Hello there, it's your petit chef, podgy here, to make the bears' some scrummy scones.
First, I sifted 8oz self raising flour into a large mixing bowl
Then chopped 2oz butter into small cubes
Like so
I rubbed the butter into the flour, until it resembled fine breadcrumbs.
Mind you don't get any flour on your nose, I always manage to avoid such embarrassing things happening to me!
The bears like fruit in their scones, so, along with 2oz caster sugar, I added two good paws full of mixed fruit. I then added 1/4 pint of milk and mixed until I achieved a dough like texture (my scone mix that is, not me, although I guess with all this baking I may start to have a dough like texture!)
I floured my work surface, then patted my dough into a round, and cut out some giant scones.
I like watching my scones bake, and anyway, food has been known to disappear straight from the oven if not watched!
I baked my scones for 12 minutes, and they came out golden brown and ready for cream and jam. Mmm mmm.
Hello there, Cedric here with you to share a background I made. We wend out to our local town today, it has one of those super dooper bargain type shops. I picked up some combs for the exorbitant price of 99 pennies! These can serve a dual purpose; not only will they get the knots out of our fur, but they can also be used for crafting. NB, make sure you comb your fur BEFORE using them for painty effects, or you could have psychedelic fur!
For this ex'bear'iment you will need:
A comb
Some bearby wipes
Some acrylic paint in the colours of your choice
Splat a little colour onto your page, be generous, but not so generous that it spreads too far. Now, pick up your comb and create
Zooom, oooh what fun.
Add more paint, and this time wipe it over your page with a bearby wipe to spread your colours.
Pick up your comb once more, and really scrape it through those colours, ths way, that way, any way you choose, have fun and see what happens.
I love this effect
You can scrape a line through your criss crosses, for a change.
Just play then play some more,
This is my finished background, I may add another colour, or start creating some art on top of this. I just love the way I have so many textured effects from one small comb.
Hello there followers, newbies, WOYWWers and anyone else who may have stumbled across our humble little bear blog. If this is your first visit here you may be surprised to see that this blog is not written by humans, but by a bunch of bears, who took over from the human sometime last year, as we decided we were bored of just sitting round looking cute, and that we could blog abut more interesting adventures than said human.
Anyway, Wednesday means it's WOYWW time, this is the best time of the week if you're nosey like us, as it's our regular snoop at desks across the world, courtesy of Julia at Stamping Ground. Check out her fab blog, but be warned, once you hop, you can't stop!
So, what's on our workspace this week then? It's Horace hosting the bears' desk this week, I asked Podgy to take a picture of me mid card make. I have a glue stick, a cutter, a half made card, ink pads, scissors, scraps of patterned paper..... All the usual pawraphenalia involved in a card making session. If you're anything like me, you'll have a thousand ideas going round your furry brain of what you want to make, and far too many embellishments to fit on 20 cards, never mind a small pawful!
Do you subscribe to any monthly craft kits? Although it's not a subscription kit, we've bought the Papermaze monthly kit since they started selling them last year. So far we've been rather bad at using them, thinking we'll save them for 'something special' but at last we've managed to make some scrapbook lay outs from one of the kits, and, determined not to end up with a bag of odds and ends, I thought I'd use the scraps to make some cards.
Here I am, in all my cuteness, with some of my paw made cards.
I utilised a balloon punch for this one, we bought this last year thinking it would become a much used tool, but I think this may be the first time it's actually been used!
Wilbear bought us some lovely Wellington bear embellishments for one of our Christmas presents, so I made some card toppers with them.
The card below is for our dear cub, who recently moved to a new town with her husband, as he had secured a new job there. Despite her having no job to go to, she had secured herself two interviews before she had actually moved, and was offered the first job she went for, not bad eh?
In the card below I utilised the negative of a leaf die, to show that all scraps can be used in some way.
We've decided that from now on, whenever we create a scrapbook page, we will endeavour to make a card with the leftover patterned papers.
After all that crafting I feel a deserved break is needed, so I shall go desk hopping across blogland. See you next week. Xxx
Hello there, your favourite soldier bear, Pooh here today, taking a little break from my guard duties to create our february calendar page, to take part in the year in journalling challenge over at The Kathryn Wheel.
In conjunction with this challenge, we're trying to use some of our veritable pile of 6x6 patterned papers we've accumulated over the years. I chose this pad for February's pages, as it had a romantic feel to it. I'm just an old softie at heart you know, must be all that hunny!
I found a heart stamp in our stash, and along with our new Archival ink (thank you so much to everyone for inky advice - we bought a selection of archival and stazon inks to play with)
I stamped the heart 28 times onto the patterned papers. Goodness, I had a sore paw after all that stamping on it!
But the hearts looked pretty good.
I cut them out, and only then did I try them for size on the journal pages, thank goodness they fitted.
I retired to the kitchen, to spray some pink glimmery shimmery mist to one side of the calendar page. I then spritzed this with water, and closed the book to ensure an even spread across the double pages.
Once I'd opened up the book and dried the pages with kitchen roll. I Used our latest mask to spritz more water through, lending a ghosting effect to the background.
I think this works far better with Dylusions inks than with Glimmer mists.
I stamped a script background stamp across the background, completely obliterating my ghosting effect (well that was a complete waste of my effort wasn't it? ) I then added my hearts to my spritzed and glitzed page,to produce this.
I just need to add the dates now, and of course some paw- written journalling.
Hello there from Captain Pooh, taking a break from my guard duty to show you the postcard I paw made for our dear cub. She recently moved away, and we agreed to keep in touch in an arty way by decorating and sending each other postcards through the mail. I bought us both some plain postcards with the idea that we decorate them as we wish. When we've used a pack, we will somehow bind our makes into a little keepsake book each. We showed these blank postcards on our WOYWW desk last week, as we were about to decorate our first one.
Here's my first make
As we're missing our dear cub already, we thought we'd send her a bear hug.
We agreed to decorate both sides of the postcard and send them to each other in an envelope.
For the 'address' side of our postcard, I used Papermania stamps to represent a postage stamp that had been franked, and some alphabet stamps for our cub's name. As I had coloured the postcard with Walnut distress stain, the alphabet stamps didn't stand out well, so I used our white gel pen to make them pop. I used some Picket Fence distress stain around the edges of the postcard, to enable me to add some paw writing to the card.
By return post we received this lovely make from the cub, depicting her adventures in a new town.
Hello there, goodness, February has sprung on us rather quickly hasn't it? As it's the start of the month, it must be the start of another challenge here at The House of Bears.
It's Pooh and Podgy here as your hosts, you've caught us reading one of our all time favourite love stories, Pride and Prejudice, ah, don't you just love Mr. Darcy et al? Don't you just love Austen's portrayal of Mrs. Bennett , desperate to marry her to daughters off to men of substance? Who could resist the opening line 'it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife'. It's probably one of the best known opening lines to a novel, even if you're not sure on hearing it, where it originates from, you will probably still be familiar with the line. Austen's novel is actually 200 years old now, but is as well loved and read as ever, Austen has book groups and societies worldwide dedicated to her works, and, despite only ever writing 6 novels, can be considered one of our most popular and enduring authors.
So, I guess you're all now thinking, oh, we're going to be asked to base our art work on this esteemed novel this month? Well, yes and no, yes if you want to, and no if you don't. Confused? Join the club!! This month, the bears have decided to be unoriginal in their challenge choice, and have agreed on the good old theme of love, just like Austen's novels it too is a timeless classic, which most of us at one time or another are either in, or searching for!
The challenge this month, LOVE
Make any kind of art work, an ATC, journal page, tag, greetings card, bookmark, you name it, anything goes.....
Base your art work on a love story.....
This does not have to be the conventional love story between a man and woman, where everything turns out just right, but could be a mother's enduring love for her child, a struggle to be loved, an unrequited love, such as Pip's for Estella in Great Expectations, a lost love such as that in One Day, where Dex's long term friend turned love, Em, is taken from him suddenly (wow that twist really shocked us in that book. ) You could take the great work, Wuthering Heights, and illustrate Heathcliff's love turned to bitterness and revenge. You could pick your favourite love story, anything, if it has a theme of love or a quote about love it can count.
Alternatively, you could make art work based on the book you love the most, or the author you love the most, if it has a book theme to it, it counts. Conversely, you could be subversive, and make a piece of work that has a twisted love (think Dracula and his love of blood) or love turned to hate, as long as your original idea takes inspiration from a book, it counts. Thinking outside the box is as welcome as conventional here, we don't want to be so prescriptive as to put off potential joiners. The more the merrier in The House of Bears.
Normal 'rules' apply, post your art work to the linky (which we hope to remember to provide early this month) and add a comment after posting, so we know to come and look at your work. We do check back, but it's a lot easier to come and see you if you add a comment along with your link. If you can, please visit other participants, as the best bit about the bears' challenge is sharing ideas and interpretations with each other. This is a just for fun challenge, no prizes or top threes, as we have some of our nearest and dearest taking part, we don't want to be guilty of nepotism, or ignoring our loved ones. :)
Please do help yourself to our challenge button if you haven't already. Spread the word, we really do love crafting with friends, so the more people who join in, the more fun we find it. The best thing about blogging is the inspiring and encouraging people we meet along the way.
Challenge will be closed at the end of the month, when we will also post our art, once we've chosen just one book to base it on, that is! Incidentally, did you know that the bears never know before the challenge what their chosen piece will be, it makes it a challenge for us that way too.
Our most important rule which MUST be adhered to - have fun.
