Eek we forget

The winner! For our competiton!!! Bad bad bears. Well, we've crawled out of the bag and been counted and there were 8 of us, which means our lovely blog follower GILL EDWARDS, of STAMPING LEMONS. Yay. Please email us with your address so we can send your goodies. We're trying to hold Podgy back from eating the chocolate festive treat!!!

Thank you all for playing along, and of course for coming and supporting us during the year. We will be back with more craftyness soon.

With love from the bears

Christmas wishes

Wishing all our followers and friends a very very merry and peaceful Christmas from all at The house of Bears. Don't forget to have a go at our competition especially for our lovely followers on the post below. Xxxx


With love from the bears

Roll up, Roll up for the bears' annual Christmas competition

Well hello there. Here we are once again ready to celebrate Christmas in The House of Bears. We like to give something back to all our lovely loyal followers, to say thank you for coming and reading our witterings and joining in the fun. So, how can we do that? We hear you ask. With our annual Guess The Bears competition of course.

For those who don't know (why on earth not, tsk. Were you sleeping through the festive season last year?) The way our competition works is thus. A few, or many, bears volunteer to climb into our christmas sack. They're counted in by an independent adjudicator (the human under the bed's husband) who also takes a picture of the bag full of bears. Like so.









Proof that there is at least one bear in said bag.








Next, we ask our blog friends to guess how many bears climbed into the bag. If the guess is spot on, we have our winner. If not, the nearest guess wins. In the event of a tie ( two people choosing one number either side of the correct amount ) we shall ask a bear themed question to decide the winner.

So, if you would like to join in, please leave your guess in the comments box below. We usually invite everyone to join in our competitions, regardless of whether you follow the blog or not. But the christmas competition is just for our lovely blog followers or Facebook likers, as a thank you for all your comments during the year.







Did I forget anything? Hmm, the prize? Some craft stash






Stamps, patterned paper, a card sentiments book, some mini notelets and a festive chocolate.





If you read our post yesterday, you'll know we said we may offer a pawmade journal as a prize. Well, Horace has worked his little paws off making this





It has tag pockets





Mini journalling spots





Blank ATCs for you to decorate





More tags





And plenty of blank pages just waiting to be decorated






So, what are you waiting for? Get guessing. Nab a number for your guess as soon as possible to be in with a chance of winning stash.

Rules

For this competition only, you must be a follower of this blog or a liker on our House of Bears facebook page.

Only one number guess per participant please.

Choose a unique number, if your original guess has been taken, please guess an alternative number.

If a number is used twice, the first person to pick it will be deemed the winner.

We will reveal the winner on 31st december, so you have happy mail to look forward to receiving in the new Year.

Good luck lovely friends.

With love from the bears

Pawmade presents

Well hello there. It's Horace here with you today to share some pawmade pawsomeness with you. Being unable to work means we often have a lack of pawket money with which to buy presents, but of course we still want to give to our friends. After searching Youtube for tutorials of pawmade gifts, we came across Jenniebellie's videos. She is passionate about using what you have to make beautiful gifts. If you haven't heard of her before, check out the link. We've watched almost all her videos and have been collecting the card from latte boxes, cereal, snack bars... Well, anything that comes in a box, to use as material for art journals. I thought we would have enough saved now to make a journal or two and get us started on birthday pressies for next year.





Jenniebellie's tutorial is ace, easy to follow and inspirational too. I made a start while I watched her Cereal box journal tutorial. I started by sealing down all the flaps, as Jennie suggests, for extra reinforcement.


Voila.



Goodness. I've made a fair few


I then added a coat (well it is winter) of Gesso as a base. I left this to dry completely before adding any other paint.



Then it was on with the decorating. For the journal below I scrunched brown paper then adhered it to the box with PVA glue, and added paint over the top, making sure to brush between the scrunched paper so there were no brown patches.


I then brayered some orange paint on. That produced a great effect as it only caught on the bumpy bits of the cover. Over that I went a bit Gesso mad, and flicked it from a paint brush, at a great height. Unfortunately, when I looked down, I found I'd also Gessoed the laminate floor. Oops!


I painted the rest of the journal covers in acrylics. First adding one colour, then using a scraping knife effect to add the second colour, in random scrapes.


I then sat and watched paint dry!


Here's one I made earlier, this has collaged papers and a stamped effect for the front cover.


The inside is made from unused envelopes,


12 x 12 patterned papers cut to size,


And a page from our Art Journal Love book, which we decided to rip out and use as journal paper rather than fill the book in as it was. I've started a sketch in this already. I was a bit keen!


The other journals are all sitting patiently on the desk. I'll let them dry overnight then use surplus patterned papers, scrapbook card and any other papers that can be cut to fit for the inside pages. Jenniebellie uses decorated card from cereal boxes for her journal pages (which are known as signatures) but we only had small boxes, and as the pages need to be folded in half to make the signatures, mine would have been teeny tiny. We have a plentiful supply of patterned paper and card here anyway. More than enough to fill these journals and several more besides.

If you have time, pop back tomorrow when we will be posting our annual Guess How Many Bears competition. It's a must do tradition and there will be crafty candy prizes for the winner. I might even include one of my pawmade journals.
With love from the bears

WOYWW? Secret journal stuff

Well hullo there. It's your royal Podgeness here this morning. I've nabbed the desk to join in with WOYWW. If you haven't heard of WOYWW before then take a trip over to Julia's Blog to find out more.

We spent a large chunk of Sunday art journalling with the cub. We clubbed together to buy two small Dylusions journals. We're going to create collaborative journals and we made a start on them. We'll each create pages then swap the journals when we meet. We'll both end up with a journal created together. We've decided that if a page is date stamped it means it's completed and the other person can't add anything to it, but if a page has some creation on it but no date we can add to it and even pass it back for further decoration. A page is only considered complete once it's date stamped. Here's the journal we have at the moment. It's opened on the cub's page as we don't want her to see our next creation just yet.


There's not a lot else on the desk, when the cub visited we worked in the kitchen as the desk is too small to fit both of us.

I thought you might like to see yesterday's supper too. Dinner tastes so much better when it's smiling!


I'm off for a hop around some work desks now. TTFN

With love from the bears

WOYWW? The neglected desk

Well hello there. We missed last Wednesday's WOYWW so we were determined to join in today. What does the acronym stand for? I hear you ask, well, if you press your furry paw right here you'll be magically transported to the wonderful host of this weekly blog hop where she explains it all much better than a bunch of furry bears can.

So, what's on our desk? Sadly not an awful lot as you can see.



Wilbear has been commandeering the desk for his studies, he's been getting himself all stressed trying to keep up with the workload and we think he's feeling a little overwhelmed with it all. We pawsuaded him to take a break over the weekend and we all went to visit the cub. Horace created the page above whilst at the cub's. We always take our journal to show her and we always have a little rummage through her stash while we're there. How come other people's craft stuff seems so much more exciting than your own?

Here's a close up of Horace's page so far



He's not sure what else he'll add. Maybe a quote about chilling out for Wilbear? Anyway. We're off for a bloghop before Wilbear insists on studying again. TTFN.

With love from the bears

Let the Christmas Countdown Begin

Hello there. Are you getting ready for the big day? Here at The House of Bears we can hardly contain our excitement that Christmas is almost here. We pawsuaded Wilbear to put the tree up. He muttered and moaned a little but that's just his way. He loves December really. He insisted that he was the only one allowed to assemble the tree.


We were allowed to watch though.


It did look like a dangerous job when Wilbear began to put the lights on the tree. Ouch!


He cheered up a little when he remembered Mr Tesco brought these with last week's shopping.


He said decorating the tree is a load of baubles!


We think he did a great job though. Is that Rudolph hiding to the side of the tree?


We already have our first present to put under the tree.


It's from the cub. How exciting.


With love from the bears

Advent fun

Well hello there dear friends. It's Horace here with you to share some festive fun. We've been a little neglectful of the blog lately. Wilbear's studying has tired us all out. All work and no play makes for a very grumpy atmosphere in The House of Bears though so I borrowed the credit card to pawchase some supplies for a Christmas project.

Oh good, they've arrived. Let's see what's in the box.


Oooh. A Tando Advent house.


And a lovely Christmas paper pack.


There's even some free ribbon included. How lovely.


I'd better start building an Advent house.


First, I'll read the instructions carefully.


Goodness, there are lots of pieces. Hmm, this may take some time



I think I'll need some of Podgy's special glue for the house construction.


I'll start with the little boxes - one done...



23 to go!


The shell of the house just slots together. easy pawsy.


Miracle of miracles, the box fits too.


Now to glue the sides. This is my technique to apply pressure and make sure the glue adheres properly. I was going to use Podgy for this step but we don't want the house to collapse under his weight, do we?


There. All done. I just need to decorate it now.


Gold and white boxes


With glittery gold and white numbers. How festive.


Voila


One finished house.


The bears said I could open the first box, as I made the house. Now, what have we got in here.


One for each paw. How yummy. Podgy offered to taste test them for me, but I think I'll be okay.


With love from the bears