Pinky-tone rainbow bears this time

I was asked to do some rainbow mohair dyeing as a custom job recently, and as always I painted up way too many pieces of mohair. So what didn't sell as part of the order I decided to use for some rainbow bears. The order request was for rainbow fur but in a more pink-based tone like my earlier dye-techniques, rather then the red/orange based rainbow mix I had been using lately. And I must say... I do like the pink!

It feels like it has been a little while now since I've made some of my distinctive rainbow creations... at least from mohair anyways (we do have a lot of rainbow faux fur in stock at present! lol).

This chunky little lady is 'Violetta'. When I started writing this blog post she was actually still available for adoption, but just in the last few minutes someone has snapped her up!

This is the mohair Violetta was cut from. I LOVE doing the crazy patterns and then cutting a bear from it. Due to the shapes and sizes of bear-pattern-pieces you usually don't even recognise that there was any kind of pattern to the original fur fabric!

The shape of Violetta may look familiar too - we cut her out using our chunky and very versatile 'Delight' pattern. 

~*~

Then there was THIS piece of mohair. 

This is actually a piece of our long-pile white 'Eddie' mohair rainbow dyed as well. This was a spare of the moment decision just to use up the last of the dye in the pots (I do hate to waste things!). I quite literally just wet the fabric, squeezed out the excess water, lay it on a black towel and blobbed the dye on in wiggly lines. 

Usually I'd be very careful to evenly place the colours and to blend it well and to make sure both the pile and the backing had good coverage. But this time it was just fast and furious - and I LOVED the result! 

A few hours of sun-time meant the colours were set really well, and even after a spin in the washing machine to remove excess dye, the colour was still nice and vibrant. (I may be going on and on a bit about colour here - but trust me, it isn't as easy as it looks to get colour like this on long pile mohair!!! lol) 

This is little Opal. She has already found her new home as well.

And then this little bear below is 'Prism'. She is actually the last of the trio to still be available for adoption. 

Ava and her purple eyes

This is 'Ava'. Our very latest, and very girly artist bear! She is the proud owner of these stunning purple handpainted glass eyes of ours, that we then surrounded with hand sculpted polymer clay lids.

Ava was created to fit into this gorgeous little pink striped cardigan that I had picked up in my travels. I decided to use my new 'JUMBO' pattern reduced down by 75% to give me a bear that would be 22" rather then the original 33" (it also meant we only needed a 1/2m piece of fur to create her, rather then a full 1m piece!).

Ava is cut from a new limited edition faux fur curently listed in our Fur Addiction store. It will be the last limited edition fur we'll release this year as we have a massive home and business move coming up next month! (we finally sold our old house and will be moving to a larger property a bit further away from the city. I'll take some photos once the move has happened and we're all settled).

Ava is currently available for adoption. All her details can be found in her etsy listing.

LeRoy

LeRoy says hi.

He'd love to stay and chat but he actually has a plane to catch and a new mum to meet.

Which doesn't surprise me. He is a little bit of yummi-ness :)

We do have some of his stunning fur available for sale in our store though. And he was made using our ' 10" Osias' pattern... so you could have a go at making one just like him yourself?

Faux Fur bedspreads

So we decided to try something new - and put our fur to use as faux fur bedspreads this week! How good do they look like this!!!

Each blanket will be hand made to order - and you can completely customize your fabric and size over at our website.

If there are any colours we haven't shown that you'd specifically like, just let us know :)

JUMBO 33" pattern is ready!

Get ready to dust off the old sewing machine guys!

 Our jumbo 33" bear pattern is now ready for instant download in our etsy store!!! All you'll need is a full yard or meter of fur fabric of your choice, a set of 75mm joints and some 16mm eyes.... and you're ready to get to work on a massive bear of your own!

{If you'd like a kit made up, just send us an email at sales@furaddiction.com}

Asher - progress in photos

This is a new little guy. Big white face, big sparkly eyes. Looking a bit odd at this stage though...

... but add a nose and we're starting to see more of his character emerge.

And then, once the ears are on it's very clear who this bear is. Such a sweet, cheeky little thing!

This is Asher. He is made from a mix of mohair and a delightfully soft, mottled faux fur. I had no idea this would be the bear looking back at me when I sat down to cut his pattern out. I had pictured him looking a lot more traditional, but as is the way with creative projects - sometimes they have a life-force of their own!

Asher is a one of a kind artist bear. We don't have this fur for sale. We don't have his pattern for sale. There are no kits. It is just him! If you'd like to take Asher home feel free to check out his listing in our etsy store.

16" is a really nice size for a bear

In amongst all the other stuff going on here in the Emma's Bears studio with creations and custom orders and fur supplier negotiations... we've whipped up these two bears using our 'Lyric' pattern. The resulting bears are 16" tall, and I think I have come to the conclusion that this is my new favourite size for a bear. They're not too small that you wonder how on earth something so tiny took you so long to make, and not so big that you feel like you've run a marathon at the end of stuffing it!

We made these bears as examples of some new limited edition faux fur fabrics we were stocking over at www.furaddiction.com. This fluffy ginger guy is 'Belmonte', and there is still a bit of the faux fur he was made from available. We achieved his distinguised centre-seam part look by folding the head-gusset pattern piece in half and rotating it to lay horizontally on the fabric rather then vertically, then cutting each half of the gusset so that the fur naturally parts down the middle like this (and sewing it back together again obviously!).

*** it sounds way trickier then it actually is! ***

But we've sold out of the faux fur used to make the bear down the bottom of this page (I've gone a little photo-crazy with Belmonte here so you'll need to scroll down a fair way to find poor Bon Bon bear!)

We cut Bon Bon using the same Lyric pattern, but this time using the muzzle pieces (instead of the full head pattern) and the half-body pieces (instead of the full body pattern - it will make a lot more sense if you actually own this pattern already!).

We used our dense 'Noah' mohair to make his cheeks and chest insert as they allowed us a flat white contrast to the 'noise' of the faux fur. Sometimes a bear's face can get a bit lost if you use a really noisy fur like this without something to break it up a bit.

In saying that, Bon Bon's faux fur was VERY popular, and we actually sold out of it within a few days! We do still have Bon Bon himself available for adoption though, and 'Belmonte' bear available for adoption too.