Ellen Borggreve Design

An empty house

I hope I have no more tears left for today. I miss my girl so much...
To distract my mind I have decided to give all the floors a good scrub and wax and so I have moved all the furniture through the house. The coffee table was incredibly heavy, but I think this might be because I have not been able to eat since Caya died. I will just leave the table there until Robert gets home, so he can move it right back....I know what he will say...Honey, what have you been up to now??? The thing is...he'll have to get the furniture back, because I have sort of made a pile of it, so no dinner until everything is back in place :)
When Amor and Cino died I was so lucky to still have Caya. This is harder, because I have no dog left this time.... My husband said to not take another dog for at least a year or so, but 6 hours later he all of a sudden said he did not know if he wanted to have a house and no dog to share it with. For me it is difficult....I think I just miss Caya, not so much a dog, if you understand what I mean. She was such a part of me.
Tomorrow I will be back to work. I still feel the same even with the sadness of now. I still am raring to go on new designs. I just think I should not work today, because I am scared the little cute raccoon might look sad if I airbrush him now :)

No words

Just tears....
How do you even begin to start writing something like this....
Caya died today. Yesterday she had a very bad turn for the worse and today it got worse and worse quickly. She finally gave up....that brave little girl of mine.
I am utterly heartbroken, I have not ever felt this bad in my life, not even after Amor and Cino died
I will be back on track soon though, I want to and I have loads of inspiration to work with.

A Touching Blog Award

Oh, thank you Tina.....For all your kind words, you really touched me there.... I actually got tears in my eyes from your words. Thanks so much! Tina is a very talented Danish bear and lots of other things artist....Please check out her blog here and her website here...Tina is incredibly talented, can do just about everything and on top of that....she is a wonderful friend, whom I truly care deeply for.

The Bella Sinclair Award was created to celebrate art in the blogs and to honor the value of friendship, sisterhood, sharing and caring. It is to be awarded to the gifted, accomplished, eloquent and talented blogger whose friendship and influence inspire us to do our best.

This award was created by CES - please visit her blog to read more about this speciel Award.

Now I have to pass this on to 10 other artists that I find inspirational....
I wish I could give one right back to Tina...
But here we go
Sarah Medina...
Marlys Waggle...
Joyce Stahl....
Shelli Heinemann....
Tami Eveslage...
Cyndi Mahlstadt...
Lyn from Brimbin Forest Bears...

Kathy Myers...

Shantock Bears...

Matilda Huggington Beare...

I hope you will enjoy a visit to their blogs. They are all very talented and wonderful people :)

Tadaaaa....here is Spot

Spot is an entirely new design and I am so pleased about this one. It is a double neck jointed bear with felt sculpted paws and he has the best ever mohair. This is a mushroom colour mohair with a milk chocolate backing. All colour accents have been handpainted with a new method I discovered.
He is 12 inches and I think he is the first small bear that really looks like my big uns :)
He can be found on my website and as usual he is strictly One of a Kind


The new raccoon is also as good as finished, but he will be surprisingly different and only available through eBay later this week...

Loving Life...

Oops, has it been a week already??? Since the caterpillar was finished I really have been sewing up a storm. I actually managed to finish a bear and I almost finished a raccoon as well. I have been patiently waiting to show them to you, waiting for myself to find just the right things to finish them :)
This was the first week in a very, very long time that I could actually work full time again. This means that in the evenings I do absolutely nothing, but that is actually truly wonderful as I have discovered. During my vacation there was just nothing I could do to achieve a tiny bit of a relaxed feeling and now that I am back to work....I am so relaxed in my time off :) There you have it....
Yesterday in the very early hours we went to a fleamarket close by. We had to go early, because the sun has been burning in the last 8 days and it is oh so easy for someone fair-skinned like me to be totally red after one hour in the sun.
The funny thing was that I was going there with a mission. I read in one of my Art Doll Quarterly magazines about a challenge to make Barbies ino art pieces. I never liked Barbies, so this looked like the ultimate revenge on this long legged girl that was sort of a role model for all kinds of girls (obviously not for me, I have very short legs ....ahhhh, that explains it, right?). Anyway, the Barbie quest did not go so smoothly and then I stumbled on a box of books and there they were....the two books I have been trying to find for many, many years....both of them....in the same box!!!! These are picture albums from the 1950's and my dad got them as a child. I used to love looking through these albums as a child, they had magnificent subtle illustrations in them, just the way I like them.

Anyway, I have been looking for these albums for a very long time and every time I found one the price was either astronomically high or someone had beat me to it. The nice lady asked me 5 euros per book and without me even asking for it she said I could have both for 8 Euros. My jaw dropped and I have never pulled out my wallet so fast....I was so happy.....It is funny how things work that way. When you stop looking, they all of a sudden just fall into your lap :o)
I recently received another book as a sort of permanent loan from my parents. It is a book with a collection of very old patterns from antique women's magazines. You would not believe what you can find in there....I love it to bits!!!
How about this.....Long knitted underpants for ladies....hahaha....

And how cute is this illustration???

Now I seem to have got obsessed with how to make fans and umbrellas/parassols. I want to have a true metal frame for the umbrella, so I am still thinking about how to achieve this without having to call on my dad to ask him to solder the metal together. My dad is a miracle worker with metal.....I think he is where I got my design skills from. I just want to find a way of doing this myself first though, I can be extremely stubborn that way...hahahaha....Well, I am off to design the two new bears for this week. Last week's bear will soon be making an appearance and mr. raccoon will probably be making his debut on eBay soon...

The Finished Caterpillar

caterpillar...finished!!!
Originally uploaded by passion4raccoons

My class is over and this is the end result. I like how his face turned out and I had so much fun making him. I learned a huge amount of things, things I do like and things I don't like....Both equally important :) I have started working on new bears and animals in my studio today. One bear or animal per week will be kept for my secret Hugglets stash. The other one will be coming up for adoption. This is my new way of trying to get a table full of truly available animals in September.
I feel inspired again and am raring to get started on my new designs....Watch this space as they say!
The Teddy Tutor will get a new tutorial tomorrow....about ears this time!

Caterpillar Stage 5½

caterpillar stage 5½
Originally uploaded by passion4raccoons

This guy is keeping me rather busy in my time off....Boy, the amounts of time this joker takes.... I have now decided to let most directions for what they are and just go with the flow with him. He seems to know perfectly well what suits him and what does not. I don't plan his looks, he seems to just ask for the right things to add...hahaha...He is demanding though. He wants many more small fur bits and he is even thinking about antennas on his tail...I know, I told him to not overdo it, but like I said....he is demanding :))

The next stage of Project Caterpillar

Caterpillar Stage 5
Originally uploaded by passion4raccoons

Here is mr. Caterpillar waiting not so very patiently for the last lesson which will give him a nice body and some furry accents :)
I can't wait to finish him :) My husband wants to go to museums, zoos and just DO things outside of the house. I'd rather sit here and sew on this fun critter. I am perfectly happy this way...

What does an artist do in her time off?

Caterpillar Project Stage 3
Originally uploaded by passion4raccoons

Take creative workshops of course!!! At the very last minute I signed up for this class and I had 5 weeks of catching up to do, which I did by working on this caterpillar (who has a head looking like a turtle) for 3 entire days....Ohhhh, the fun of it! I have not enjoyed myself this much since I made my very first bear over 12 years ago!
I am a firm believer in challenging yourself, so.....I think I will take more classes! There's so much I want to learn....Ahhhhh, I am really excited :)
One more week of time off and I'll be back to make new bears. There are no more orders to be finished, so I feel completely free again...yayyyy!

Poor Chelsea...

This was the bear that did not find a home on the TBAE. I love little Chelsea though, she was my absolute number one :)
I just made a presentation for her on the website, please find it here
She is now also the cover girl :)

Hahaha, this is supposed to be my holiday....I seem to be working though. I will take two days off and work on the next tutorial on Saturday. It will be about eyes!