Ellen Borggreve Design

Teardrops in my eyes

Next time I'll be true....

This picture made me think of this song from the eighties. Kayla just got out of the bath on this picture after having been drooled under by a huge, huge dog....She looked like she had fallen into a tub filled with hairgel....yakkkkkk.... You can see the tears in her eyes....

A sweet commissioned panda

I am most definitely experiencing "flow" at the moment. It feels like I am surfing on the waves instead of swimming against them. So....things are now progressing quickly. This is Someso, a commissioned new panda. I really, really like him.

Pictures taken with new Panasonic G1

 

Miss Me?

The poor 5 month old little lady is suffering very much from teething. Her jaws are swollen and are purple in colour and she has been without teeth for 3 weeks now. The poor thing. You can see she is tearing as well due to the teething process, but she is as lovely as ever....

This is the first picture with the Lumix G1 and I have to say, I love this camera. It is really good.....oh happy days!!!

Yayyyyyyy, my new camera is here

And it is great!!! This one is just right!

I tried out a compact camera last week, but did not feel happy with it. Today though I received the ultra great Panasonic Lumix G1 and boy....is this thing fun! I will need to buy myself a new macro lens for studio photography, but I can see this will work for me!

New batteries arrived for my Sony DSC F717 as well and so I could take pictures of this commissioned bear...His name is Kalimo...

 

I am working on several other commissions at the moment, but there will be a new available bear soon too. I am working through piles and piles of left over pieces, so I can start living my dream in 2010....I have long said to myself that IF I could choose, I would just make high end collector's pieces, truly unique and very detailed; more like the set Didit and Dunno I did earlier this year. A few weeks ago I realized that I could in fact choose and now that I am feeling tons better I think I'd better start living that dream. I don't know if it will suit me, but I won't know until I try :) Anyway, that is why I am making loads of bears from left over pieces at the moment :)

 

Beemine and Cracker

Two new bears (well, I actually finished 3 today, but one panda has a home waiting for him)...

Two entirely new designs...

First there is Beemine, his proportions and design are brandnew. I love his new look. He is 27 cm tall, so about 10½ inches. His price is Euro 310 including shipping.

Sorry, he has now been adopted

 

 

Second is another new bear in a new even smaller size....This one is just 25 cm (9¾ inches) tall and was made from a silk mohair blend. I swear I will never buy this stuff again, because I really did not like working with it....

He is called Cracker...

Sorry....reserved

(Sorry for the bad pictures, I am still having camera troubles....)

 

 

Please get in touch with me if you'd like to give one of them a new home :)

EMail Ellen

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.