a letter from Australia

Here is the follow up of the charity event to Bears That Care in Melbourne.
I receive a letter from the host, a copy of auction catalogue and a limited lapel.
The most exciting thing is to hear that the positive response on fund raising and participation on donation bears. They are from different countries all over the world. The event started at night with 50 auction bears. Though i am not there, but i know there are lots of hard work behind of every people work on this raffle sales.
I wish i can come over one day, if not, or i can join next year...
If you wish to participate next year, try to visit their website: http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
The cover bear of the BTC lapel pin is from Rosey Day, Australia. I am glad to have one for a festive gift and also reminds me to show our support of the ovarian research






once again, thank you for the online German magazine for posting this event:
http://www.teddybear-news.info/news2011/bears_that_care.html

Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khWvxVEhcMQ&feature=rellist&playnext=1&list=PL4AC19ADC0C79E320
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

a brief description over my blog, wish you enjoy your Christmas with this warmth of chestnuts lie on your palm.
i recently working on some decoration for this seasonal greetings.
instead of having big meal, it's my favourite food in winter. actually i love the shape and proportion of chestnut and bring this into my design.
if this is a decoration, i wonder how it can be hang over the tree with the head...?
i follow what i learn so far to add the double joint neck so it can also hang 45degree against the wall or door.
attached some photos on my development of idea.

we know bears that care

Girls cares, women care, men care? bears that care?

This is the most recent bear project which i committed to do for the charity auction held in Melbourne, for the benefit of ovarian cancer research - a disease that affect many women and their families.
For more information, please visit the following link:

www.bearsthatcare.com.au

Women has to due with many challenges nowadays, friendship, courtship, family life, business life and career life.
Will you have time to listen and follow the news and reports on health issue?

When i was a small, i lost my favourite class teacher who was suffered from breast cancer. I asked my parents what it is and why... but they seems very reluctant to explain that is something you will understand when you grow up.

After graduated, i lost my aunt, who was suffered from breast and cervical cancer. In my memories, she was an outgoing, energetic, positive strong woman who is positive to hold up responsibilities, care family members.
She make use her leisure time to do voluntary work for the society during her recovery. She always shows her smile
each time when we visit,
Her lights and power glows in my heart.

I made a bear, Pierrot. My charity work is minimal, instead of raising fund for the research on ovarian cancer, i wish people can show their awareness to care and support women or people who suffered from this kind of cancer.

Thank you for your interest on reading this information. Wish you can find out something valuable for this Christmas.

updated bear events

With some more information from some bear people, there are much more events coming:
especially in America, go to the link attached for more information. Good luck my friend.
Here comes some photos of the Mittagong show. It's a doll and bear show. There are many active doll maker who devotes their time and skills in making bits and pieces of the outfit. I adore and admire their skills. As they say, it's not difficult, just need your patience to work on it.
This is one of my fav. store: Karen's Artistic Touch:




And one more great table on bears and animal by Robyn at A Gunnie Collectibles:

I like her Gollies and animal's fabrication, the clashing of short pile mini bear fabric to very long pile fur which is very interesting to think and feel their texture rather than visual perception.
May i recall her quotes on the back of her name card:
" All our collectables are designed & created to put a smile in your heart and a light in your eyes"
Finally my bears arrived a place with Hot Christmas:


It's a pity that many great store material supplier and creations only do local business.
Finally, i have an extremely early Christmas greetings to many of you,




oh, wish you can focus on these little tiny mice, instead of those horrible brand reflection.

Bear events and shows

Dear my friend,
Are you busy in preparing bear shows?
Here are the link of the upcoming events before the end of 2011.
Don't miss it. Mark your calendar if you can join or hear the news from other bear making friends.
If there are some more additional information, please leave a comment here.
Looking forward to hear you soon.


Who is Who in bear making, Christmas Bazaar. 5, 6 Nov.
Mittagong Doll & Bear show, 6 Nov.
Scottish Bear Fair, 6 Nov.
Teddies Worldwide Online Bear Show, 18-20 http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifNov.
Taiwan Teddy Bear Show & Creative Awards, 20 Nov.
The Great Yorkshire Teddy Bear Event, 20 Nov.
Hansebar, Hamburg, 27 Nov

woohoohoo, 7 shows in November, must be very busy to work on, to participate and to pay :)
and there is still one show in December:
Salon Ours et Poupees Passion, 4 Dec.

wish you have a wonderful show and a beary happy sewing day.

Q & A

my habits of collecting and using alpaca still keeps on. but there is a design decision query over my recent making.
i try to look for some alternatives instead of using dense pile smooth alpaca, here you will see the sand beige alpaca, it looks coarse and dense, but it feel soft. It's a kind of alpaca & mohair mixed with ratinee finish.



as i want to make a bear friend with the blue mohair bear, i try to use the same kind of method to sew the nose, but under many times of trial & error, i still cannot get what i proposed, so i throw this method.





I find without any even supportive later of suede, the embroidery thread over the sand beige alpaca will bounce back, no matter how i pull the thread...and look a bit full instead of thin and flat. so i look up for another way,
guess what, i try to make a paper mache nose again, i love using this kind of making because it stands very well no matter on alpaca or mohair, it got good qualities to manipulate through each step of layering paper, adding white glue and coloring on top, i got lots of fun through the exploration.



i am going to finish these bears for Christmas, it will be a hot Christmas for them... stay tuned.

the great advisor

Yesterday nite, i read a post from a friend, it's a clip of news in Chinese about a well known label Zara.
To certain people, those items may not their cup of tea, but i was moved by the story of the man behind this label.

Mr. Amancio Ortega Gaona. He was born in a poor family and went to work in a very young age, his success not only built from technical experience or you can say exposure in the industry. But i am sure, instead of working very hard and loyal to one's job, it's important to have a vision in the industry.
Although, the Chinese version news stated that his force of motivation is drawn from the snobbish attitude from the wealthy people, However, i see his positive attitude towards his career path: he observes only rich people could afford good clothing at that time. Why? So, he had a strong intention to make fine clothing available and reachable to most people. Then he look for some other alternatives, saving the transaction cost from the middleman, finding some cheap but good qualities material. It seems a clever act to run a business.
There are experienced bear makers marked high price while on the other hand i notice that there are some well known makers who mark their good qualities critters low... instead of looking up reason for why, or why not. It can be
a personal thing, one can be already self sufficient, no worries about to put the food on the table. Or one maybe looking up for challenge in their life.
It matters about how to keep our material cost low! In our living space, we are suffer from the high rent cost and the cost of living too. Most of the bear making 'material' have to ordered from overseas, we incur a lot on shipping and handling fee. It's competitive for pricing our making.
Recently, i am thinking about the fabrication of materials. It can be an interesting starting point on how to design the cut and how to bring different materials together. I am so excited to see there are some bear maker sharing their fun on exploration in colors and how the material behaves.

Here are the links to the news clipping:
The Chinese version. http://tw.news.yahoo.com/%E4%B8%8D%E5%A0%AA%E6%AF%8D%E5%8F%97%E8%BE%B1-%E7%AA%AE%E5%AD%90%E5%BE%A9%E4%BB%87%E7%BF%BB%E8%BA%AB%E5%85%A8%E7%90%83%E7%AC%AC7%E5%AF%8C.html
The English version. http://www.theoriginof.com/amancio-ortega.html

it's time for present

hello, i was back from the trip for a few days, gotta to share photos with you. the weather was fine last week.

Life is not easy, like reading this words in our daily life


at the British Library near St Pancras station. The picture ( by Patrick Hughes - 1996) below is 3 dimensional, you can see those shelves got different perspectives while you are moving from left to right or vice versa.


you can only use the reading rooms facilities once you got a Reader Pass.
As a foreigner, i can still visit their museum, it's free. On the day i visited, the showing theme is ' Out of this world'
i' m not a futurist, but still curious on how people perceive our living nature and there is a hot topic while reading other Russian bear artist included steam punk as their inspiration.



For more fantasy item of future, have a look at this link
http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/outof/outofthisworld.html


the Hampton Court Palace


the conservation of the gate in the palace


the components of the show



with the rabbit lantern again, we celebrate the Mid- Autumn Festival.


I went up to a suburb by train, can't imagine when i return from the journey, i got the wrong train, is a transit with stops went to another direction......it's horrible to get back to Paddington train station by taxi and got back my luggage to the airport, late late! But the picture shown is a beautiful farm, lots of farm with sheep and horses.

tea flavored bears

Finally, i have finished 2 more bears under my exploration over the tea dye for the show in Hugglets, the visitors in the show really curious on my different approach taken on using alpaca. One of the feedback was he thought if i have an overall color control over the aqua bear, he will take this. I will take this comment into my future investigation :) These 2 bears are still in my hug, wish you still like them.

The one on the left called, Mint and the one on the right called Citron.

tea spa

hi, haven't post for ages, how are you, friend?
there is a gift from my friend last visit to Canada, so nicely packed with finger size proportion.
do you remember the taste and fragrance of Ceylon tea?
she has a light smell but dark brown color which bring my interest to do some dyeing...
i find that there is a need for me to do some investigation over my favorite fur, alpaca.
apart from inviting friends to my den, how about my little friend...:)
he doesn't like drinking tea much but suggested to have a hot tea spa on his own







that's what i did last nite, i feel it's a bit dark but when i wake up this morning, it turns out to be curly, dense and a used tone which is my favorite color, i' m still curious on warm colors, so i did an experiment this morning with mango color.
how it will be?

move on the track

there's only 5 more weeks before the show and i have to move restart my bear making life.
here again, i made another panda for a commission, it's a bit different from the previous pinky panda.
a little discovery after finishing her, as long as i add the double-jointed neck, i found it's too long for her proportion.
so, i tried to rethink on the jointing method within such a short cotter pin,
finally, without stuffing over the neck, and forgive the original setting of cardboard disc, and come up with this solution.
Seems i have to try one another color of alpaca to explore another possibility towards this design.




And please give me support as i' m not sure whether i can make 2 bears each week.

the article of TB&F

Did you receive the fall issue of Teddy Bear & Friends? I am so excited to share this with you.
There are 9 new teddy bear artist featured in the topic of " New Kids on the Block"



Luckily, "berries bear " is included. We are prepared to answer the questions. It was such an enjoyable moment to look back of when we get started, what we've done, why we did this... and furthermore there is a question which i find it's really interesting to share: Have you had any funny failures or errors while making bears?
For the past failure, um... i sometimes get stuck with certain technical problem or certain facial expression, i would make them hide into the box and restart a new one. So it's such a great experience to think positively on the attitude to encounter difficulties and impose another way of seeing this. Thanks God, my mind are enlightened by several famous artist who are willing to give me opinions all the way through.
Do stop by and read the featured artists, they are Becky Chase ( Dangerbears), Cheryl Hutchinson (Bingle Bears), Danielle Roothooft ( Pussman & Co.), Lainy Musgrove (Heirloom Bears), Lori Jarret (Loria Designs)Stacy Haines (Bare Bottom Bears), Yana Lengina and one of our local artist, Rita Yu (YuYu Bear).
The last but not the least, is my dear bear collector and also writer, Felicia Hymer, she suggested an ideal place to travel: Bearizonia.

more panda news

The 19 th Teddy Bear with friends Convention is over, i read some photos from other artist sharing at facebook.
And there was one more important event there, the donation bears for the charity sale to support the disaster relief in Japan as described in the previous blog.
Here is a photo extracted from the official link showing the Teddy Bear Charity Sale:
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif




For more details, please read this link
Finally, i would like to say thank you for the people who adopted pinky panda.

panda, red panda

Haven't go to the Ocean Park for a few years, we miss our old friend, visited them on last Saturday, they are the ambassador of the Panda: An An - male, 19 yrs old, Jia Jia - female, 27 yrs old. I can't imagine they are at the adult age. There are also 2 panda, Ying Ying - female, and Le Le - male, both 6 yrs old who came to Hong Kong since 2007 for the celebration of the Hong Kong return to Chinese sovereignty. They were born in the China Conservation and Research Center in Wolong in Sichuan province.







During the visit, we are always remind that to keep our voice down not only educate children the awareness on their living , for an adult, we have to learn their survival problem they are facing and help to prevent the extinction.
There are several means and ways to show our support from the park facilities.



Sure, i also want to enclose the close neighbors of panda, ...the red panda, they got lovely fur, beautiful patching of colors, and i must show my gratitude to the park as they set the stage for tourist of taking good pictures for them.

a donation bear for the POB in Japan

We live in Hong Kong, quite close to Japan, after hearing the natural disaster occurred in our neighboring country in March, everyone here care about the people in Japan, there are lots of things we can do, someone pray , someone donate, someone share their professional practice and we all wish to give a helping hand.
Based on a Japanese artist post, in May, there is a bear group called the Petit Ours Brun ( POB) which is a charity group, they accept donations to support disaster relief efforts in Japan. They receive the donated bears and will sell at the Teddy Bear and friends convention in Tokyo on the 9th and 10th July. Yes, as a bear maker who got the sewing hand, i wish i can help in this way.
Here is my pinky panda carrying a glass bottle, she preserved this beautiful handmade silk flower and wrote down her message: Life with Hope.
I wish people in Japan like her and give her a new home and to my thoughts, i hope their restoration and reconstruction process runs smoothly.
People who live in Japan are co-operative and sensible even under shortage, and i am so proud of YOU.

today is sunday

morning, wish people from all over the world have a sunny day today, apart from work work work, no matter at home or in the bureau, sunday is the day to throw the toughness stuff at the back and relax.
My latest bear design, Sundae is up at etsy. Would like to enjoy her favourite sweet cone today. I wish her cone hat serves another function, even though it's a bit childish ;)

Little Dew new clothes

As a brother of Paula, this little guy also loves to stay with the ocean. He wish to be a sailor when he grown up. Unfortunately, the weather condition is not so suitable for him, droughts everywhere. Can we make his dream comes true?

new stuff

i miss the day to share with you, here with my bear.
sometimes, i had some head stuffed a head for practice to see the marginal difference between the 7mm to 10mm alpaca behaves and adjust the pattern size. but when i do the open mouth design for the small bear, their head size always bigger than the initial design. therefore, i have to modify his face, this time, i stuff the bear head again.



aw, he looks funny when i get his stuffing out and lie on the desk, his smiling face poked out, perhaps i can make a 2 dimensional collage for him next time.

I had sculptured his eye socket and place his eyes a bit lower, area around the bridge of the muzzle (along the seamline) and mouth(over the upper jaw). The books by Nancy Tillberg and Jennifer Liang do help me a lot in tackling these problems. For the later steps are all patterns modification on the limbs.
He is still naked, i will make him a sailor collar, it's coming.
Forgot to tell you, his name is Little Dew, he's the little brother of Paula, as they got the same fur and fabric co-ordination.

etsy treasury

today, my couple bear is featured in the etsy treasury of Lovintagefinds, go there to see if any vintage items you like, love their collection.

the ACD award is open

Good morning, welcome to my page, both of my critters are available, please visit them here




Let's celebrate the anniversary of Beatrix Potter!

inside the letter

Oh...i am thrilled to see what's inside the letter from Australia. It's a precious medal rolled over my palm, a tiny photo of the official bear image of the Sydney Teddy Bear Fair 2011 was framed on the front of the bronze medal, it has a light weight as most of my 6" bears. At the back, it marked down with the category i participate, this is my first Australian competition i joined, and i am looking forward to see more in the coming future.
Special thanks for the people working behind this event.




Thanks for your support and votes all along. Here is my entry bear, Mushroom.