Eloise's bubbas

At about 2:30pm on Saturday the 13th December, Eloise delivered three big bubs. A stunning tri-agouti roan boy, a gold agouti boy and a dark-eyed-white girl. It was rediculously cold here on that particular weekend (we were used to temps around the 30-35 degree mark, and on that day is was about 10 degrees colder), so we helped Eloise get her bubs dry a bit faster. She was an excellent mum though, and her bubs are thriving.

My 5yr old daughter helped me name them. This little white one is 'Mary'. (as in Mary had a little lamb who's fleece was white as snow!)

This handsome man is 'Ben'. And the stunner below is 'Beethoven' - the tri roan. He is JUST like his daddy when he was a little fellow. I'll have to take some comparison photos when Beethoven is around 3-4weeks old.

We have chickens!

We moved house recently, and now have a much bigger backyard. One of our plans was to eventually get chickens too. We wanted a coop that would last a little longer then the 'mansion cage' we bought for the guinea pigs at our last house (it started falling apart after about 2 years!). So we went with this one from a local aussie retailer. It is suppose to be double the strength of the regular fir wood cages - and certainly weighs about twice as much! 

The whole cage measures 3.6m x 1.1m. The pen area is 6m x 3m so hopefully they have enough space to be happy. We bought 4 araucana cross breed hens who will apparently lay blue/green eggs! They're beautiful little creatures.

Harriet

Meet Harriet.
Isn't she just DIVINE!!!

I worked my butt off for years trying to produce a curly-coated pig like her as part of my curly-coated sheba program, and she appears in a random pet litter born at an acquaintances stud a month ago!

Granted she is related to one of our Sirocco foundation animals 'Glenjolie Liam' (she's his Great Great Granddaughter), and is actually also related to our famous 'Kobe' (she's Kobe's Great Granddaughter). But there have been so many other lines introduced along the way that there isn't much of a resemblance anymore!

I do not intend to start up that project again as the mature curly-sheba doesn't look dramatically different to a mature alpaca guinea pig, but I have always loved this look in cavies, so will treasure her as a pretty little pet. And can't wait to watch her grow into her curls.

More Cavy Plushies... its addictive!

Spent the better part of this week sewing up yet more plushie guinea pigs. You can see a bit of my work-in-progress above.

The end result are these cute little faces below. I fall in love with each one as soon as they're completed as well, and I think I'm getting a little better at the real-ism. I've never been great with getting art fully true-to-life (so I've ALWAYS gone for the more cartoony/stylised genre) - but these guys have been a nice break from that.

Granted they do still have quite cutesy, rounded little faces that aren't totally true to a classic cavy shape... but, I'm going to blame my little butterball Kobe on that! (as you can see below!)

So, this big boy is 'Shelton' - and yep, he's a 'Sheltie' style coated guinea pig. He's the adult-size, so full 9", and is actually really quite heavily weighted. He feels like you're picking up a real pig - minus the scratchy claws!

Shelton is currently (as of the time of writing) still available for adoption too.

Then I decided to make a mum and baby pair of plushies. Cookie and Mumma Pig were the resulting creation. They too are available for adoption. 

And this little guy was another custom request. I just love this fur made up into a guinea pig. All of our fabrics are fake fur from our fabric supply store - no real fur was used on these plushies.

Custom Cavy Plushies

The two cute little pigs in the photos above are Abby and Spikey, and belong to a couple from Singapore. We were asked to make some plushie look-alikes this week, and this is what we came up with...

... not perfectly realistic (they are just mohair and stuffing afterall!), but there's enough of a likeness there to recognise who is who I think!

Little Abby even has the tufted-out look to his fur around his face and along his body.

And Spikey has the wispy bit of fringe that flops over his eyes. One side he has his larger cream eye patch, and the other side just a hint of cream.

I tried to get one of our pigs to sit in on the photo to show the size comparison too. This is our 'Abby' sitting next to the two plushies (she was a little confused by them I think! lol).

These plushies are obviously claimed, but if you would like your own replica guinea pig soft sculpture made, feel free to contact us (eleb2000@hotmail.com) or check out the ready-made plushies in our store.

The Lucky One

This gorgeous boy has just joined our family. He is 5 weeks old and a pedigree sheltie. His granddad was our 'Sirocco Omari'.

His name is 'Ohana The Lucky One' - sole survivor of a litter of 5!



(The photos below are of his granddad when he was a bub and later at a few months old. Sadly he is no longer living, so it makes Lucky all the more special)

Guinea pig Plushies

These are our latest super cute hand made guinea pig plushies! Their listings, with even more photos, can be found in our etsy store.

There are only ONE of each - so grab your favourite now to avoid disappointment!

We will release this pattern for sale later in the month if you'd like to have a go at making some yourself as well. I'll post a link when the pattern is finally in PDF format :)