Crop, wine charms and bears - oh my!

My daughter and I went to the monthly crop at the scrapbook store this past weekend. We've been going every month since the beginning of the year. It's about the only time I get any scrapping done! I packed an hour before we got there - talk about waiting until the last minute! I might as well have kept my stuff at home because I scrapped one little thing in the five hours I was at the crop. I spent 3 hours on a custom order for Etsy (50 wine charms!). I was determined to finish the job over the weekend. Rather than spend five hours scrapbooking and still have to work on the custom order after I got home, I just brought it with me and finished it there! I'll post a photo after the order has been received by the customer. I don't want to spoil any surprises for anyone. ;-)

Like I said, I did get one small scrapbooking project done.  I had about an hour to kill after the wine charms were finished and I ate dinner (chicken alfredo pizza - yum!). While we were in NH last fall our camp was visited by a mama black bear and her cub. They stayed about an hour - long enough for us to get some decent photos and a short video. I decided to do a paper piecing of a black bear for the layout that I intended to do at the crop. The layout didn't get done but the paper piecing did. I haven't lost my touch for making them from scratch.

This is what I created...

And this is the image I used to make my pattern...

Clip art source: Phillip Martin Clip Art

It's a free clip art image I found with Google. Isn't he cute? Obviously my bear that's pieced together with cardstock, glue, chalk and pen doesn't look quite the same but that's the point. It's a one-of-a-kind piece for my scrapbook. My bear is kind of sloppy because I rushed. He also has that deer in the headlights look because I used white pen for his eyes. If you want to learn to paper piece without a pattern, check out this paper piecing tutorial I did a couple of years ago. It's fun to get back to basics every now and then!

As a final note, my pear green and peach bracelet is part of this Etsy contest today (Aug. 13). Please be a peach and vote! Click here for EtsyContest.com (mine is the green & orange bracelet!)

The clip art featured in this post is original work created by Phillip Martin and is protected by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 and other laws. More guidelines about the use of Phillip Martin images can be found at the link above. When using images found online, be aware of copyrights. Finished pieces made from copyrighted images should not be used for commercial purposes unless permission is granted by the copyright holder.