Shadow, Bruno and the rainbow pieces...

This wide-eyed wonder is 'Shadow'. Made this week from a super luxurious piece of hand dyed midnight blue mohair I had left in my personal stash. Teamed with the silver and cobalt blue of his eyes and bow... he's just a blue beauty!

Shadow is currently available in our etsy store. He is made from our Kanoa pattern - so it long and lean, but has a decent amount of weight in that pudgy belly!

We also finished this big boofy-bear from the Collaboration Bear's box. He had a note in his bag saying his name was Bruno, so we kept it for him.

(Random cat pic - this is 'our' Bruno - our British Short Hair kitten. Had to throw a pic of him in too! lol)

Bruno the Bear is also currently available in our etsy store.

We've also been working on some custom rainbow-dyed bears this week as well. On the table above is actually the pieces for 4 new bears.

With colours like this, just pinning and sewing is a pleasure! A feast for the eyes!! More updates of these bright bears will come as I get them completed over the next week :)

Kosta, Skittles, Ace, Avalon, Aristos, and 'Sneeze' meet the world!

We had another big week/fortnight here at Emma's Bears. It always amazes me when I pop on over to Blogger to do another post, and look back at all the new faces I need to show off - and see just how many have emerged since I last chatted to you guys.

This week we had a lot of bears.

And a rat. And a rat pattern.

And some more bears! lol

This little cherub was 'Kosta'. He was made in our Lyric pattern (the one that includes pieces to make three very different bears) using our black and tan faux fur fabrics. Because the backings on our faux fur lines have been chosen for their lack of stretch, they're very easy to work with and allow us to do face-inserts and tricks like that with the bears without warping of the shape. I actually really like the colour combo of the black/brown here too. But I choose Kosta's bright blue eyes late one night while I was working on his face, and found them a touch too pale in the light of the morning.

Kosta has left home to meet his new family, but we do have kits available for him. And you can choose whatever coloured eye you'd prefer from our eye listings. He would look completely different with gold eyes, or green eyes or even basic solid black eyes.

The other new, exciting product we've added to our bear supplies section of our Emma's Bears/Fur Addiction store is the addition of our 'Rat Pattern'. These were my initial sketches of Mr Rat back in 2012 when I first got the bright idea to see how one would turn out. The prototypes were made in rainbow dyed LouBear mohair, and worked out beautifully (see below).

But I hadn't tried the design in a more natural colour-way, so decided to use our shortpile/antiqued line of mohair to see how it would look. The result was 'Skittles':

Skittles is so sweet - as far as rodents go - and I love the big, droopy ears. His tail/rear legs are wired for posing, and his front legs are jointed. He's a really interesting, easy pattern for a beginner-to-intermediate bear maker to try out. Something a little different to bears.

The biggest challenge with him would be turning out his tail, but my advice to anyone embarking on the 'Rat Pattern' journey is to only sew one side of the tail, then turn it out and ladder stitch it over the wire frame rather than attempting to turn out out fully sewn (which is what I did - and 30mins later and lots of choice words, I finally managed to get that little bugger turned! Why do I always end up making things harder for myself due to laziness! In this situation, a little hand stitching will save a lot of pain!).

'Skittles' is available for adoption if you're looking at adding a rat to your collection ;)

We also had the 'A' triplets - 'Avalon', 'Aristos' and 'Ace'. These guys were made from our 'Willa/Attila Bear/Bunny' pattern (using the bear pieces, not the bunny pieces).

Avalon was made in some left over mohair pieces I had from my personal stash. She has found her new home.

Ace was made from our 'Latte' tipped, distressed mohair. He has also found his new home, but you can purchase his Kit if you'd like to try making one yourself.

And Aristos was made in our 'Milk Chocolate' Kid Mohair. He too has found a new home, but is available in Kit form.

Then we switched pace a bit and ended up with this crazy big guy. My initial plans for this bear were that he was going to be a sweet little lady-bear with maybe a pink hair bow... but when I'd finished with that face I knew this was no girl-bear!

And so 'Sneeze' was born - a gorgeous, unusual bear in luxury green faux fur and floral print pads. Sneeze has now found his own home as well.

And to leave you guys with a sneak peek - this is our latest work-in-progress. He will be a big, chunky boy and is made in our 'Island Sunset' faux fur. We'll upload his finalised pics as soon as he's done!

Autumn, Summer and Spring

Our bear-making week in photos :)  

We were asked to make another big bendy rainbow bear as a special custom order recently. Something like this bear (from quite a few years ago now!)

So we set out cutting off a rather large piece of our 'Polar' kid mohair and drawing up four bears (the fourth will be showcased in a few days - he still needs his ears attached!) 

When all the pieces have been cut and prepped, we lay them out and get to work painting them in cascading rainbow colours. This is incredibly time consuming - but if you keep the colour strips and blending as even as possible, you'll end up with limbs/bodies what look like they were dipped into a rainbow! The photo above shows the pattern pieces still wet with the colour setting. 

Below we can see these same pieces rinsed and laying out flat to dry. We always get a much softer colour then it appears when wet. The backing soaks ups a brighter intensity of colour and the pile stays pastel. It gives a really lovely effect. 

Then there were a few days of work where there wasn't anything too interesting to photograph - just lots of sewing and turning and jointing. This was the end of one of the days of work - three bears lined up in the corner next to a massive new batch of painted eyes with the hope that if I had them pushed to one side of the lounge room the colours wouldn't catch the attention of Master-2-yr-old and Miss-Nearly-4yrs. (Yes - I do need a studio with a close-able door! lol) 

Fast forward another day or so and we have three bears fully stuffed and just awaiting their detailing and seam closing (the most tedious aspect of bear making in my opinion!). 

The bears in their fully finished glory - in natural lighting. That little aspect makes a HUGE difference to the clarity of the photos my little point-and-shoot Canon can take! We asked our Facebook likers to help us with names again - and ended up calling them 'Autumn', 'Summer' and 'Spring'. Our last little dyed-bear from this batch (mentioned earlier) will end up with the name 'Winter'. He can have his own listing in a few days when his head is attached to his body.... :) 

Autumn and Summer have been adopted. 

Only 'Spring' is left looking for his new home. When you meet him in person his light green/blue/lemon eyes don't look quite so intense... I think the natural light hasn't done him a great deal of justice in that department. But he is still a lovely, handsome big boy. 

I love the photo showing the length of his arms and legs. He does look so serious posed like this though! It's a little bit of an optical contrast - my brain goes 'Why so serious, you look like you're dressed for a Mardi Gras!?' 

lol. Poor Spring. 

We had a bit of dye from the rainbow bears left over on dyeing-day, so we decided to use our last piece of longpile white mohair to make a pretty pastel selection of 'Easter Colours'. Each piece is a one of a kind, and only available until I get too tempted and use them for a bear creation of my own!

(they're actually the same pile length/type as the fur I used for little Aoki shown below... you can see why they might not last as pieces of fabric in this house for very long... the temptation to draw out patterns is HIGH! !! lol)