Ellen Borggreve Design

Yippeeeeee

My new camera arrived and it is a featherweight! Oh, my wrists, hands and shoulders will be so grateful. I have not been able to play around with it, because the batteries should be charged first. With a bit of luck I can take pictures of my new black and tan bear later this afternoon.

Ellen without camera

I feel a bit lost....I am currently without camera.... No matter how much I love my Sony DSLR camera, I have had to give it up for the simple reason it was too heavy for me. Every time I had taken pictures my neck was stiff and my hands were all cramped up. So I sold it and am now waiting for a new camera to arrive. It has been quite a search to find the right camera, but I think I have found one... I felt too proud to admit the camera was too heavy, because being in all kinds of photography groups means you have to have a DSLR camera or at least it is kind of expected of you. I found it a bit hard to surrender to the idea that my bad joints really could not handle a camera this heavy. Let's hope the new one will be impressive as well :)

The light of our day

Kayla is teething and she is not her usual happy self because of it. Her gums must be sore. She is now over 4 months old already....How in the world did that happen so fast???

Here she is:

 

 

 

I hope you'll enjoy the pictures ! Hope you'll have a wonderful day!

Lollipop and Icicle

Tadaaaaa, may I introduce to you : Icicle and Lollipop

 

Both bears are available for immediate adoption and both are one-of-a-kind bears. Icicle is 31,5 cm tall and Lollipop is 27 cm tall. Both again have new designs. I am working towards some different proportions and smaller sizes. I will still be making big bears, but with a shoulder that is not entirely how it should be, I'd rather stuff smaller bears at the moment ;)

 

Icicle was made of alpaca and airbrushed felt and he has a double silver and organza ruff around his neck

 

Icicle has been adopted...

 

Lollipop was made of mohair in two colours (salmon and pink) and he is just 27 cm tall (10 ½ inches). His paws were made of a suedette used in the haute couture industry and I airbrushed them a bit for added depth. His nose was embroidered from very fine perl cotton in a matching colour.

 

 

His price is Euro 320 including shipping

 

I must say to be feeling rather infatuated by these two

Free Tutorial

I know that many of you have asked me if I could show you what the tutorials are like on my Teddy Tutor blog and I decided to give you an early Christmas present and give this first tutorial away for free....This was the very first of now 23 or 24 tutorials. This week we'll start with pattern number 2 which is a penguin just in time for Christmas, with all sorts of new techniques to learn :)

If you would like to subscribe to The Teddy Tutor and get all 52 tutorials, please go to my etsy shop  I will only teach this one year (from May 2009 to June 1st 2010). After that I will focus completely on making bears again :)

Here is the free tutorial

I am going to start with ''embroidering noses''. If you are anything like me, you might just struggle with this. I remember starting out and placing the nose on the seams and jerking my needle through the seams and having long, long needles end up in my ribcage. I have thrown bears through the room out of pure frustration about these noses until I found the way that worked perfectly for me. It is actually a combination of several techniques that I had picked up and for me it delivers perfect noses every time...
Here we go....
The first thing that is really important is to have your nose area stuffed firmly and even more important; to have it stuffed evenly, so the middle seam has not shifted to one side. I will tell more about this in a later topic. What is also important if you are not that good at nose embroidery yet, is to have the backing of your gusset exactly straight. The weave will help you so much!
First you will need to clear the area where your nose will go. Just a few words on where to place your nose. This of course is very personal, but if you have a very deep snout, you might have to place it a bit lower. If your muzzle is more like the old Steiff bears, you could move the nose up a bit. I have medium deep muzzles (this is beginning to sound weird...), so this is where I place them :) Start by cutting it with sharp scissors
 
Try to be a bit conservative here. You can always cut off more hairs later, but you can't glue them back on....This is how it looks in my case. Just keep the shape of your own nose in mind and work from there...
 
Then grab your tweezers and start plucking the area, so no hairs will grow out of little teddy's nose later...
 
This is how it looks after plucking...
 
Here you see suffering nails from using them as needle pushers ...hahaha
The next thing I do is to get three pins and mark an approximate triangular outline (this is of course for a triangular nose shape, if your bear's nose will have a different shape, you will mark out that approximate shape)
 
Next step is to get a piece of embroidery thread, in this case it is perle cotton. I try to use the finer threads, also for my big bears. This is a raccoon head for a 16 inches tall raccoon and I still use a fine thread (number 8). This has a smoother finish, but will take a bit longer to embroider...
You just get a 1½ meter length and pull it over the pins like this:
 
Why would I do this? This is to check if your triangle is even on both sides of the middle seam of the muzzle and also to check if the line on top of your bear's nose is horizontal. Next thing I do is add two pins inside this pulled outline (again, this is just for my bear's nose shapes, you can easily place your next two pins much lower for a round nose or a more square shape)
Now it looks something like this...
 
Now it is time to check everything again. Does it look symmetrical, is it the same at both sides of the middle seam and is the top line horizontal? The best way to check this is to keep the head upside down with his nose facing to the floor.
 
Remove the thread and knot the end. Push it through the neck area (for a sinlge jointed neck I would do this before you add the joint and close the head, so you can bury the know inside the head) and up to the nose area and embroider from pin to pin to make the outline like this:
 
Then take a stich to the middle of the top line....And make you first stich over the outline like this...
 
Then start embroidering your nose, doing one side of the nose first. This is really important, because if you don't you might end up with a crooked nose or have a build up of threads on the inside of the head making it hard to stitch.
Place your stitches close to eachother and work as close to the outline as possible, but try not to stitch underneath it...
 
The trick is to have an even tension on these stitches, neither too much or too little. If you pull too hard you will distort the nose and if you have your stitches loose, you will not get a nice finish.
This is the first half done. No worries if it is not perfectly straight. That is the good thing about this method, this first layer can still be a bit crooked :)
 
Now start again in the middle and work on the other side. After you have finished this side as well, take a stitch from the corner of the nose to the opposite like this and stitch a new outline under the nose and over the top (three stitches in this case). You will probably need to get a new length of thread now. Again tie a knot, push the needle from the head to somewhere in the area of the nose, but never through the nose and stitch to the point where you need to start again.
 
 
Then add a second layer, just like the first layer, starting in the middle, working towards the left side first and then the right (or vice versa). Now it is even more important to not pull your stitches too tight, because you will pull through the first layer and it will definitely not look nice) Have an even tension and place your stitches very close together. Now....this is the end result....a nose!!!!
 
I came out at a point under the base of the nose as shown to make my start for the mouth of this raccoon. From here I take a stitch back to the base of the nose and from there to the left side of where I think the mouth should go... I have the head upside down for this (not my own head, the bear's head...)
 
Now you will have to make an estimated guess to where the other mouth-end should be. How to do that??? It is not that difficult. Try to think of the middle line of the snout and see where your first stitch came out . Pull the thread over the fabric to the other side to see what would make a horizontal line and where it would be the same distance from the middle line and have your needle come out at that place.
 
 
Check one last time before making the final stitch to the base of the mouth by pulling the thread over the muzzle and see if there is anything crooked. You can still make adjustments now...

 
Then if all is well....Make the final stitch and have your needle come out somewhere in the head, enter your long needle at the same place and stitch through the head another time and repeat this again to secure the thread. Then cut off close to the head and voila...here is your nose and mouth....Well, you bear's nose and mouth actually :)
 
Sorry for the enormous amount of pictures. I know how hard these noses can be, so I thought I'd better be thorough... I use a 10 cm long needle to embroider the nose on this bear and a long doll needle for getting the thread through the head. I hope this method will help you as much as it has helped me.

Swinging on life's rhythm

I have not been around here much lately, have I? The days just turn into weeks without me noticing it. Life is good again; extremely busy, but good...

Kayla is growing into a young, well-behaved lady. It really paid off that I spent 8 weeks focussing on her training, because she has now fallen right into place. Since a few days she can be taken into the studio and just sleep there for a few hours or play by herself. This means that I can now work again at some kind of schedule and lots of bears have been sewn up already.

The only thing is that all orders go wrong....Why does this always happen when you are trying to get somewhere??? I was supposed to write the second airbrush tutorial, but ran out of black paint. I usually get that within a day, but am still waiting now after 2 weeks already. Then my sew-in tags needed to be ordered. I ordered them in time, before I would run out completely.They arrived this week and instead of Ellen Borggreve Design they said MM..... What????? I sent them right back, but now have to wait for them to be woven again, which can take quite a while. Here I am....11 bears already half sewn up and no sew-in tags, so I will just have to wait and make just heads...That is....if finally my fiberfill will arrive as well...

Anyway, there's nothing I can do but wait for the supplies to arrive. I did manage to order 40 new colours of perle cotton on eBay....Yay, I like eBay!!! I now have many colours to choose from, also for the new batch of smaller bears.

Oh, sorry....You were waiting for pictures of my now 4 month old "lady" ???

 

 

Zzzzzzzzzzleeping....

Puppy Paw

Her favourite toy is a plastic ball which is usually used for liquid detergents. I placed it over her new Kong Toy (thanks Thea!) and she is having loads of fun with it

 

Watching the birds through the skylight :)

Behind on just about everything

I am soooooo behind on everything. My husband had forgotten te renew his driver's license and was not allowed to drive anymore until he had a new one. Guess who had to do all the driving??? Besides that I had one of my least favourite emergencies; a dental one.

Kayla however is thriving and is our number one "happymaker" in the house. We both love her to bits. She is growing so fast, you can almost see changes from day to day. She still has an itchy skin, but after treatment from the vet she is getting better. She still has to wear her little puppy-angel suit though, to prevent her from scratching and biting the bald spot again, but if things keep improving, she will finally be her gorgeous natural self again really soon :)

Here she is this morning....ain't she sweet???

She is now 16 weeks old...time flies....

She just fell asleep whilst chewing on a bone....Puppies can just drop down and sleep everywhere and anytime....I am so jealous of that wonderful ability to just doze off whenever you feel like it....It must be heaven being a puppy

There is news on the bears though. I have cut 17 bears....Yes....17!!! I don't know when they will ever be finished, but when you have inspiration you'd better take advantage of it while it lasts...

I am working on a small white bear at the moment. Watch this space for more information about what I am up to :)

Scout's Honour

I have not been chewing away at any plants....scout's honour...

Hmmm, somehow I don't think Kayla got the meaning of this scout's honour thing....hahaha. She is looking pretty proud of herself too...

Where do the days go???

Time flies when....you have a puppy LOL

She is all over the place now, such a bundle of mischief....She can be extremely sweet too by the way, but she does have a slight tendancy from distracting me from my work. I have a plan up my sleeve for the last day of November. I will let you know once I have established IF my little gremlin will let me work again .....hahaha....

 

Whilst sitting here thinking up new things (ahhhh, being a bear designer has its advantages, you know....daydreaming comes with the job and I am so good at it too!) I got a new outfit for my Latidoll FG Lea made by Shazdolls again. It is soooooo perfect. I love these colours!

 

It is one of my frustrations that I am just not able to crochet. I just can not do it. I admire everyone who can crochet and envy their skills :)

New Little Panda....

Meet Lil' Soso.....A new panda in a very new design. He is not just smaller than my usual pandas, but he also has different proportions. I am very pleased with the way he turned out. I do like these new proportions a lot (the cuter, the better LOL)

 

He is 27,5 cm tall and stuffed with fiberfill and rubber granulate, which feels wonderful!

 

Lil' Soso has ultrasuede feet in trapunto quilting technique and after that I arbrushed them so the toes really stand out. The same technique was used for the hands...

 

His nose is embroidered in brown perle thread and he has special eyerims to make him look so vulnerable and sweet

 

"Hello there"

Lil' Soso is available now at the price of Euro 320 including shipping. Please get in touch with me if you need to have more information or if you'd like to give this little sweetheart a good home. E-Mail Ellen

Adopted...