Patch and Popcorn (what do YOU think they look like?!)

I have been unpacking a lot of boxes in the last few weeks and finding lots of treasures that I thought were long gone (or that I'd forgotten I still had). One of those treasures was some pieces of mohair with some odd shapes drawn on the back. I vaguely remembered a design I drew up when Byron was having a day sleep as a small bub of about 6months old. It was supposed to be for a guinea pig sitting up on its fat bottom with it's little paws up teddy-style.

I decided to try and see what it would look like made up - after all, it was already drawn. I just had to work out which bits were supposed to go where! lol.

These are the resulting critters - 'Patch' is the gold/white dutch style cavy, and 'Popcorn' is the tri-colour. They are 8" tall, and have huge eyes and over-sized heads. They're pretty cute, but a little ambigious as to what they actually are.
I held them up for Mark to see last night and he said 'they're pretty good'.
Me:  'do you know what they're meant to be though?'
Him: 'um... squirrels? possums? maybe hamsters!?' He could tell by my face that he was digging himself a hole!
Me: 'yeah, I thought that might be a problem - they're supposed to be guinea pigs'.
Him: 'of course they are.....' as he backed out of the room...

so... while they may not be the most guinea pig-looking guinea pigs, I do still think they're pretty cute in a generic small-animal with big-eyes kind of way!

They're both available in our etsy store. 

Personal Bear Collection selloff

These critters are a collection of orphaned bears that have been gathered over the many years we've been in the artist bear community.

Many are from our own personal collection, some have been swaps for Emma's Bears, some have been traded for bear supplies. We have an eclectic assortment of critters here, and all are in excellent condition. We decided to make some space for further business expansion (new fur, new Emma's Bears, new stock etc), so the poor personal collection needs to be moved on. They've just been sitting in storage, so it will be refreshing for them to see a change of scenery I think! 

Please note that once sold, they are not able to be replicated (obviously!) - so if you really like someone, grab them while you can. We have 40+ bears and critters available in a special listing on our website. 

And we're done!!!

We got there in the end! All four new design bears are finished. From top left we have 'Wirra' (Amethyst Sparkle and Bright Ice Sparkle faux fur), 'Willis' - mentioned in the last post, 'Wilma' (Wild Blue Yonder and Coconut Ice faux fur), and Wendy, also mentioned in our last post.

Wirra has now been adopted. 

But gorgeous Wilma is currently available. She is our 'quirky' face experiment - and I love it! The asymmetrical mouth and the expressive eyebrows just set her apart! Her fur is pretty damn cute too.

I'll do another post in a few weeks when we have the pattern ready for these guys - and we will be able to offer a 'Wilma' kit too which will be so much fun for you guys to make - this bear makes people smile!

New Design x 4

Well... I did say I wanted to try our latest design in some other colours...! This is what I was up to last night (New Years Eve - we party hard here! lol).

Before I am happy to release a pattern for general sale I like to make sure that it's versatile enough to work with different fabrics and different eyes etc. - so this was kind of like a product-trial. We cut out two bears using our long pile imported faux fur, one out of some funky rose-eyelash plush and the forth one from a super dense faux fur with a polar fleece face rather then the faux suede I had been using.

As expected the polar fleece face gave a much more rounded look (he's the face on the bottom left of the bucket of heads above, and the same guy as show below). I like the 'clean' lines of the more rounded cheeks - but you also loose the 'jowl' look that I was originally going for. Out of all the faces I think I actually like the blue/pink head with the smaller eyes at the top of the pile the most for character.

We've had sick kids home with us this week, so it feels like it has taken me an eternity to get these guys done as well. I honestly though I'd have finished bears to show yesterday afternoon - but a full 24hrs later and I still only managed to get 2 of the 4 bears done.

But half is better then none!

This beautiful big guy is 'Willis'. He's very heavy and very squishy and fully jointed.

(This pattern will come with instructions and piece-options to make the bear in either a jointed style or non-jointed. The outward look is nearly identical, with the only difference being the non-jointed bear won't be able to stand like you can see Willis doing below.)

The other little cutie we managed to get finished was 'Wendy'. She was the bear cut from the unusual rose-eyelash plush fabric. It's a strange fabric, and I'm not sure what it's actually manufactured for - but it worked reasonably well as hair for a bear. It is very stretchy though, and you wouldn't be able to make a traditional face as you can't cut back the rose detail without compromising the integrity of the fabric. So really - this design was perfect for this type of fabric!

Her belly was cut from our wiggly 'Maltese Cream' faux fur, and her face, paws and inner ears were cut from our 'Bright White' faux suede. (We've actually just re-stocked a lot of the faux suede colours that had sold out too).

Wendy is also currently available. 

We plan to have the other two bears completed tomorrow. All going well :)

Collaboration Bear - Jewel

I totally forgot to post the photos for this little lady before Christmas!

She is one of the first Collaboration Bears we've made in months and months. She didn't have any paw pads in her bag of pieces, so we drew up some to fit the shapes already there, and cut them from a stunning batik-dyed purple/blue cotton. We were then able to use this to make her a gorgeous little ruffle tutu as well - making her an explosion of purple goodness!

Her name is 'Jewel' as we then handmade her a genuine Swarovski Crystal necklace as well. She is stunning, and surprisingly still available! 

New design

We had a request to make a bear with doggy-type jowls and closer set eyes. His new mum also wanted him to be unjointed and soft to cuddle. So we got to work designing a new bear using some of my kids puppy dog plushies as inspiration to try and get the face right.

This was the head in the process of being sewn together. Looking a bit more 'monkey' at this stage.

Then we started assembling the bear's body and legs and got this cute looking critter - and then below we have the final product! His new mum is happy and we will be making another one in a different colour to see how it comes out.

Adelise

Last week I decided to work on an old-style bear again. These were our work-in-progress images posted to our Facebook and Instagram pages. I wanted to keep her colouring secret until she was finished :)

She was a unique big thing - made from all different colours of pastel pink/blue/purple hand-dyed mohair. She had LOTS of shading and stitching and a pair of sweet matt-effect glass eyes to give her that older bear appeal.

We called her Adelise and she has already found her new home. You can create a similar look using our 'Alivia' pattern and some of our 'Emmet' mohair (the exact same mohair and pattern we used).