Tour Of Teddies

Wilfra Cakes For Bua And Truffle McFurry

/ Miki de Goodaboom / Leave a comment

by Miki de Goodaboom

You saw it probably, Ann La Mar recently baked Wilfra cakes from Ripon and shared them with us here. They looked gorgeous!

Truffle wanted to try them and Ann was so kind to send him some. Under the pretext too of needing help by the quality control.

Truffy invited his cousin Bua to share them with him, as Bua was with us as we visited Ripon during our Tour Of Yorkshire in September 2016. We were delighted to see him again and to share Ann’s cakes and apple with him. Bua looks always a bit sad, but he is not sad. He is originally a German bear, and he tends to think too much, and always gets that expression on his face when he thinks…

You might wonder how we do it… but we, The Urso Majors, have invented another kind of internet, where we can send each other not only words, but also food, drinks, bears, etc… It works fantastically! But it is not a world wide web, it works only between Planet Goodaboom and Planet Boomerann’.

Wilfra Cakes For Bua And Truffle McFurry S

(Prints of all sorts are available. Click on the painting to go to Miki de Goodaboom’s shop online)

Advertisement

Winnie Wimbledon In Thirsk

/ Miki de Goodaboom / Leave a comment

By Ann La Mar

(Illustration by Miki de Goodaboom, partly based on a photograph by Ann la Mar)

I first saw Winnie on the Internet, she was so cute and had such a sweet face. We, the other bears and I decided we would like her to come and live with us on Planet Boomerann. She lived on the south coast of England so arrangements were made for her travel to Yorkshire.

We waited and waited, days became weeks and still Winnie didn’t arrive. I checked with the lady at her previous home but she hadn’t gone back there. By this time we were very worried. I knew Winnie had been to that place called ‘ the Royal Mail sorting office’ full of conveyer belts and big baskets of mail. I think poor Winnie had been dispatched to Wimbledon in London. This would have made her happy because she had big dreams of becoming a tennis champion.
We were so sad and downhearted that Winnie was lost that Miki and Truffle decided to look for her. Some weeks later a surprise package arrived and to our delight there was Winnie. Miki and Truffle had found her and sent her home from her adventures. We were over the moon.

Winnie has settled into Yorkshire life but she is always up to mischief with her brothers and sisters so I thought it would be a good idea that she had a hobby. I decided to take her to Thirsk to visit the yarn bombers display. These ladies as so clever knitting amazing things to decorate their town. Winnie loved sitting on the bollard with the Yorkshire rose and a background to match her dress. She was very high up, her ‘head in the clouds’ needless to say not one stitch of knitting has been done!

 

Little Addition by Miki de Goodaboom

While I was painting Winnie sitting on that lovely bench knitted by the Yarnbombers from Thirsk, in North Yorkshire, a little bear with a blue bow came around. He looked at Winnie, looked at the free place next to her and then asked her if he might sit there next to her.

“Of course you may!’, she said in a quite posh way. “I am Winnie Wimbledon… and who are you?”
“Hello Winnie… I am BlueBow, and I come from Richmond.”
“From Richmond? It is quite a distance! Have you come walking, all alone?”
“No, there are others like me, we came in a bus to see the Yarnbombers decorations!”

And they went on and on and on… Teddy bears have always so much to tell each other!

Winnie Wimbledon In Thirsk S

(Prints of all sorts are available. Click on the painting to go to Miki de Goodaboom’s shop online)

 

Comtessine Coccinella De Lafontaine

/ Miki de Goodaboom / Leave a comment

By Miki de Goodaboom

 

Stage 5 of  “The Tour of Teddies”.

As my Mom saw Comtessine Tivolie, she fell in love with her at once, and wanted to know if Tivolie has got sisters and brothers. She said:

“She is an aristocrat, you know, she needs some aristocratic company!”

And there she was, my 92 year old Mom, searching the net for Tivolie’s relatives! She found a lot, and eventually she ordered for me 4 Sisters for Comtessine!

I am not sure I will have time to paint them all, so many other bears have been waiting for their turn to be immortalised for a much longer time.

But here is “Comtessine Coccinella”, wearing a Lady Bug costume. All my Comtessines are in disguise  by the way… I wonder if they are a bit embarrassed to be aristocrats… Coccinella is at our home in good company with some others from her kind… I am not sure they are Ladybugs too, or some extraordinary mutation, but my Comtessine feels very well among them all!

 

Comtessine Coccinella S

Comtessine Tivolie De Lafontaine

/ Miki de Goodaboom / 1 Comment

By Miki de Goodaboom

 

Stage 4 of  “The Tour Of  Teddies” leads me to teddy “Comtessine Tivolie De Lafontaine”, originally called “Happy Ziggy Chicky”.

I adopted her during my painting trip to Copenhagen in May 2017, while I was visiting the famous attraction park ‘Tivoli Gardens”. I was immensely happy to meet her there, as I had not seen many teddies in Copenhagen.

She was born in Sweden, at Barbara Bukowski’s house.

She is a birthday present from my Mom.

She looks like an aristocratic Teddy,  hence the name “Comtessine”. The family name “De Lafontaine” is the name which have all the Teddies given to me by My Mom. Her own family name (my too) is “Fonvielle”, which means something like “Old Source”. A “fontaine” is a source… So, ‘De Lafontaine” is the “aristocratisation” of Fonvielle, somehow…  and a wink  to our famous fabulist and poet “Jean De La Fontaine”, who wrote these wonderful animal fables.

Comtessine Tivolie wears a chicken costume. She wanted to take a “chicken bath”, to know how it is to be a real chicken, so she asked me to bring her to a poultry yard. It was not the best idea ever, I felt that poor Contessine was a bit scared there by all the noisy clucking and weird looks she got. Chicken are not silly, you know, and despite her disguise, they did get that she was not really one of theirs!

Comtessine was glad then to be back home among all her brothers and sisters!

Comtessine Tivolie S

Elise And Eloise

/ Miki de Goodaboom / Leave a comment

By Miki de Goodaboom

 

On my 2 week Tour of my Teddy Bears Art, I have arrived to the end of stage 3 . After Shakesbear and Napoleon Bearnaparte, the Tour took me to Elise and her grand-Ma Eloise, my two wonderful Settler Bears from Australia.

As I saw that collection on the net, I feel in love with them at once. They look so cute and mental at the same time!  I love their fur, so wild, and so soft. Somehow I recognised myself in them, with my hair always wild, hardly ever able to get combed in the right place, like a real lady should wear her hair,  but following all wind directions at the same time. I just wished it was as soft as theirs!

My Mom call them the “Espeluadas”, a word from her South French dialect. It means something like “with hair all over the place”. She says, there exists no word in French to describe them so accurately. I agree with her.

These two really don’t need hair gel to get their hair all punky!

As Ann La Mar -our  Go Teddy star reporter- saw the painting of Elise and her Grand-Ma Eloise, she wrote:

“… Wow they are beautiful…they look so well together…it is like they are reminiscing and sharing memories…”

They do indeed… and surely they are very exciting memories from their life in Australia!

Elise And Eloise S

 

 

 

 

Napoleon Bearnaparte

/ Miki de Goodaboom / 1 Comment

By Miki de Goodaboom

Our bear family has grown a lot in the last months. I was very busy with some painting projects, and still am, but now I have decided to take 2 weeks to catch up with painting some of our new bears. A portrait is a portrait, be it of a person or of a Teddy bear. Painting them if for me the best way to get really close to them, to look into their soul. Because in case you don’t know it: Teddy Bears have got a soul, a wonderful one!

I started the two weeks painting Shakesbear giving writing lessons to my Teddy Truffle McFurry.

My mother, who is a very nice 92 old lady, always loved dolls (not like me) and did not really know Teddies. But with me, she got to know them, as I always bring some of her grand-children with me to her. She has caught the bug now, and always get me some new. This is how, partly, my bear family increased so much!

She recently saw Napoleon Bearnaparte on the net (yes, she is a profi with the internet, needed a tablet and just a bit more than one year to learn it all) and wanted me to have him. In memory of my brother, who recently passed away and loved Napoleon. She too likes Napoleon. I am a bit embarrassed about that, as I am not sure Napoleon was a good person… but one can admire him for his military skills, I suppose.

Anyway, my Napoleon Bearnaparte is a good person, and certainly looks infinitely cuter than the original one!

 

Napoleon Bearnaparte S

 

Shakesbear

/ Miki de Goodaboom / 2 Comments

By Truffle McFurry

(Illustration by Miki de Goodaboom)

Hallo everybody!

I told you millions of times, I am writing books right now. And I need them to be best-sellers, because I want to buy a castle where all abandoned Teddy Bears of the world could live.

Buy my Mom Miki de Goodaboom says, it is difficult to write a best-seller. So, she has decided to invite the Great Shakesbear at our home in Spain, to give me lessons about how to write a best-seller.

I had 2 lessons already. When I have my lessons, I am wearing my school boy uniform. Well, I never was at a real school, so I don’t have a school uniform, but we looked in my wardrobe and put something smart together.

The first lesson was while my parents were swimming. When they came back home my Mom asked me  how the lesson was, and I told her it was great and exciting. But she looked at me with her big brown eyes. She did not understand one word! My Dad told her that I was speaking all Shakesbearean suddenly!

Love you all, take care, xx

Truffle

 

Shakesbear And Truffle McFurry S