"Careful" the Sloth of Love

Careful Close Up, a photo by Je Suis Lugly! on Flickr.

Every year I try to make a Sloth of Love with a sweet heart theme, usually around St. Valentines day. I wasn't sure I'd get the chance to make one this year becuase of my hectic teaching schedule but last week half my classes were cancelled because of school trips and so I had a lot less planning to do, hurrah! (sadly I'm back to busy from next week!).

Careful is one of my little Sloths, sitting at about 11". I've hand needlefelted his sweet face and chosen deep brown eyes with suede lids for him. As with all my sloths he has a double jointed neck so he's a really expressive boy: you can pose him with lots of different expressions. He can even hang from his claws like a real sloth (although don't leave him hanging too long!). You can see a lot more photos of him on my Flickr account.

His heart shaped nose makes me think of the Care Bears, hence his name!

I'd love to find him a new home. His adoption fee is £150 or $235 and I will ship him free first class if he finds a home before St. Valentines day cuz i'm feeling a little loved up myself right now :)

**** Careful is adopted! Thank you for your interest everyone :) ****

Have a good one!

Chloe and the Lugly's xxx

PS. If you haven't already, please sign up to my mailing list (top right of this page) and/or Facebook as I'm feeling a giveaway coming on and will use those to announce it :)

A few of my favourite things...

Guess who just got a big delivery of new furs?!

Aahh, it makes me so happy! I had a great day today at school (I was told I have 'it' when it comes to teaching, yey!) and then I came home to find two big boxes waiting for me. I'm now the proud owner of:

1 yd. white + 1/4 yd. blonde and ginger kid mohair like Bombardier's fur (this stuff is AMAZING: a really soft kid mohair).

1 yd. white scruffy mohair (I think I will save it for hares maybe?)

1/2 yd. short white alpaca like Gem's fur.

A lot of white, right? That's because I'm planning on borrowing a series of big pans and dying the heck out of this order :D I am thinking pink, duck egg blue, beige and lavender for the little bears, and maybe blue for a big Bombardier bear? The blonde and ginger kid mohairs will become little Bombs I think... sooo excited! I have a half term break in a few weeks and will be sewing like a maniac then.

I also managed to get my copy of Teddy Bear Times this week: it features the British Bear Artist Award winners and so has two of my creations in it. It also has some really nice shop features and some good artist profiles too so I'm glad to have it to relax to this week as school is hectic right now.

Still no idea what I'm doing for the tea party theme for my main bear: I know what I can do for the little ones but ideally I want the preview bear to be like Bombardier? I'm finding it hard to think of manly tea party ideas, other than Alice in Wonderland which I expect will be done to death... any ideas?

Anyhoo, back to lesson planning! (Not one of my favourite things...)

Chloe and the Luglys xxx

Gem: a New Bear

My first bear of 2012 :) Gem was pretty much finished in December, but I've been adding the final touches now I'm back at University. He stands at a COLOSSAL 10" (lol!) and has the same facial pattern as Bombardier, although I've adapted it for a horizontal neck joint rather than Bomb's vertical one. I hope you like him! His body pattern is based off of Roux: my first bear that I ever sold: you can see them both on my Flickr account. I loved his pudgy body and have tweaked it ever so slightly to fit this non needle felted face a little better.

I'm very pleased with this design and and already plotting my next order of mohair for these little guys...

Hope you all had a good New Year? I had a great time and went to two new cities that I've never been to before. One of them was Bath, which is basically Jane Austin land. Despite this it's a really lovely city: very Olde Worlde but not as unkempt feeling as York, which is my other favourite old city in England. The picture shows the old Roman Baths in Bath, the only natural hot springs in the UK. We went to the fancy, modern baths too which was really cool: rooftop heated pool, steam rooms and a lazy river? Sold!

Happy New Year,

Chloe and the Lugly's xx

Wordle and Have a Great Christmas!

Have you ever heard of Wordle?

It's my new favourite thing. Basically it looks at your blog/essay/bunch of text and works out the words you used the most in it: we've used it a lot of educational documents this year. I thought I'd give it a go on the Lugly Blog, and the results are not too surprising, I guess? Lots of use of the word 'bear'! I can't see 'sloth' on there at all though...

Anyway, this post has two actual reasons for being here: the first is to point out that I've started a trial on Bear Pile. Bear Pile is a website that artists can use to list their creations instead of using Ebay or Etsy or their own site... I thought it might help with making sure more people can see my weird creatures. I've added Moreno to the site, as well as a couple of faces you might recognise :) I've also updated the blog layout so that it looks like my website, hurrah!

Last but not least, have a fabulous Christmas and a great New Year! I just finished an essay on the public understanding of the use of dissections in schools, which is the third most boring thing I've ever had to write (just behind my undergraduate literature review "Current Opinions of Multilevel Selection Theory" and my final project "Can a Altruistic Trait Survive in a Population of Selfish Individuals?", sadly!). Now that's over I can pack up and get out of here (I'm the last person left in my student flat!) and finally start to enjoy the feeling of being on holiday.

Merry Christmas!

Chloe and the Luglys' xxx

Moreno: my last sloth of this year!

Moreno Sat Facing, a photo by Je Suis Lugly!

Hello everyone, please meet Moreno!

Moreno is looking for a new home. I know I'm a bit late for Chrismas but I'm going to make him a red and white hat and he can hang out with my flat mates and I until he finds his special someone :P He's 14" tall, with a double neck joint, poseable limb armature, epoxy claws that mean he can LITERALLY hang out and his own rose quartz heart sewn into his chest. There's more photos on my Flickr if you'd like to see them: I will try and get some outdoor pics later this week.

Sadly my University room has a limited capacity for good photography, hence the fetching quilt background... Maybe Father Christmas can bring me some new daylight bulbs and a big light tent this year :P

Moreno's adoption fee is £170. Please contact me for delivery costs to your country: I only charge actual fees and will post as soon as possible so he can get to you before Christmas!

Chloe and the Luglys x

Medals

Medals, a photo by Je Suis Lugly! on Flickr.

After the big British Bear Artist Award news (*cough*1st and 2nd*cough*!) I've been trying to work out a way to get time to work on my creatures, on top of all the Uni work I have to do for teaching.

I've finally found a way of making the medals I want... I had sent some off to a company who were going to cast for me, but they won't reply to me and have kept what I sent to them... so upsetting. The medals I make on my own will naturally be more rustic, but I quite like the cracks and wear on them: makes me think the could actually have been made by the animals themselves somehow?

Anyhoo, I've found a kind of clay that you can use to make metals! This is copper clay: eventually I will make silver versions too... I'll be firing these with a bunsen burner in the practise labs tomorrow :P

In other news, I'm coming to the end of my first teaching placement. For those who don't know, my output of lovely creatures has somewhat slowed because I'm training to teach secondary school science. It's bloomin' hard work! Shown to the left is a selection of work from my Year Sevens: they had to design an organism that lives in a particular habitat. The pic's a bit small, but you can see I have a plant that runs away from its predators, a fire penguin who lives in a volcano and uses his firey head to blast through rock, and a critter that lives inside other animals and eats them from the inside out.

Teaching is AWESOME.

Chloe and the Luglys xxx

British Bear Artist Awards - The Results!

Amazing news everyone!

I entered the British Bear Artist Awards this year with a bear and a hare: no sloths as I'm accustomed to as I've never had much luck with them... I've been really, REALLY hoping for some good news, and now I can reveal...

Bombadier, entered in the Medium sized category, Modern style, has won first place!

The judges said the following about The Bomb:

• "Great comical appearance"
• "Made me giggle when I saw the original photographs"
• "Bursting with personality"
• "Right up to date"
• "It's tough for everyone out there and this bear truly stands out because of the way he makes me feel".

On top of that (as if I need any more happy!) Jack the Hare came second :D My sloths weren't even nominated, so for me this is a BIG deal. The highest I've placed before is Third, so I am dead chuffed!

I am trying to decide if I should sell or keep my lovely winners now.. I'm training to be a teacher right now, and so I have hardly any time to do anything other than lesson plan and write daft essays. My lessons today went brilliantly too, so as far as I'm concerned, this Thursday has been AMAZING. Anyhoo, I've been staring at the same half finished bear head on my desk for well over a month now, so I will be unlikely to finish him in time for Christmas... but usually I keep my winners. What do you guys think?

Woo hoo!

Chloe and the Lugly's xx