The Taiwan Teddy Bear Olympics

Hi Everyone

I'm finally posting again, sorry for being away so long.

I haven't made much since my last show, and I do usually find that I tend to not feel very creative after each show.

I have got this to show you tho, I was asked to compete in the Teddy Bear Olympic Challenge. This is a public voting competition so if you like my little Ngaire I would love it if you could pop in and vote for her! http://www.twtba.org.tw/2008_TBOC/contest.asp

Voting starts in a few days and runs for a month.

Anyway, about Ngaire. Well I found out that my country (New Zealand) wasn't sending any gymnasts to the Olympics this year so I thought I would send one of my own.

Ngaire (which means silver fern, our native emblem) is needle felted in all natural romney wool, with a merino leotard felted over the top. She is posed in a leaping position, with her ribbon in mid twirl, she was rather hard to take pictures of. She even has a silver fern of sorts on her leotard, bit tricky to get real detail into it!

I hope you like her, I was really pleased with how she turned out!

Thanks so much for visiting again, I'm off to another show this weekend so more pics for you all then!

Vote here! http://www.twtba.org.tw/2008_TBOC/contest.asp

Show's Over!!

Well, it's all over for another year! Actually, only this show is over, I have another one in July! hehe

It went really well, we were surprised to find that we did better on the second day than we did on the first. A number of other bear makers found the same thing. Very odd, but a nice surprise as I had thought we were in for a very slow Sunday by the end of Saturday. I made a nice little wad of cash, more than covered everything and Veronika and I had a great time mucking about and crafting away!

Here you can see my table:

There is Veronika busily felting. I had new signs and you can't really see in the pic but there was a narrow pillar up the left end side of my table so I put a bunch of laminated pictures on there too which was good.

Competitions!

I did rather well in the comps, above you can see Luca won the Judges Choice Bear award. I was so pleased. He's a lovely little fellow and I could have sold him a number of times over since he was created more than a year ago, but I'm rather attached to him.

Here are the other bears who I entered in the comp. All won blue ribbons, not too sure whether that is a good thing or not, they all got around 97/100 which is cool. I even had one of my students enter the comps and she won blues as well. Her work was great!

So that's the Hamilton Show over for one year. Next is the Midwinter Show in Auckland in July and then Dunkleys in Hamilton in August. Once again I met some wonderful people at the show, and many familiar faces. The more shows I do the better I get at picking the bear artists and their work. Was good to see some new sellers but the show wasn't as good as it could have been so not sure if they will be back next year. It's a bit disheartening for your first show to run at a loss, at least for me I live there so I had no extra expenses for that one.

Auckland was great last year so I have my fingers crossed for that one, and Dunkleys is a huge show and my first time there. Trying not to stress over that one yet!

Ok, that's it from me. Until I have new bears to show, although at the moment I am working on some reborn babies! (You might have to look it up if you don't know what those are!)

Happy crafting!!

Liza

New Bears for the Show!

Hi Everyone!!
Hows the week treating you?
Things are going really well over here, lots of creating going on! I wanted to show you these fine fellows who were finished just in time for the show.
Jelly Phil and Cara Mel are The Donut Boys! I was inspired to create them after buying these gorgeous accessories. I got 2 little takeaway coffee cups in their holder, and a pack of the most gorgeous donuts, all kinds of toppings and they look so realistic!

This is Cara Mel. He's holding his Caramel sprinkle donut. I can't believe I never tried this wool blend before, the colours look so good together!

Here is Jelly Phil, with his sugar topped Jelly Filled donut. These bears have the biggest bellies ever but it's a bit hard to tell when they have their chubby paws full!
Here are the boys with their gear, the cups even have a holder and everything matches. So darn cute!

This pair are Katie and Kittie. Katie is felted in a gorgeous pastel blend of turquoise, lemon, peach and baby blue. Her pale green suit was crochet by my fabulous friend Rita. She holds onto the sweet little chair where Kittie is taking a nap. That is the smallest little cat I have ever made, something of a challenge she was!

Another in my Delectables range. Raspberry Parfait turned out so well, just look at those little raspberries! And I added sprinkles to this cake. The sweet little bear is felted in a gorgeous pinky red blend of wools and I thought the white embroidery really tied her in well with her cake! Colours are richer than they appear in the pics.

BunBun got a new display to sit amongst. I thought it really suited him, love the little carrot!!

This is Heather, she is sitting on the cutest little polyresin chair with sparkles and metallic paint job. She had to have a feather boa type collar and perches on the edge of the chair quite happily!

Little Tibs got a new outfit too, I thought there was something missing from his look and this suited him really well. He also comes with a wee wirework pram now, so sweet!

Hope you enjoyed seeing the new creations, I had so much fun this week creating and letting the work just flow! Usually I am much more stressed before a show but really cuising this year!

Huggles

Liza

Nearly show time! Time for some new friends!

Hello again my faithful followers! lol Nice to see you here again!

This week I have a few new friends to show you and there are lots on the way as it's nearly show time again! Only 2 weeks to go until the Hamilton Doll, Teddy Bear and Craft show!

This 2 day event is gearing up to be especially good this year with new organisers and lots of new ideas, including (much to my relief and joy) the return of the competitions. So I have 7 bears entered and I am most excited to be finally competing!! I will take lots of pics at the show for you but for now here are some of my newest friends.

Here is something new! This Fawn was made using some new sculpting ideas I found online, he has that lovely bandy legged baby look to him with wire in his legs and the sweetest little tail.

Filbert is my latest favourite, he is felted from plum and pink/lavender shades of wool. He has the sweetest little face and is a bit different I think!


Well it was time for another Anime bear, so here is Hannah, she is felted in a deep blue with a rose pink. She now has a sparkly necklace and blue bow by her ear!

Do you think I have enough Pipe Cleaner bears?? I decided it would be good to fill out the table and have some cheaper items for folks at the show. I tried a few new things this time round with a poodle, bumble bee, squirrel and cat.

Well, that's it for now. I will have more pics for you soon as I already have another 2 bears waiting their turn!

Thanks for popping by again, hope you enjoyed your visit!

Huggles

Liza

Pictures at last!!!

Hello all!!

Well I finally got meself a new/used camera and I'm really pleased with it. Takes pretty good photos and I love the way it lightens them all, my other far more expensive camera always came out darker and you couldn't tell until you uploaded them to the computer!! Most annoying.

So here is what I have been up to lately.

What do you call a bear on a cake??

Delicious of course!! Welcome to my new Little Handfuls range of Delicious bears. There will be bears on slices of cake, bears on doughnuts and bears on cookies. Anything you can think of that looks fab and tastes even better, cheesecakes, muffins and more! They are all made from felt and so fun to make!


This is my Fruit Salad bear on his Fruit Salad cupcake! Don't you just love his little berries and slice of Kiwi? He also has a chocolate heart and a dollop of cream for good measure!

This is Pandachino, he sits on a delicous coffee layer cake. With a dollop of cream and a wee coffee bean on the top. He is felted in natural Alpaca in two shades and I am very pleased with him.

This wee bear is kinda named and kinda not. I came up with Panda Storm, (Like thunderstorm but with a panda!) because of his cloudy blue colour but not sure about that one. I just love him, he turned out so well and the colours are an amazing blend with all sorts of flecks in them.

Stanley is in a style of bear which I feel is becoming my trademark. I have made a few bears now that look similar to him, all have emerged from the wool on their own and were not designed to be similar to each other. He has a lovely big nose, really pleasedwith that. And big dropped paws which are my favs. He also has wee toes!
Bun Bun was made for an order but she has come out rather small, under 2 inches long actually so I will probably have to make another. But she is just so sweet, I can't believe how well she turned out!

And I am currently working on my next bear, plus I have a load of pipecleaner bears made up so my table for the next show should be looking nice and full.

I HAVE HAD SOME BIG NEWS!!

I am going to take a stall in The Great New Zealand Craft Show, otherwise known as Dunkleys. It costs an absolute fortune for someone like me, and that's at the beginner price which is half the usual price!! I am so darn excited and have been up all night the last few nights thinking about how I am going to lay out my booth and worrying about whether I will have enough stock.

This show is right after the 2 I am already booked in for, Hamilton in May and Auckland in July. Dunkleys is in August just a week after the Midwinter show in Auckland. I may have to actually NOT put all my work out in Auckland as I sold so well there last year, I would hate to not have enough work to show at the big one.

Ok, nuff rambling. Hope you like the new work and thanks so much to all my regulars for keeping up with me!!

Love to all

Liza

No Photos!! :o(

Hi all, I'm just checking in really because it's been a while since my last post.

Unfortunately my camera broke down a couple of weeks ago and I haven't been able to replace it yet. I was so upset about it I didn't even feel like making anything but this week I have managed to create a couple of things, including some felt cakes which I had been just itching to try. They look really good and I can't wait to share them with you all.

I found a wonderful lady online who sells patterns for felt food, I will put the link up when I show you what I have made. So nice to find such neat things online!!

Ok, that's it from me. Hope everyone is happy and healthy and you will hear from me again soon! (finger crossed!)

Huggles,
Liza

Show's Over Folks!! :o)

Hi all!

Well I did it, and the show was really great! Even tho the weather was horrid, with gusts blowing my work off my table every 5 minutes! It drizzled with rain for most of the day but people still came out which was really impressive! It was a much bigger even than I would have guessed as I have never even come down to look at the festival before much less be part of it.

Set in our beautiful gardens it spanned across an entire feild, the pavilion area where I was and then further down amongst other gardens was a petting zoo and area full of plants for sale and kitchen produce, conserves etc.

There were artists, knitters, wood workers, beaders, wrought iron sculptors and more! And that was just in my area, I couldn't leave my table to look around unfortunately as I was on my own.

The day was from 10 - 4 and we arrived early to set up which didn't take as long as I would have thought so I started on a bear while I was waiting for folks to arrive. While I did finish the bear I also sold 4 bears, 1 large sculpt (my Mermaid), a felted egg, and bags of wool. I made the same amount in one short day as I have made on my best weekend at the bigger doll and bear shows! I was really impressed and will certainly be attending next year. The cost of the table was a fraction of what it costs me to do the bear shows. So if any of you are thinking of doing shows, I think that even if it's not a bear show it's still worth doing and probably cheaper too.

Here are some pics from the day, firstly my table. My poor sign was in tatters by the end of the day from the wind, and I've had that thing for 3 years now, laminated and all. :o) You can see my bag of wools and such at the end. The bears on the display in the middle were not for sale, the basket at the other end has my felted soaps and easter eggs in it.

This is part of the view from my table, I was under the eaves of the Pavilion and these are all the tents that were in the middle of the garden area there.

This is the view further along, there were 2 of these gorgeous gardens in front of me, what a view! Look how grey the sky was tho!

I had assumed these were Alpacas as an Alpaca lady approached me about making some bears for her store. I'm not totally sure tho, anyone know?

These fabulous stilt walkers wandered around all day in the rain and wind, I was so impressed with them! They looked great and they must have been cold getting drizzled on and then blown about by the wind!

Well that was my day! I'm so pleased I did it. Was a bit of a shame that no one came down to see me that I was expecting, but I was surprised when my Mum and Dad turned up as they have never seen me at any shows. Apparently they were dead impressed with my table so that was cool.

So now it's back to work for the Doll and Bear show in May. I don't really have a lot to do for it, but will just keep making at my usual pace and hopefully produce some really nice pieces. I already have a number of bears that I am really pleased with and hope to enter some comps! Yay, at last I may get to win something as I have nevered entered anything before.

Thanks for dropping by, hope you enjoyed my pics and waffling!

Happy crafting and huggles to all,

Liza