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.

Happy Food

Hello there, the bears have been a bit miserable, with all the snow lying about, we haven't been able to get out at all. We're a bit wobbly on our paws at the best of times, so snowy paths are a no no. To cheer us all up, I made us a special dinner. Cheesy faces. I mashed a tonne of grated cheese into some mashed potatoes, and baked in a hot oven for about 30 minutes. I used the special monkey mitts to get the cheesy pie out of the oven, in order to protect my paws.



To make the faces, I placed a round of mash in the middle of the plate, added tomatoes for eyes, half a cheese triangle for the nose and a sausage for a mouth.



The finishing touch was baked bean hair


The bears were much cheered when they saw their special dinner, so I made them smiley desserts too. If the dreary weather is getting you down, try a smiley dinner, how can you fail to smile back when even your dinner smiles up at you?


With love from the bears.

WOYWW - Flowery thoughts

Hellooooo, Wednesday? Again? Goodness, well I guess it's time for WOYWW, if you want to know what on earth WOYWW stands for, pad along to the wonderful Stamping Groundhosted by the lovely Julia.

It's Horace here again, the other bears will find any excuse to stay in the cosy bear bed and keep telling me it's my turn to host WOYWW! So, on with the show I must go.

Here is my starting to craft mess. I had an idea for a journal page, so started by stamping our new Dylusions stamp, which I love. I have various other stamps piled up, as I like to play around with several ideas before making my final choices. Also on the messy desk is a scrumpled piece of kitchen roll, how slovenly of me!


You'll also see on the desk the crafter's essential of bearby wipes, various inks I planned to use on my page, my Dylusions lined up ready for action....

I'm trying to limit my backgrounds to no more than 3 colours, as I was finding that anything I made, I was not happy with, resulting in one page that had taken hours ending up in the bin. This background uses two Dylusions mists.


A little close up of my Dylusions, I swear you'd have thought the bottles contained radioactive matter, I had such a struggle to break into the Mowed Lawn bottle! I didn't use the pink in the end, choosing to stamp pink flowers on the page instead, for a contrast.


To use the Dylusions sprays, I had to move to the kitchen table, as Wilbear has banned any spritzing and spraying in the bedroom - he found a big splotch of vibrant turquoise on the duvet cover, and I have NO idea how that got there!!!!!!!

After spraying then drying my misted page, I added some stencil effects. Spritzing through with water, for a ghosting effect, then using the negative of the stencil on the opposite page and pressing the watery residue down for a different effect.


Once back at the desk, the stamping began... This was from one of the bears' Christmas stamp sets.


I stamped onto lightly patterned paper, then cut out my flutterbyes (as Pooh calls them)


I did the same with a small flower stamp, then stamped our new brick stamp directly onto the page in Pine Needles distress ink, keeping to the green and pink theme.


Mid - craft perusions! So far so good.....


I continued stamping, distressing and sticking, until my page looked like this.


I took a moment to consider, then decided I needed more, so I highlighted the journalling with a dark green Sharpie pen, in keeping with the initial colour scheme. I also added some of the Dylusions stamped eyes to my flowers. Just for a funky finish.


BUT, in the bears new 'I don't like this' style. I decided it was now too much! Argh. Also, the new cheap journal I'd created this in was really bad quality, the paper was very buckled after only 2 Dylusions colours applied onto it, so, I decided to re create the page onto our Pink Pig 8x8 journal. I applied our new 'less is more' mantra to the background this time. I've decided my problem is, I love so many journal pages I see on the Internet, and try to recreate all the ideas on one page!!



Left hand side close up



Right hand side close up. The journalling reflects that it's nice to think good thoughts, as it keeps you feeling positive.



I'm off for a bit of desk hopping now, see you soon. X

With love from the bears.

Bin Art!

Hello there, you know that saying, Creativity is making mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep? Well that certainly applied to my last art project...

I had watched a Limor Webber Tutorial, if you haven't seen any of her stuff, search Youtube for her work, wow, she can create. Anyway, feeling all inspired, I decided to copy directly from her tutorial. Only problem was, I had NONE of the items she used.

No problem, I thought to my furry self, I shall impawvise.... So off to the art box I padded.... I leant over to see what I could use.....


And promptly fell in!


Wilbear rescued me, and made me a nice big bowl of chocolate cereal to console me.


I really wanted to use our new Dylusions stamps, which we bought with Christmas money. Aren't they great?


Limor created her background with acrylic paints, I didn't have the colours she used, so chose the closest matches I could find.


Once I had applied my paint, I took a bearby wipe, and wiped it over the paint, to both spread and blend, and then wipe areas of paint off the page.


Next, I took a bright red paint


Splotched a little onto my foam brush


and applied it through a stencil.



Yikes, I was beginning to wonder what on earth was going on with this page. But thought I'd see where it took me (bad idea!)


My next mistake idea was to add some gesso to the page, to make a frame effect for my stamps.


Some of which I stamped, coloured then glued to the page, others which I stamped directly onto the page, in the bears' own inimitable way.


Yikes, what the heck? Limor's page was wonderfully arty, mine was a mess of grunge and, well, mess.


Despite really not liking my page, I left it overnight. Maybe I hoped it would marinade into something more pleasing to the eye?


But when I awoke, the art bearies had not visited to magically transform my pages


In fact. I disliked them intensely now.


On the advice of a friend, I gessoed over all but the Dylusions characters... But I could still see the mess underneath in my mind, so I finally ripped them out, and consigned them to the bin.


So, there it was, my experiment into mixed media was not successful this time, maybe I threw too much at the page, maybe It just wasn't my style, maybe it actually had so many styles that it ended up having no style, whatever, if you don't like what you've done, it preys on your furry mind until it's gone.

So, why am I posting this? Well a beary good friend of ours says she doesn't rate her own art work, and I thought that maybe it's because we all compare our own work to others' work, and as people (naturally) post what they consider to be their best work, we don't necessarily get to see the bin consignments. So, I thought I'd be brave and post mine!

Also, I have some beary honest friends, one of whom admitted they hated this, another who said they liked it. Proving that art is subjective. Isn't it funny, one bear's trash and all that.

Feel free to comment either way, especially with helpful hints of how we can manage a more pleasing mixed media page, is it that less is more, or that we needed to co ordinate our colours more? Answers on a comment form.....



With love from the bears.

Every Inchie Monday, Stone

Hello there, Monday has come around again already so here we are with our next inchie. The challenge blog can be found here We were pretty stumped by the title of Stone at first, but then Horace's furry thoughts turned to precious stones, and this is what he came up with




Horace used one of the inchies cut last week, so it's pink card, with some ribbon effect patterned paper ripped and glued on. The edges are inked in tattered rose distress inks. Horace then added a 'diamond' which is a sticky gem, and the word forever, cut from Podgy's latest trash mag. I'm sure the story it was cut from will still make sense when he comes to read it!!!

Horace then had a slightly mad moment with the stickles, he wanted to bling up the edges of the inchie, but his little paws pressed so hard on the bottle that a huge lump of the sticky stuff shot out, and he ended up trying to disperse it over the whole inchie. It's still drying, hours later, pah!

With love from the bears.