Time to Reveal

Hello there, it's the end of the month, which means the end of the bears' just for fun literary challenge. This month we took inspiration from The Time Traveler's wife, by Audrey Niffeneger, a more contemporary book than usual for us, but it's good to have a change and keep us on our paws.
Before we show you our creation, we'd like to say a big furry thank you to AJ at Morning AJ , Ali at TeddyBobCrafts, Alison at Words and Pictures, Cestina at Cestina's Dolls houses and Lauren at Our Holidays their fabulous entries, please do go and have a look at their creations, they're excellent. We're so pleased that you all took the time to join in with our challenge, it's so much more fun when sharing crafts with friends.
Now it's over to Horace, who (once again) drew the long straw to complete the challenge for the bears this month.
Hello there friends, here I am, deskless for my challenge, as it was chilly in the bear bedroom where the desk resides. I dragged some crafty stash into the lounge where it was cosy and comfy up on the sofa, don't tell Wilbear though, he's banned any inks etc from anywhere but the kitchen!




I thought I'd have a play with our water colour crayons, which were a Christmas present from the cub, Florence. I chose a mixture of blue, grey and white, and coloured onto a little of my page, before spreading and blending the colours with a bearby wipe.








I then placed a mask over the page, and spritzed some water through it, to produce a ghosting effect.




I turned the stencil over and pressed the negative down into the page for a contrasting effect. I find the best way to give an even spread is to sit on the mask.








I found some time themed oddments in the bears stash. Wilbear would count as a time themed oddment due to his advanced years, but he didn't fancy being adhered to my page!




I begged and borrowed some of Podgy's special glue




And set to work, being careful to avoid splodging glue onto the sofa.








I wanted a busy page, to match my chosen sentiment, which is a quote from Clare in the book. 'I keep myself busy, time goes faster that way'. I loved this quote as it matches the bears' ethos on life.




A close up of the left hand side, with various time themed words.




A close up of the right hand side, the stamp is one we received for Christmas, and it matched right into this month's theme. I added wings to the time word, to suggest time flying when you are busy.




Come back at the start of February for another challenge from the bears, this time not themed to one particular book, but more of a readers' choice,

WOYWW - Postcards

Good morrow from Pooh Bear, here to share with you the latest WOYWW from the bears. Wonder what on earth WOYWW stands for? Hope over to Julia at Stamping Ground to find out, be warned though, it's addictive. Once you hop, you can't stop!

On with my little show and tell...on the desk of plenty this week are some pawchases made from our regular craft shop, Papermaze, as well as some products with which to decorate a postcard for our cub who has just moved away, we agreed to decorate and swap postcards as an arty way of keeping in touch, this will be the bears' first make. Oh, also to the right of my furry yellow paw is the calendar journal in which I plan to decorate our February page later on today.


From Papermaze, as well as a Circles mask and some necessary glue rollers we bought some chalk mists.....


Some pink washi tape


And (yet another) Kaisercraft stamp, I think we're addicted to these!


I'm off for a quick bloghop before starting on the cub's postcard and the calendar page, phew, what a busy bear I am today. Pop back soon to see what I made.

Oh, there's still (just) time to enter our monthly challenge, details can be found if you press you furry paw on this ridiculously long link.

With love from the bears.

Dragon's Dream challenge - Dress to Impress

Hello there, here I am, so fresh from my latest baking exploits that I haven't even had a chance to change from my chef whites yet! Such is life, busy busy!

Anyway, have you seen the latest challenge at Dragons Dream Blog ? It's a fab one, and serendipitously, Wilbear just bought us a magazine with free sewing theme stamps. I just had to have a go at this challenge.


To comply with the embossing element of the recipe, I used a button embossing folder


We received this in our Christmas stash, and hadn't found a use for it as yet.


I embossed a Kraft tag, then inked over it to make the button effect more noticeable.





I used a variety of stamps, oh- do you know why they're called stamps?


Now you know!!!

I added some patterned paper, and stamped a stitch effect between the two papers, to depict them being stitched together, the dress form is the tailors dummy stamp, and also stamped is the cotton reel, the couture stamp and the scissors, all of which were free with the magazine.


A close up of our tag.


To comply with the bling element of the challenge I added a button, which I blinged up with some clear Stickles. It doesn't photograph too well but never mind.


I loved this challenge. Thank you to the dragons for yet another great inspiration.

With love from the bears.

Every Inchie Monday - Hut

Hello there, I've been busy today preparing my inchie for the fantastic challenge over at the Every Inchie Monday challenge blog. If you'd like to join in you can find a list of inspiration words to the left of their home page.

This is great fun, and really is a challenge, as you have only one inch in which to create your work of art. That really gets the furry cogs whirring.

For this weeks word - hut, I was going to create the symbol for a well known pizza chain, but remembered that the bears had a veritable stash of corrugated card, and changed my mind to a beach hut theme instead.



I used Salty Ocean Distress stain to colour my inchie background.


I then cut a hut shape and a triangular roof from the corrugated card. I cut a little door into the hut, and added some pink card underneath the open door to suggest a bright interior to the beach hut.

For the inchie background I used a miniature stamp we have of a flock of birds to add to the seaside theme. I then tore a little sandpaper, and adhered this to the bottom of the inchie, to represent a sandy beach.


I really enjoyed this week's inchie making, so much so that I then had an inchie frenzy, and made the next 7 week's worth! You'll have to wait to see those though, oh the anticipation!!!!!

With love from the bears.

The Alpha Challenge -C

Well hello there, Horace here with a guest helper, Spider bear, we're colouring our dictionary for the Alpha challenge over at The Craft Barn This week's letter is C, and after perusing our French/English dictionary, we found the word Casino, which, in English means......casino!!!!

After gessoing our pages, We coloured them with green water colour crayon,




and after colouring just a little of the page , we then spread the colour over the pages with a bearby wipe, these are a must have to a bears' craft stash.




We remembered to leave our word highlighted, as per the challenge.




I then added some red water colour crayon around the edges of the pages, and again spread this with the bearby wipe.




To create this simple background.




Next, I stamped a small gambling themed stamp, which had come free with a magazine a while back (we're suckers for magazine freebies).




I cut the chips from the stamped image and placed them randomly over the page




Spider bear had given up helping, and seemed to be having a remote control frenzy on the couch.




I started stamping gambling words across the pages.




But got distracted by this beauty on Spider bear's tv!




Anyway, after slobbering over TV cake, I eventually finished my page.




I think it's quite plain, but as we're trying not to overdo every page at the moment, I'll resist the urge to keep adding to it.




I love this challenge, and can't wait for the next letter. I wonder what it will be?
With love from the bears.

Horace's Background Tutorial

Hello there, it's your favourite bear blogger, Horace here, I'm giving a tutorial to a willing and rapt audience!!

I'm taking inspiration from one of my favourite crafters, Dyan Reavely, and following her background tutorial on Youtube. Don't let the other bears know this though, they think I'm naturally creative!


As with any journal creation. I started with a blank page. After spreading a wipe clean mat over our very light duvet cover, I chose 3 Dylusions mists; Bubblegum Pink, Vibrant Turquoise and Squeezed orange.

First, I spritzed my blank page with water, then sprayed my mists in lovely big blotches randomly on one side of the double page.


I spritzed a little more water, to allow for blending, then closed my book, to spread the inks to the opposite page. I find a good way to do this is to use the book as a seat.


After opening up the book, I had a lovely double spread of cool colour. I dabbed off the excess ink with kitchen roll.


Voila. A (very) basic background.


Next, i opened the lovely new Dylusions alphabet stencil purchased at the bears favourite craft shop- Papermaze, and spritzed through it in random places, onto the misted background. I carefully took the mask away from the page, and pressed kitchen roll into the stencilled area.


This lends a ghosting effect to the page, which I love.


I repeated this on the opposite side then dried the page with a heat gun, I then spritzed once again through the stencil, this time using Turquoise mist.


To the basic background I added some journalling in alphabet and number stamps, and some random images, which were Paperartsy stamps sent from a lovely friend for Christmas.


To make the journalling really stand out, I paw-drew around the lettering in white gel pen.

I was so pleased with my tutorial, and finished page, that I couldn't wait to show my interested audience.......oh!



Never mind, you can have a close up instead. Make Every Day Count, by Horace.





With love from the bears.