Tea staining with Podgy

Here's my handy guide on aging papers for crafting, no need for expensive inks. Just use good old English tea.

First, find an old book, not a valuable one, they can be sold to make money for honey!!



Rip out some pages with interesting (or boring) text


Make yourself a strong cup of tea, mind your paws, the water will be hot, and the kettle very heavy!


Don't discard the teabag, dunk it into your tea, then lift straight out and onto your torn pages


Dab a random pattern over the text


Alternatively, place the page into the sink, then drip tea onto it from a teaspoon.


Hang the pages out to dry




Drink your tea, ahh, that's better, crafting really works up a thirst.


I'll be back when my pages have dried, to show you how to use them on a craft project. Now where are the biscuits to dunk in the tea?

With love from the bears 🐻

Wilbear's Wonderful Chocolate Celebearation cake

To celebrate the Jubearlee I thought I would make the other bears a nice chocolate cake

For my Elizabear sponge you will need

6oz butter, softened
6oz caster sugar
3 free range eggs
6oz self raising flour (replace one tbsp of this with
1tbsp chocolate powder)

First preheat your oven to 180 degrees, and line and grease two shallow cake pans. To do this it's a good idea to draw a template so you know your baking paper will fit pawfectly.




Be careful with sharp scissors, cut carefully round the template and place in your pan







Once you've greased it of course!






Now, weigh your ingredients carefully, the pawfect cake depends on pawfect measuring



Whizz the butter and caster sugar in a food processor, or if you're a real glutton for punishment, mix by hand


Once the butter and sugar are mixed and creamy, add the eggs, one at a time. The addition of a spoonful of flour at this stage helps to stop the mixture curdling.


Once the eggs are thoroughly beaten in, sieve the flour and chocolate powder, and whizz once more, until everything is nicely combined. You may need to scrape the edges of the mixer to make sure all the flour has mixed in. We don't want bears chewing on floury pockets later.


Add the mix to your cake pans



A good tip to make sure your mixture is evenly distributed is to weigh each pan as you add the cake batter.

Cook the cakes in the oven for around 20 minutes, until the cake springs back when lightly pressed, or a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.


Once the cakes have cooled in their tins for about 5 minutes, carefully turn out onto wire racks and cool completely


When the cakes are completely cooled, add your choice of filling. Of course, mine has to be chocolate. I made this by creaming together 6oz of sieved icing sugar and 1oz of chocolate powder with 3oz of softened butter. It's my favourite cake filling.


Sandwich the cakes together


Cut yourself a huge slice and enjoy.



With love from the bears 🐻

Jubearlee Party

This is such a special occasion, we couldn't let it pass without a party to celebrate our dear Queen Elizabear's phenomenal reign.

Wilbear made us a delicious quiche, full of great British ingredients, and with the left over pastry he made us some jam tarts, strawberry flavour, our favourites.


Horace made ham and cheesy triangle sandwiches, and we also also had red white and blue fancies, and a very patriotic tin of choccy biscuits. It didn't take us long to polish it all off!


We had our picnic indoors, as the weather outside was far too dreary for furry bears, Imagine the state of our fur if we'd sat in the rain all afternoon.

We dressed in red, white and blue, Podgy overslept and turned up in his dressing gown! He said at least it was the right colour!


We watched the Queen's pageant on TV, her madgbeary looked very chilly. We waved our flags at her to cheer her up.


Podgy went a little OTT on the sparkling wine, he can never hold his drink.



We hope you all had a splendid Jubearlee weekend, and we would like to wish his Royal Furness Prince Philbear a speedy recovery from his sudden malady.

With love from the bears 🐻

Anything Podgy does.... easel cards, take 2

Hello there, i've just been reading Podgy's easel card post, he's impressed me, but I think his design is a little bit basic.

I decided to do a variation on his theme, and experiment with some twisted easel cards. Here is my easely peasely tutorial, just for you.

Take a square card




Fold the left hand side of the card, to form a triangle like so


This will form the front of your card, which we will now decorate




Choose a previously made topper, this image was stamped and coloured for us so we just needed to cut a frame for it using our Nesties dies.



Cut a piece of coordinating card to exactly the same size as your unfolded side of card.







Then glue your triangle like so



And adhere your cut card to this



Your card should now look like this.



Check the placing of your patterned paper before glueing



Then add 3d sticky foam to the topper



Be careful with the foam, it's double sided stickiness can cause problems


Once you have un-stickiefied your fur, chose a suitable cutter




And cut some card into funky strips


Glue to the centre of your patterned paper, or wherever you decide it looks best



Now, cut a piece of card, just big enough for a frame for a sentiment, and cut a slightly smaller piece of patterned paper, to fit just inside the card




Like so



Add your chosen sentiment



And use some more of those pesky sticky 3d
foam monsters, this time trying not to decorate yourself in the process



Here is the finished card.



As Podgy pointed out, the cards fold to fit in a standard envelope. Which is handy for posting to all your bear friends.


As usual I developed card making fever and made a few more with previously made toppers.






The topper box is looking a little empty now! Oops.