2017 Japan Teddy Bear Show & TBAI – Right Around the Corner

The title says it all actually. Two shows, The Japan Teddy Bear with Friends Show & Convention as well as TBAI, The Teddy Bear Artist Invitational in Syracuse, NY, are coming up pretty quickly. I have been sewing and sewing and along the way I managed to finish my piece for the TBAI gallery. The theme for TBAI is Dragons, Witches and Magical Myths. I am looking forward to seeing all the pieces that will be on display.

I have taken photos of the evolution of my piece and I thought I would share them here with a bit of commentary. There are quite a few photos so I will spread them out over several posts so your eyes won’t go square – an expression I learned from my British friend, Lex.

Here is the beginning.  I think if you create things, make things, paint things, write things – whatever, that first step of where to start is often the hardest.  At this point, I have thought about where I want to go with this project but the difficult part is committing - committing a pencil to a piece of foam core and a knife to the rule lines.

This is the beginning of my building – that can be either a noun or a verb.

It looks kind of strange and to be honest, I always have a few doubts as to whether it’s going to pan out in the end.

The basic structure can be seen below.  It’s held together with painters tape because in the process of adding the other parts, it will have to be deconstructed and reconstructed several times to make sure everything goes together in the correct order.

Each of these three gothic chipboard frames came in two pieces so you can add artwork in the middle of them.  I saw them and immediately thought they would make perfect shelves for this piece.  Easy peasy, right?  Oh, no, it’s never quite as easy as I think it will be.  The arches and the decorative edges gave me pause.

These frames had to go from being two dimensional to three dimensional and look as if they were intended to be that way.

And many moons and many little piece of chipboard later . . .

and foam core too . . .

I painted the edges black, because it is after all a witches and dragons theme.

I had chosen a decorative paper for the shelves and walls.  I loved this paper.  I will probably use it again somewhere else if I can part with it.  I covered all those chipboard and foam core pieces with it.

This photo shows the basic shelves right before final assembly.  I made three frame sandwiches consisting of the back piece, mirror, the shelves themselves and the front decorative frame.  That mirrored back is an idea I will hang onto for another project. Pretty cool!

Here’s a side view of the shelves.

Here’s a front view.  The mirrors haven’t been cleaned yet but you get the idea.

And that, my friends, concludes part one of this project.  Part 2 will follow shortly.

Thanks for reading!