Cedric's Splattery Splodgy Tutorial.

Hello there, it's Cedric here to show off show you how to make a relatively cheap and cheerful background for your artwork using rubbish!!! Yes really, common, good old fashion chucksies, anything that can be painted, misted or altered will do, but just in case you need some inspiration, for this particular project I used 2 different sized plastic bottle and tub tops, a small piece of bubble wrap that came with a parcel we had ordered and some acrylic paints and mists from the bears' stash.

I started with a blank journal page and some splodging supplies, as I intended to get very messy for this project.


I gessoed my pages, to give a good background to work on.


I then pawrused the paint box, and chose some pink colours for lurve!


I splodged (very technical term that) a little of each colour onto our plastic plate and spritzed a little water to make them more runny.


I then loaded up one of our very expensive (99 pennies) foam brushes with one pink paint shade, and painted some bubble wrap


I pawressed the bubble wrapped gently but insistently onto my blank journal page and left it in situ for a while. Once lifted off this gives a great effect to the page.


Meanwhile I painted the lid of a milk bottle with another shade of lurverly pink


And pressed the top randomly onto my page


Talk about background papers virtually for free, look at the effect just from using repurposed rubbish!


I decided my page would benefit from some larger circles, so painted the lid of an old instant chocolate tub.


I decided to use the bears' inimitable stamping style to add the circle effect to my page this time. Does my tail look big in this?


My page was looking rather bare (bare - bear, get it?) ahem, moving on... I selected various pink coloured mists.


And sprayed with gay abandon over my splodgy circly page.


Spritz, spray, etc.


I heat dried the page in between each misty colour, to avoid a sludgy look, although this is less likely with pinks than with the darker colours I normally make that mistake with.


Voila, one painty, misty, splodgy, free patterned background. Try it, it's such fun.


Would you like to see what I do next with the page? Well just to tease you a little, you'll need to come back at the end of the month, as I've been nominated to make our February love challenge piece, hence all the pink on this page.

I shall post my finished page on the last day in February. Why don't you pop back then to see what I made. Don't forget, our Just for fun challengeis open to all, maybe you'd like to enter? There's still time.

With love from the bears.

WOYWW- Everything But the Kitchen Sink

Hello there, fellow WOYWWers and anyone else who has wandered into The House of Bears this morning. Not sure what WOYWW stands for? Then press your furry paw right here to see what this rather addictive phenomenon is all about.

It's a pyjama clad Horace with you here today. I've just moved myself, and rather a lot of our stash, into the kitchen. I persuaded Wilbear to leave the table out after the weekend craft session, normally he insists on everything being put away neatly once we've finished, he likes everything in its place.

Anyway, I've decided to carry on replenishing the card box, it was rather empty, and since we started using our scraps from scrapbook kits to make cards, I feel the inspawration to make more.

Here I am at the table, with veritable piles of STUFF. I've decided to make cards with our already made toppers, which we seemed to make on an almost weekly basis last year, in our mad card making phase!


I climbed Mount Patterned-Paper-stash - which were mostly freebies from magazines, either 6x 6 paper pads or the paper that comes free inside the mags. We've acquired enough of this to decorate our whole village twice over. Also on the table-desk are some distress stains, glues, a corner rounder, gems, die cuts..... A bit of everything I need to keep me occupied this morning.


Despite the early hour, I've made two cards already. This one below using patterned paper, a stamped and coloured butterfly courtesy of the cub, a die cut flourish on top of a brick effect embossed and distressed piece of cardstock.


I've also made this card below; the stamped image was again coloured by the cub, she's better at colouring than us. It's mounted onto a spellbinders frame. I cut a co-ordinating piece of patterned paper for the background and a strip of pink card as a divider.


I'm going to pawruse the WOYWW blogs before continuing with my cardathon. Hopefully I can make a dent in the card making stash box, and add to the made cards box.

With love from the bears.

Every Inchie Monday - broom broom

Better late than never....



One of Horace's inchie frenzy makes from the other week. He paw made his broom from coloured card in two shades on brown, cut a broom shape and glued it together. The darker brown brush part of the broom was cut into bristles. The brown stain is the detritus swept up by the broom!


With love from the bears.

Crafting with the Cub

Hello there all lovely followers and readers of the House of Bears blog. Horace here with you for this post hoping you're having a lovely weekend, just like we are. Today we've had a visit from the cub, who came back from her new home to craft with us. Wilbear pulled the table out to its full length in the kitchen, as our craft area in the bedroom is not big enough for such important guests and us together.

We decided we would scrapbook together, so I filled my half of the table with a Papermaze kit. I thought it was time to use up another one, as we still seem to be hoarding 6 month's worth!!



The cub brought the January Papermaze kit with her. Look at her cute little paws sorting through her stash below! Note, neither of us are affiliated with the aforementioned shop, we're just partial to a kit or 6 from them!


Once I'd used most of my chosen kit, I was left with extras, which were not large enough to make more scrapbook pages with, so I decided to once again make cards with the scraps to use up all of the kit and get value from it. This piece of patterned paper is really not to our pawsonal taste, but was included in the kit, and, being rather womblish in our crafting, I decided to see what I could pawduce with it.


Along with some other scraps from the kit


I made some cards, and by cutting out the flower images, I found the offending paper to be much more pleasing to my furry eye. This technique of cutting shapes from your patterned paper is suddenly hailed in the scrapbook world as a new phenomenon, and titled 'fussy cutting' but us crafters have been doing it for years without the fancy new name, haven't we?


I used the negative of our trellis mask for this one below. I sprayed the mask, and pressed the negative onto the brown paper, then cut the trellis shape. I added some washi tape from our stash as a border, and another flower from the unpopular patterned paper.


I had cut a zigzag pattern to another of the pieces of patterned paper, and didn't want to waste the leftover triangular shape, so misted it and added it as a long border to this card.


All flowers had 3d sticky pads added, to make them stand out more. I shall add sentiments as and when I need the cards for pawsonal use, or, if as planned these form the basis of our 2013 charity donations, I shall have a marathon sentiment adding day before parcelling them and sending Podgy to the Post Office (he needs the exercise, he's been eating far too many scones lately!)

This craft session just goes to prove that even with stash you really dislike, you can turn it into something that pleases you, and also has a practical use.

With love from the bears.

WOYWW - Goody Bag Goodness

Happy Wednesday fellow WOYWWers. It's Cedric here today, actually on the desk. If you're wondering what my odd acronym stands for, or why I'm on the desk with a veritable amount of stash, then look Here.

The reason I'm on the desk?I wanted to take a close look at our new gift, bought for us by the cub last weekend, when we visited her for her birthday, we went to the Range where she treated us to this goody bag choc full of goodness. We've only just got round to emptying it out, although we did have a good look at the contents whilst at the cub's house.


We always like to keep new stash on the desk for a few days, both to drool over it, and to have a little go with it before putting it all away. Wow, this bag has so much in it, it's chronology goods mixed with Papermania vintage notes goodies. There's a stamp we've coveted since the Chronology range came out in the shops, steampunk inspired 8x8 papers, little notelets, stickers and decoupage sheets...... So much stash in one bag. How lucky are we? We've had a quick play with the stamp already, and will be making a card out of it later today, or this week.


We found these paperclips in The Range, and just had to buy them.


Also these mini alphabets, which were a bargain at 99p each. Too good to resist, as they will be perfect for ATCs, our art card swaps and other mini projects.


We're off for a blog hop before using our fab new image, probably to make a card or two, what fun.

With love from the bears.

Compare the Mists

Hello there, it's Cedric here today to try out our new mists. We recently bought chalk mists and Tattered Angels, more expensive glimmer mists.








I decided to compare them. First I spritzed my page with water








I then added the yellow chalk mist to the inner page, and the blue as a border. I was rather frustrated with the yellow, as after just a few squirts it was clogging up, and needed to be cleared twice just to produce this!




I re misted the page with water, then closed my book to spread the colour evenly.




The chalk mists produce a very subtle burst of colour, which looks lovely.




I tried spritzing some more yellow mist through a mask




Using the negative on the opposite page to create two different patterns,




I then spritzed water through a brick effect mask . Here is the effect on the chalk mists. I don't think it's very clear at all.




On another journal page, I sprayed the chalk mists as above, then, once dried, I added a layer of Tattered Angels glimmer mist, again through the brick mask. On one side of the page I sprayed through the mask, and on the other, I pressed the inky residue from the mask down, to produce a negative effect. What a difference a spray makes!!!




I joined an ATC Trailswap on the UKS forum, so repeated the above steps, this time in miniature form.




Here is the effect sprayed with glimmer mist through my brick mask.




I then once again pressed the negative down onto another ATC.




Which produced this effect.




Podgy liked my backgrounds so much he decided to complete the ATCs for the UKS swap. He paw stamped and coloured some Wizard of Oz themed Graphic 45 stamps to pawduce these.




Follow the yellow brick road



If you like ATCs, maybe you'd enjoy joining this swap? Just click your furry little paws onto the link above and see what it's all about. The best thing is, you can dip in and out of the swap as you like, making only two ATCs each time you join. One for the person above you in the swap, and one for the person below. Oh, and another great thing, there is no set theme, so you're free to create whatever your furry heart desires!




Podgy decided to make the cub her second art card while he was feeling inspired.




Follow your dreams, as she has just moved and started her new job.




He's saving the February challenge piece to show you at the end of the month.

With love from the bears.