The Noses have It!

I thought I'd do something a little bit different to my usual posts here on my blog, and talk to you about noses.

As you've no doubt noticed, I've been needle felting noses on my latest bears - doing this is a complete change for me: in the beginning I embroidered all of my noses, trying to perfect the ultimate system for keeping all of the threads uniform and neat. Then I tried baked clay noses for a while - and while both of these mediums were lots of fun, I wanted to learn more ....

.... and so I found needle felting!

I really love the realistic style of bears produced by Joanne Livingstone of Desertmountain Bears and Heidi Hollis of Citico Ridge Bears, however, I still wanted to keep my own contemporary style bear but add nuances of realism here and there.

So I studied all types of noses - here's just a few!

Once I started studying noses in the animal world, I couldn't believe how very different they all are - as you can see from these photos!

Here's a sample of my latest bears - all with needle felted noses - which I'm very proud of!

I hope you like the direction I'm taking with my latest bear cubs ... I'm sure there's plenty more for me to learn, but for the moment, I've learned a few new things, and am having lots of fun doing it!

Until next time,

Hugs,
Marg xoxo

URSA Awards Finalist!!!!

Wow!!!! My bear JIA LI announced as a 2013 URSA Finalist!

I can't begin to tell you how happy I am: I've just heard the news that my beautiful Chinese princess bear Jia Li has reached the final round of the 2013 URSA Awards!

At the moment there are 3 finalists in each Category so each of us do not know yet whether or not we've won 1st, 2nd or 3rd place, and the organisers have already said that there's not many points between some of the competitors! How close is that!!! There were some really fantastic pieces entered this year - I'm not surprised that the voting was close!

Thank you to all of you for taking the time to vote for JIA LI - you guys are just the best!

The final round of voting is open from August 12 to September 9 - I would love it if you would find the time to place your final vote for Jia Li in the Diva's Category - just follow this link to take you to the voting page on the Bears & Buds website.

All of these final round votes add on to the votes already placed for each entry - a few votes could be the difference!!!

Good luck to all of the other finalists - it's certainly been a nail-biting finish this year. The overall winners will be announced in the Bears & Buds Online Magazine on October 1st.

As you can imagine, I already have my fingers and toes xxx'd!

Hugs,
Marg xx