Cedric earns his keep

Hello there, Cedric here today. Remember our previous posts have shown this


On our desk? Remember the bears' intention to do 'something' with it? Well I got bored of the pawcrastination, and decided to take action.

Dressed in my decorating best....


With paw sized paint roller to hand....


and of course, some paint


Oh, and some very necessary mid-painting snacks





I set to my painting and decorating task. First, I removed the drawers from the unit.


Then loaded up my roller


And rolled away.


Next, I drew a template for my drawer fronts.


And cut carefully to size






I adhered the paper with Podgy's special glue, note he corrected the mis-spelling!


I applied a thin coat of the Mod Podgey


And pressed my patterned paper over the top, smoothing out any lumps or bumps before it could stick fast!


I used contrasting papers for a more interesting effect.


After all my hard work, Podgy cooked me a hearty supper.


After leaving the unit to dry overnight. I reassembled it on the bears' desk.


A very simple decoration technique, but it looks so much better than it did bare (bare, bear, funny eh? No? Hmm, maybe we have an odd sense of humour!)


With love from the bears.

Page sketch challenge

Hello there, Pooh here. I've purloined Horace's scrapbook page, he wanted to enter the challenge at Creative Craft World which is a sketch challenge. Here is the original sketch



and here am I, in my smart Soldier uniform, keeping guard on the bear's hunny stash, I got a bit bored of guard duty though and decided to get my picture taken with Horace's interpretation of the sketch.


He used one of our pictures from the zoo, of the red panda having his lunch. He went with the theme of time, to fit in with the clock in the sketch challenge. We had some cog die cuts, which he stained in Walnut distress stain.


He also stained a piece of book page paper, with clock images and text on it, he thought it was too white for this page.


Here is his finished piece, there is journalling to the top left, which says feeding time for the red panda at Banham Zoo.


Won't he be pleased that I've blogged his hard work for him?
With love from the bears.

WOYWW - Snow Much Mess

Hello there, Podgy here today, fresh from my chef duties


to share our workspace with all the noseylovely crafty peeps in Blog land. Why am I sharing pictures of my workspace? Press your furry paw here to see the addictive blog posted by Julia, be warned though, once you WOYWW you can't stop. Believe us, we tried to miss a week once, and got severe withdrawal symptoms!

So, on with my workspace.... It's snowing outside, so I decided the bears needed a journal page to remember the occasion. We have our Pink Pig 8x8 journal open, with a suitably snowy scene. I made the snowmen by cutting circles with our Spellbinders circle die, then embossing them. I may add noses and hats and other snowman accoutrements at some stage. Why am I on the desk too? Well, where else would I craft? Don't you do the same?


Also on the desk is this glue, named after me, wow, real fame. Shame they spelt my name wrong but I can always cross out the e and add a y.


A close up of some mess on the desk, I cut some letters for my journal page, and some for a friend, and the discarded card soon mounted up.


These inks are also on the desk, why? Because the bears just bought them, but we are not sure if we bought the correct sort of ink, we wanted archival, to stamp over mists and paints etc. Wilbear decided Memento meant the same as Archival, but we think he may be wrong, does anyone know which inks are best for journal pages? Our distress inks just seem to fade into the page if stamped on top of any inked or misted backgrounds.


Here's my page so far. I need to wait for the glues to dry, then I may get busy with the stickles.


Time to go and have a nosey around blog land, we do love Wednesdays, don't you?

With love from the bears.

Alpha Challenge -V

Hello there, your favourite bear, Horace here to thrill you with another of my creations!!!! I decided to take part in The Alpha challengewith Craft Barn. You can either alter a dictionary or tear pages from a dictionary and add to an art journal. I didn't want to face Wilbear's wrath by tearing his big dictionary up, so I repurposed this




Which had been sat on the bears shelf for at least 5 years, with good intentions to re-learn French, oo la la. as good intentions go, it didn't!! C'est la vie and all that. I'm going to use it for all my alpha challenges instead. I shall eventually alter the covers but I may wait until the end of the challenge, or I may not, who knows. Gosh I live life on the edge don't I?




First, I gessoed over the dictionary pages, leaving my chosen word un covered. By the way, my chosen word is Voyage!!




I dried the pages, then added another layer of Gesso.




Going with the word voyage, I decided on a Trip to America theme. first I sprayed Dylusions inks, first Post Box Red, then London Blue. On top of this I added more inks through a funky mask. Finally, I added some white acrylic paint through the same mask. This was not altogether successful, as I added a little too much paint, and lost the mask effect in places, but hey, it's all an ex'bear'iment, isn't it?




Next came some stamping, in the bears own inimitable way.....




In accordance with the challenge rules, I left my word un misted, so it was easy to see.




I had a blue postcard, from one of the bears Christmas advent presents, which I tore in half, then stamped some swirled writing on, and added an airmail stamped image to, just to add more interest to the card. In the same set was the America map, how serendipitous was that? To the left is a Statue of Liberty image, stamped in Blazing Red Stayzon, it's clearer in real life but if after looking at it for a few days I decide it's not defined enough, I shall re stamp onto card and cut out and stick, for a more defined effect.




I used a metal passport embellishment, which has been in the bears stash since the year dot, whenever that was! I really enjoyed this challenge. I wonder what letter will be chosen next?




With love from the bears.

Every Inchie Monday

Whew, here I am at last, the bears have been out on a shopping trip, buying a housewarming gift for the cub's new lair. Luckily I still got time to sit down and make my inchie. The challenge blog is here, and you can find a different inspawration word each week, this week's word is Girl. Can you spot my inchie in my paw?




Shall I zoom in closer?



What? Closer still?



There! It's not that distorted in real life, I don't think magazine images photograph very well,and that's where I found the girl image, in Podgy's trash magazine, I do hope he wasn't wanting to read that particular page!!!

Anyway, I started, as usual with a one inch square, in pale pink this time, I inked the edges in Tattered Rise distress ink, added a torn piece of lace effect patterned paper, a 'girl' word, also cut from Podgy's magazine, and voila, one inchie with a Girl theme. :)

Now I'm off to eat dinner, the bears have roast chicken tonight, cooked by the ever willing (put upon) Wilbear.

With love from the bears.

No Time To Choose

Hello there, Cedric here, fresh out of the bears' sick bed, to show you my crafternoon creations. Horace bought the bears a new journal for our calendar challenge, and I decided to utilise it for important events throughout the year.

The first major news of the year is that our dear Cub, Florence, is moving away at short notice, due to her husbear being offered a lovely new job in a new city. This has resulted in them trying to find somewhere to live in rather a rush.

As we moved to the bear bungalow only a couple of years ago, we can remember the stress of trying to find suitable accommodation, although not at such short notice.Thinking of their dilemma inspired me to journal it, to relieve the stress the bears were feeling for them.




I decided to copy a background I'd seen in one of our Craft Stamper magazines.




I used the dylusions colours suggested in the CS project.




Spritzing them directly onto my craft mat




then folding my book in two, and placing the page directly onto the sprayed area.




I repeated the process for the opposite page, as I wanted to create a double page spread.




After dabbing my pages with our snazzy snowman kitchen roll, I then flicked the pages randomly with water, and dabbed again with the kitchen roll.




I dried them with the heat gun. My furry foot seemed to get extra hot whilst carrying out this step. I have no idea why???




Voila, one simple background with which to create a page.




You can add further effects to your background, but first I wanted to check that my chosen images would fit the page.




Wilbear drew these fabulous houses for me, utilising an old book, they look really good drawn over the text. Isn't he clever?




Once I had my images in place. I decided my background needed more work, so I set to adding effects to it. First, I rubbed distress inks and stains around the rim of an old hot chocolate tub and pressed this onto my page.




I then used our fab Dylusions stencil, which, incidentally, fit my A4 page almost perfectly. I sprayed water through the circles, left for a few minutes, then raised off the stencil, and dabbed with kitchen roll, to remove some of the ink.




Next, I spritzed through the squares border with Dylusions




Then lifted off the stencil,




And turned it over, pressing the negative onto the opposite page. This creates two different effects with the same stencil. Clever eh? (I learnt this trick from watching a Dyan Reavely tutorial.)




I then assembled my page, after colouring Wilbear's groovy houses with Spectrum Noir pens and distress stains. I added journalling with various alphabet stamps.




Florence said she loved the page. I added a date so we can all remember this event, and hopefully laugh about the stress we all felt,once the move is over. Journalling this event really relieved the pressure of the day for me, try it if you have an event that is causing you stress. It really helps. Alternatively, eat a chocolate bar, that helps too!!




With love from the bears.