The bears challenge end

Hello there, well our challenge is at an end and we'd like to say thank you to everyone who entered, what fun we had looking at your artwork, we were impressed that two of you managed not just one but two entries, wow. have a look at all the fabulous entries

Heather's entry

Ike's First entry

Lauren's first entry

Lauren's second entry

ike's second entry

AJ's entry

Ali Wade's entry

Maureen's entry

Aren't they all fabulous. We love every one's art work and would like to thank you all for joining in the fun with us.

Pooh was a little bit naughty and sneaked in a challenge entry of his own here

Now it's over to Horace, for the bear's entry.

Hello there dear friends. Remember my previous WOYWW showing the start of our April/ May challenge page?

Well here's how I made it. First I blobbed some blue and white acrylic paints directly onto my journal pages.

Then closed the book, and brayered over to spread the paint. Be warned if you try this, the paint will squeeze out of the sides of the journal, so it's best to start by adding kitchen roll underneath the page you close onto, and make sure you have nothing on the page you are brayering onto, as this will be covered in paint, as you can see.

Another tip (which I didn't follow) is to Gesso the blank journal before starting, it seems to give you a little longer at the brayering closed pages stage, when I tried to open mine, it was partly stuck, oops.

Yet another tip is don't look too closely at your work, or you may end up a little painty!!!!

Eventually, after a few mishaps, and a blue snout incident, I produced this

As you may remember, we were using quotes this month, and I chose 'I am lonely sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me'. This quote sums up how I feel sometimes, despite sharing the bungalow with the other bears. I guess I'm a bit of a solitary bear at times, and having an artistic soul makes me feel a little blue (especially my poor snout when I lean into my journal!!!!)

Come back tomorrow for our June challenge.

With love from the bears.

Ordinary people

Hello there, it's Pooh bear here, sneaking in my own entry for the bears' literary challenge, which this month was a choice of quotes from Little Women. I decided to use the quote ' I hate ordinary people'.
I used a Gelli print for my background, and fashioned an alternative kind of person from our Dylusions stamps and a magazine flower cut out, with more Gelli prints making eyes and a nose.

Yet another Gelli print made some fab letters, cut on our Cricut.

I Mod Podgied everything down and sloped off for a small smackeral while everything dried.



Ta dahhhhhh, my pages.

And a little close up! Tune in tomorrow for Horace's interpretation of the challenge.

With love from the bears

WOYWW -Yet More Card Making

Hello there, friends, it's Horace here today to treat you all to a very messy desk for WOYWW. If you're wondering what the strange acronym stands for then press a furry paw here to find out. If you already know, then carry on reading. :)
It's the WOYWW anniversary today, 4 years of desk hopping! We haven't been a part of WOYWW that long, but we're very glad we found it, as it's such a great concept, and we've found lots of like minded friends through it, so thank you Julia for allowing us all to take part. To mark the occasion, Julia has arranged ATC swaps too, we've made ours, have you? We actually made 2 ATCS, so have a spare up for swap if anyone wants to? If we get more than one yes we will pick a person by closing our eyes and poking our furry paw at a commentator.
Today at the desk I'm charity card making, trying to use up our seemingly never ending supply of 6x6 patterned papers, interspersed with papers of many sizes generously donated by friends who support our paw made charity card efforts, so a big furry thank you to them for helping us to be able to make more cards.

As you can see, as usual I end up crafting in one inch of space, despite starting with a nice clear desk. It must be a foible of crafters as I know I'm not the only one. Can you see my pre made card?

I've contacted a local animal rescue charity, Suffolk Animal Rescue, whose policy is to be non selective in the animals they offer shelter to, hopefully some cards can be sold on their Facebook auction page, or at charity events, to raise much needed funds.
Anyway, I feel the need to desk hop, so will leave you for now,
With love from the bears

Gelli on a Bag

Yo yo bear blog followers. It's the Podge here, I've been playing with the Gelli plate today, it's such fun.



I pressed a bottle cap into the painted plate, for a groovesome effect.


In our cupboard of plenty we had a stash of paper bags, which we'd been meaning to make into a paper bag book, I thought it was time to use some. This is the first one pressed into the plate.


I then decided to try a masking technique I'd seen on various Internet pages. First, I inked up a stamp


And did the usual bear style stamping,


Onto a post-it note.


I cut post it note image out and then stamped the image directly onto the paper bag, then added the mask over the top.


I pressed the masked bag onto my painted Gelli plate.


When the mask was removed, it left a perfect, unspoilt impression of the stamp.


The next step was probably the most important for a bear as important as me - posing beside my Gelli bags!


I decided my book would be full of quotes, and found these letters to fix to the first page.


Using a hole punch and book rings, I fashioned the bags into a book, just like magic, what a clever bear I am!


Now to find some quotes, I wonder if there are any about gorgeous, clever bears?

Challenge reminder

Don't forget the bears' just for fun April/ May literary based challenge, this time we have quotes to inspire you. Check out the details here. We'd love for you to join us, there's still another week or so to create something.

You can enter more than once too.

With love from the bears

WOYWW -Mid Stash Sorting Mess

Hello there, it's Cedric here with you today, Podgy said it was my turn at the desk, and that he'd left a lovely surprise for me. Apparently, all I need to do is clear this lot and my surprise will appear. Isn't that kind? He said I had been specially chosen by him, and that in no way was this a trick, that he had not turfed out every stamp from the bedroom into the kitchen, then he had certainly not emptied all the storage from the kitchen cupboards and drawers onto the desk in the hope of clearing a stampy space, and of course he had not then become bored of the mess and decided he was too important and famous to actually sort it himself!!!



Goodness, what a lot to clear. Podgy insists I'm not to cheat, and the surprise will only appear if I sort and clear this properly into relevant drawers and shelves. Aren't I lucky that he chose me for this honour?!!!!!

Eek, I just looked to my right and there's even more stash, I guess I need to clear that little lot too before my surprise materialises?! Sigh.



I wonder if Podgy will mind if I paws for a little bloghop around the WOYWW desks, hmmm, apparently I needn't concern myself with that, he's already on it, gosh, he is so considerate.

If you'd like to see neater (and possibly messier) desks from crafters worldwide, click a furry paw here to join in.

With love from the bears

Out of the Album

Hello there from Pooh bear, goodness, that rhymes, I must be a poohet!!! I'm here today to show you how to bring your scrapping out of the album and into a frame, where it can be viewed and enjoyed on a daily basis. It always seems such a shame that, once created, album pages are often placed in a cupboard, only to be viewed on special occasions.

We love to scrapbook our favourite places, one of which is Magpie Mine, a disused mine surrounded by beautiful countryside in The Peak District. As soon as we saw this place we fell in love with it, and didn't want to leave, so we took a photo, determined to bring some of that beauty back home with us. Of course, having taken the photo, we really didn't want it hidden away unappreciated in an album, so we decided we needed a frame for it.

I bought a 12 x 12 flat photo frame from The Range, but any picture or photo frame would work. I took the backing from the frame and primed it with acrylic paint, Mmm, tastes good.



Next I decided to show off my amazing balancing skills on the side of the table, just because I could, and I like to throw in a random photo or two!



Once I'd fallen off the table I carried on creating. First I sprayed Dylusions pure sunshine through a sun shaped mask, which I had cut on our trusty Cricut.



I decided that although my frame was flat, I could still give my page a little depth, so I cut some gutter guard to use on it.



I took a piece of patterned paper from a kit, and cut various flowers and leaves from it. I know the technical term is fussy cutting, but my paws really weren't that fussy where they cut!



After spraying and blending blue and green mists onto my page, I began to create my picture. I added distress inks in random places through masks to add extra interest and depth to the background, then I adhered gutter guard with a glue gun, and hid the gluey blobs with flower embellishments.



I cut my title in various Cricut fonts.



Then punched, or should that be stomped, some butterflies from our lovely Martha Stewart double punch.



Finally, my page was finished, and I love it



I reframed my picture. and hung it in pride of place, now we can see our perfect place whenever we want to. If you have a favourite photo that you don't want to close into an album, why don't you try this technique? Any size picture frame works, as long as it's bigger than your photo, and leaves room for a little embellishing. You can even repurpose an old unwanted picture by taking it out of the frame and adding your own creation.



With love from the bears

Podgy's weekend bakes

Good morrow all. It's Podgy Le Chef here today to
show off bake some weekend treats for the bears; banana and chocolate chip muffins. First I needed to look
my usual gorgeous self the part, so I divested myself of my comfy onesie in favour of my chef's whites. Goodness I do scrub up well, have you ever seen such a handsome bear as me?



I pawrused the Internet, and found a recipe on Mumsnet (I'm sure that's a spelling mistake and should read bearsnet!)

Anyhoo, if you fancy baking along:

Ingredients
60g chocolate chips (dark ones work really well)
250g bananas (two or three) weighed after peeling (ripe or overripe work well) and mashed with a fork
2 large eggs
125ml vegetable oil
150g caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Mmmm choc chips, should I try one
packor two?



I whisked together the oil, eggs and sugar.



Then added the flour and bicarbonate of soda, mixing until just combined. Finally I added the mashed banana and chocolate chips.



I cooked -the muffins, not me - in the oven at 180 degrees, for 25 minutes. I checked the muffins were completely cooked by inserting a skewer into the middle, I was tempted to just stick my paw in, but thought it might get a bit burnt.



I placed the muffins on a cooling tray, oooh my kitchen smelled like a little bit of heaven.



One for each paw, mmm.



With love from the bears

K is for....

Hello there, Podgy here with you today, I voted myself creator of the alpha page for the challenge over at The Craft Barn.

The chosen letter this fortnight is K, and due to our inadvertent theme of using only words that translate to the same in both languages, I had only 2 words to choose from: Ketchup and Karate (it's a mini dictionary!) I wanted to use karate as my word, but the other bears said that was a little narcissistic of me, and refused to take a picture of me posing in my suit. I think they realised I'm just far too gorgeous and were jealous!!!

Anyway, that left me with one word - ketchup, so after an Internet search for suitable images, I began creating. First I cut a picnic blanket from our
Spellbinders Nestabilities die




Ooh, how picnicky!




Next, I dabbed Picket Fence distress stain over the dictionary pages to dull the other words.




I selected the only red distress stain we have




Covered my ketchup word




And began a splatathon, ooh how cathartic. If you wish to release some frustration I recommend it, just bash the stain onto the page, hard!




I added some letters, in red of course, to complete the page. I circled the chosen word and definition, to make sure it was obvious on the page.




I then added a ketchupy kind of word.




Here's a close up, this was fun, even if I didn't get to feature in the actual dictionary.




With love from the bears