundle of cuteness - meet Turi the Polar Bear.


He's made from a texture white mohair/or alpaca/ or mix of both - not quite sure which! He's fully jointed and stuffed well with stainless steel shot and a touch of polyfill. This means he's quite heavy for his size, and it means he can stand on his own despite being so floppy. I love stainless steel in bears! A little goes a LONG way too!

Turi is currently available on bearpile and my own available page.




(And I just thought I'd include a quick photo of some custom rainbow guinea pigs I made last week. I've been tweaking my pattern again to make it work better for baby-proportions, and added some new features (polymer clay sculptured eyelids/noses) for extra character. I think they turned out pretty well!)

Oreo and Blizzard

So the custom bears are done!!! I had so much fun making these two as well. It was a mission trying to carry them both, and the camera, and trying not to trip over Oliver to get photos of them together yesterday. I think one of the things I love the most about custom orders is that they help push you in a direction you maybe wouldn't have gone on your own. For example, I would never have purchased this mohair exclusively for this project on my own. I would have squirreled it away in my fur box, 'saving' it for an unknown project. But now it gets turned into these guys! Also, I would never have thought to make such big bears so squishy and cuddly - falling back on the whole 'limbs need to be firm, joints need to be tight' mantra - but it works so well like this! It takes what would have been a rather large and imposing bear with not much cuddle appeal, into a rather large and imposing bear that you just want to bury your face in!

And the twist in all of this is that these two bears are actually up for general adoption now too! I've just listed them on bearpile, but will add all the photos to the blog as well. I think it would be lovely if they could find a home together, but know that not many homes would have room for two such big giants. So I've listed them individually as well. And in the next few days I plan on making the grizzly bear version too (I cut him out as a supposed 'practice' bear for using the new pattern of mine, but got impatient and wanted to make the 'real' bears first!). So keep an eye out for the jumbo Grizzly to complete the bear family!



These are some photos of Oreo on his own:






And here we have Blizzard's individual photos as well:

Panda's and Polars

I have been a little quiet in terms of blogging this week. But I have a very good reason. I'm busily working away on two massive custom bears - a Panda and a Polar. These guys are FAT!!! Both have taken up a full 1/2m of mohair each - which should give you some idea of how chunky their bits were! The request was for them to be cuddly and heavy, with a wobble head. They have been so much fun to stuff (one of the aspects I usually like the least!).


Here is a sneak peek at their heads just sewn up. I'm actually probably only a few hours away from finishing them now, and will pop up a few more final photos once I've sent them off to the collector for approval first.

So far my favourite is the Polar bear. I was working on her yesterday afternoon while Chelsea had a sleep and Mark was watching TV. I was muttering away to the bear saying how gorgeous he was when Mark looked up and asked me if I'd said something. I had to tell him that I was talking to the bear, not him! :P Poor guy!