Happy Lugly Anniversary!

Who'd have thought it?

Today is Je Suis Lugly's Fifth Anniversary!

Five years ago I decided to make my mum a Mothers Day teddy bear and bought my first kit from Bear Basics. Tedward was that first bear (the blond one on the left): I'm sure you'll agree that my style has changed a lot since he was made! Bitten by the bug it wasn't long before I was making bears as a hobby in my spare time, and only three months before I was working on my first and figurehead sloth 'Poke' . I thought I would take the opportunity to show you some of my bears through time, starting with Tedward at the top and working my way down through the years to Wedgwood, my Teddies Worldwide Show preview bear.

What I would like to do is to run a little competition with a nice freebie for a lucky mailing list person: unfortunately that will have to wait a few weeks until the show is over! I gave up on my all-nighter last night at about 1am as I thought any bear I made at that time would probably be a bit scary! Anyone on my mailing list will be eligible to win whether they're new to join or one of my established people.

In addition I have recovered some of my old unfinished projects from home this week and plan to have a revival: there's a really cute giraffe that I got fed up with because his limbs were hard to turn but I know that my left over locline will make him super poseable! I think I'm in a 'Zoo' animal mood right now, but I definitely want to work on a few sloths too, epsecially as I'm not sure my mad hatter sloth will be finished in time for the show...

I'm sorry I still can't reveal my SUPER EXCITING NEWS: I was hoping I'd be able to confirm it with you all by today but I've forgotten to sort it out XD Big announcement coming soon though, probably!

Anyway, thanks for the love over the years, can't believe it's been so long! Don't forget that the Teddies Worldwide Tea Party opens in less than a week: I hope you'll go see my creatures there!

Back to the sewing board...

Chloe and the Lugly's xxx









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Tea Party Preview

I'm a bit late updating, sorry! Apologies if you're following me on Facebook or my mailing list as you're probably already heard what happened.

Ok, so my elephant's not allowed to be my preview as it turns out: I mis-interpreted the rule 'your preview bear photo must be x pixels wide' as 'your preview (animal) photo MUST BE X PIXELS WIDE' rather than 'your preview BEAR photo must be x pixels wide'... there was also a rabbit preview last time so I'd thought I was ok: sorry to disappoint you all but you have to wait a few more weeks to meet Darjeeling the elephant! In the meantime, Wedgwood the bear has stepped up to become my emergency preview item: sadly this means he will be less elaborately costumed than I had intended but at least I have a bear up there :)

Anyhoo, please vote for him! You can vote by clicking the banner on the right: there's loads of lovely teddies to look at there too! I am now hard at work trying to finishe the other bears and animals who will be in the show before the deadline and hope to have more news for you soon... The show opens on the 23rd and I really hope you'll drop by to see my collection :)

Thanks in advance for your votes!

Chloe and the Lugly's xx

Hello everyone!

Well the sun is shining here in the UK and it's a perfect day for the park but I can only tell you that because of the light coming in through my bedroom window because today I am a Slave to the Machine... the sewing machine that is! I am however pretty much finished with troublesome Mr. Elephant! He's been a bugger but finally I am at a stage where I can say I'm glad I decided to make him because I think he's turned out well. I'm not supposed to show photos before the show preview is revealed on the 9th of March but I wanted to add a few snippets just because I'm so pleased with the details on this little guy :) I hope you like his toes and tail! More will be revealed on the show page on March 9th.

So far I have three little bears and one big 'un, and an elephant finished. I want to add another bear to the list and hopefully a sloth and a hare too: that seems like a lot though, when you consider how little time there is before the show starts! If I was a normal student still I think it would be easily manageable but I obviously can't afford to let my sewing affect my work in school. Fingers crossed I can get my hare sewn up this weekend so I can draft his jacket pattern and get him ready for the party.

Anyhoo, it's a short and sweet update today but I hope to have more photos for your soon! As soon as the show preview opens I'll link you here and also upload extra pics on Flickr as I'm only allowed two vertical shots for this show.

See you then!

Chloe and the Luglys xxx

Progress and Insanity

Well it's less than two weeks until the first previews for the Teddies Worldwide Show are up and my elephant is continuing to challenge me: not always a good thing! I've spent today wrestling him into submission though, and will be working on his costume tonight: I hope you'll love him when he's all finished. I've been playing around with my new photo tent which I've bought for the upcoming show and I love the results already: hope you like this shot of The Bomb! Work on my show pieces is going pretty well and I have almost made all the bears I need for my minimum quota: I want to add a hare and a sloth to my five bears and an elephant so time is precious to me right now...

Careful also found a home this week and has already arrived with his new mum, but I did get one last light tent photo sesh in before he got packaged up... I can't remember if I said before but last week Careful found fame on the popular website Deviantart: he was a featured piece of artwork for a day! It's like teenage me's dream come true :D

As for the insanity, yesterday I went (under non-violent duress from the boyf) to see 'The Woman In Black' as a relaxing, recreational after-work thing. Normally I hate horror films but I figured hey, it's a 12A: what's the worst that could happen?? Full of chinese buffet we rolled in during the adverts and settled down to be mildly thrilled.

Well as it happens the worst that could happen is me coming home, physically scared of anything with glass eyes and wanting to die to avoid being scared: less worried for the souls of the children I teach, more for myself and my sanity. Anyway, the logical thing to do in this situation is hide the dolls and bears and so on away, right? Well as I was planning to do this I thought 'oh no, then they'll think I hate them and will wreak horrible vengeance on me. Clearly any punishment is more likely to come from those I've neglected in the last week or so'. As a result in order to placate a fictional character who actually has nothing to do with toys at all I have taken lots more photos today alongside my sewing.

I hate horror films.

Chloe and the Lugly's xxx

How I Design Things :)

Well, seeing as it's now half term I have a LOT of sewing to do this week to catch up with my minimum number for the Teddies Worldwide Tea Party show, I thought I could waste some time writing a post about how I design new creatures :P I'm hoping to design, trial and finish an Indian Elephant for the show which is something I've never made before: I'd need to have it finished in time for the March 7th preview deadline too so it might not be feasible, but I'm always ready to take on a daft challenge :P

I started this beastie by doodling in my lectures last week: normally I do all my drawings from reference pics so these aren't that accurate, but it did let me think about adding something new to my work: a loc-line skeleton. I've read a lot about using this stuff on Joanne Livingston's awesome blog and I'm hoping it will allow me to give this ellie a bendable trunk and spine... if not I've just made a pointless, jointless all-in-one body and head pattern for no reason :P

When I got home I looked for better references on the internet. It's probably no great surprise that a lot of my references come from Disney as I am a massive Disney nut. I love the elephants and hippos in Fantasia and so I started there and found loads of character references to build on. I also went to Chester Zoo this weekend with my boyfriend and got snapping! Best bit? Watching a big male peeing on a baby elephants head, and then seeing the baby drinking the wee from the floor of the enclosure. Wow, elephants are classy :P

Anyway, weeing ellies aside, today I've started the long, loooooong process of working out a pattern. I think a lot of bear makers have the skill to just see a bear in their heads and form their 2D patterns mentally, but I don't have the skill to do that: I have to sculpt and drape. What I do is get a load of tin foil (a-loooo-min-um foil for my American friends :D) and scrunch it up into a vague animal shape. I then layer plasticene over the top: using tin foil means less plasticene to struggle with! Usually I sculpt head and body seperately (sometimes on different scales too!) but this guy is all in one as you can see from the photo. Now it doesn't have to be perfect as the detail is added later with needle sculpting: all I get at this point is hollows that need darts and the general pattern shape. To do this I lay plastic from A4 plastic ringbinder wallets over the sculpt in straight lines and then pin it into place, marking seam lines and darts as I go. I started at the top and worked my way down with this guy because that piece was the easiest part!

Anyhoo, now I have paper versions of those initial pieces ready to go. Ideally what I should do now is use canvas to make a practise version because they rarely go well the first time but ARGH the mohair is calling me... what I may do instead is make a paper version by using sellotape to hold the pieces together so I can check the fit.... shouldn't, but probably will.

I hope that makes sense? It really works for me and I'm hoping for some budding bear artists out there, this might be a trigger for your designs too :)

Chleo and the Lugly's xxx

P.S. Mmmm.... tasty wee.....

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

Bombardier!

Do you ever have a moment when something just.... comes together?

I've been working on Bombardier's pattern FOREVER,it seems: I first decided to make a bear with a front neck joint nearly two years ago! Since then I've made three or four draft bears, way more than it took to get my first sloth pattern. It's been a frustrating journey, but I would like you to meet Bombardier the Bear at long last.



I've named him after a train company in the UK, purely because a) I've heard the name a lot recently, and b) he has got a massive BOMB ;)

You may also notice the complete lack of needlefelting on him... I may add felted toes in the future to this design as the embriodered claws are just not showing through, but for now I've left them off as I find more and more that bears with needle felting seem to get pigeon holed into one catagory for competitions and so on, and I would like to enter him (or this pattern at least) in the next year or so, starting with the British Bear Artist Awards. He's just in time to be entered, so please wish us luck!



In other news, I hope you've noticed the big revamp on my website? I'm still ironing out some problems, but I'm so glad to have upgraded at least from the teeny tiny site I had before! Fingers crossed it'll be polished and look really, REALLY fancy before long :)

Love,

Chloe and the Lugly's xxx