Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

I've been away from home for weeks and weeks and just now getting around to checking in on my favorite Subject:
Oh, Pat! I couldn't be MORE pleased that you've found Barbara & Elizabeth!! They are right near the Top of the list I give out of my FAVORITE Suppliers, ones I've used for 6 or 7 years.

Marr Haven has a Merino x Rambo cross (if I'm remembering correctly w/o checking my stock!) which I love as it needles so easily and you cannot go wrong with Elizabeth's Cormo for the absolute FINEST pure white finishing layer!
These are two business women who know their stock and I've always felt thta one must deal directly with the small flock owners to get the best quality.

One cannot just purchase 'wool' for needling. It behooves all of us to educate ourselves as to which breeds are the appropriate length/crimp/and all other characteristics for each project we're designing or for the way that we like to work.

There really are people out there who know their animals and are only too happy to send you a small bit of fiber (Please insist on paying a fee and not expect these samples for free) so you can test them out and familiarize yourself with the differences between, say Jacob and Corriedale and Cotswold and Polwarth and Finn.

It's just a matter of Googling each breed and writing to the owners you'll find listed.
Most of the ppl I've dealt with are the most wonderful ppl, just trying to work as I am, in this changing economy, and will answer your question if they can. Some aren't  quite as knowledgeable about dry/needle felting as we'd like them to be, thinking that it's the same as the traditional wet felting, and will quote you the properties of their fiber in regards to wet felting. As this has now becoming more and more widely know tho, most are getting information more specific for each. But you still most inform yourself and question everything that's written or said against your own experiences.

This is where our own experience helps, as we can educate them - in order to help us in the future!
And do keep tiny samples and notes from everyone you've contacted, because you will forget or mix them up. I guarantee!
I've lost contact with some ppl that I'd purchase more from if I'd kept better records from since my beginnings almost 10 years ago, as well as being afraid to order from some, as I'm not sure if I'm going to get some that's going to be really bad fleece. (You don't want to know what has been included in some I've gotten...)

But we all learn from our own experiences and mistakes and if you just continue to purchase from online or shop suppliers who sell 'Wool' or 'Felting Fiber' you will never find the true treasures in the animal world, and obtaining the right fiber for each project is half the job done!!!

Fantabulous!!!! Just like old home week!
Unfortunately I couldn't get there until the last hour, and didn't get in the door before seeing a dozen old friends - collectors & artists.
It's been 7 years since I was on the show circuit and I ended right there at ABC's October Schaumburg.

I had less than an hour to meet & greet everyone, no chance to even 'talk bears', and too many ppl whose pics I didn't get - Marfa, Jared, Barbara Burke, Luann, the Zimmermanns, Tyler, Mark...  well you know who you are. It was so near the end and only a few visitors left.
Steven Clark, you and Cindy McGuire were too busy listening to Isabella for me to even get a hug from so you shall just go back to Toronto w/o a Chicago Welcome from me!
But tomorrow I'll upload those whose 'mugs' I crowded in on and insisted on getting a picture with.

And one of my favorite ppl in the world, Terrie Stong, with her unfailing cheerful personality was on hand looking just as she did when I first met her when I first ventured into the bear world almost 2 decades ago. God Love her ENERGY and Dedication!!!!!

Lastly, seeing Laura again is such a treat - you were such a shy thing when you used to pass my table in the early 90s, in that black Harley jacket, never a peep out of your mouth. You're still reserved but you've come a very far way, especially in bringing bubbly Daphne into our midst, with new concepts and a new enthusiasm for Bear Business in Chicago!
I was happy to see my old friends from the ABC days carrying bags as they were getting ready to leave!!!!

And looking at the hand-out program - SOOooo many TTers have supported the show by placing a business card ad - way to go!

I'll upload to Photoshop tomorrow and See you all again is Schaumburg next year!

Many mini Hugs

I exhibited for a dozen or more years, from the later Bill Boyd days through Joel & Daniel - FUN times!
I wish Cathy and Sandy and all of the KC bunch well! Health prevents me from traveling the show circuit like in the 80s & 90s; I so miss those days.
I used to tell everyone who would listen: there was no other show I exhibitedin from the West coast to the Misdwest, that had the same feeling and energy during the weekend from those gathered, like at the KC Jubille.
It was like being welcomed like a long-lost, 5th cousin twice removed, at the annual Family Reunion!

Hang on, bear artists - better times are coming. Thanks to all who resurrected the KC Jubilee!

hggzzz
Bobbie

AARrrggghhhhhh!! We're traveling in CA right now, basing out of Los Gatos, we south a week ago, to Yosemite and East across the Central Valley & Gold Country since Sunday heading for home today (there's a Magical Glass Pumpkin Glass Festival' with hand-blown glass pumpkins from golf ball to beach ball size h'ere in town this weekend!) and going up along the coast North of San Fran next week.

As the navigator (First, the CA maps are HORRIBLE!!!! - so, THANK GOD for TomTom... 'cuz we're so used to living where the roads are laid out in a grid system...), I need (hobby/vcomputer glasses to read the maps, quick: switch glasses to read the road signs, quich - switch glasses again to try to find that on the map... quick, another set of signs............

It is better to just drive and see where you end up rather than heading to a particular spot; fortunately there are interesting things to see almost everywhere!

I have an appt with my Dr as soon as I return home late in the month.
I already wear bifocals, - I may just need trifocals!
hggzzz
Bobbie

>>>>Smaller pieces are not just bigger designs shrunk down. They take a whole different set of skills and methods. As I'm finding out

Oh Karen, we miniaturists are so honored to hear you, an Artist of your calibre, say these words!!!!!  Most bear artists have no idea-or negate-what you mean (and what we deal with daily) in desiging and executing our ideas in minimal spaces.
Thanks so much for your Consultations.
Bobbie

:clap:  :clap:  :clap:  :clap:  :clap:
Fabulous Frog, Robin!
Such a savoir faire/cavalier attititude!
And the 'tude says it all!

hggzzz
Bobbie

Hi all,

Will you be teaching a Workshop(s) in Clarion IA at the Reunion In The Heartland 2010 in June?
I wrote to Steve (Schutt) to ask him a few questions and received a quite comprehensive reply this morning. I'd like to share it; would you please write me off list at   rkr4cds@att.net

The excitement is already building - I SO hope that we have this same fabulous high 70s, low humidity weather there that we're experiencing in the upper Midwest this year. I live about 350 miles due east of Clarion and we usually get their weather a day later.
El Niño is supposed to kick in again this winter - I hope it still portends a good-weather-June-2010.
The whole high school, where the show is held, and all of the buildings where the workshops are held are now air-conditioned but it would be nicer if the 'outside' would also be! At least for non-humidity-lovers like me!

Pls write if you're teaching at the Reunion!

hggzzz,
Bobbie

Oh Jane! I didn't state that very well, did I?? Sarah is cute as a button! Her big grin shows her sparkling personality; I suspect she inherited that from you.
While I know you only from this list and can only peek into your life from that I suspect you put up with a lot that we don't know about, yet come up smiling and put that smile back on your face. You make a conscious Choice to be bright and cheerful. So that's not what I meant...

It's the wax work artists that I was referring to; I have never seen one that has made me second-guess myself. A 'Is it or isn't it?' question. Somehow they never quite capture the contours and colorings..... I suppose it would take an actual face casting to get that right.

But we were addressing relative size, which IS amazing!

hggzzz ~ B

It's not Pres Obama.

I haven't followed the conversation until tonight, but just a glance at the photo tells me that it's not my my 'home-town President'.

Whoever the artist was - it's 'close' - it's good, but it's Not Quite....!'

I second Cyndee!!
When I've had a question, eBay has always been most responsive to my personal requests for answers, yet I've read too many doom & gloom stories online which appear to be anecdotal. It seems easier to agree with the masses and pass on stories that one has heard who put down eBay than to actually try them out on a one-to-one level.

I fill in eBay's online form describing my situation/question and am immediately given a number to call, which goes right to a real live person, with the power to problem-solve and REsolve any situation I given them.
I've always had every question answered and every situation resolved, before they let the conversation end.

eBay too often gets a bad rap because we sometimes pass on what we've heard, instead of finding our own answers by going directly to the source for our own solutions.

Basically, with VERY few exceptions - probably less than a dozen artists - there is no secondary marketplace.
Never buy a Teddy for its 'future investment value'; only for what you love.
Pessimistic - No, realistic.
It will not have that perceived value, unless you've had a one in one trillion lucky occurrence.
There's never been a secondary marketplace and if history stays the same, never will be.
It's just a fact, a summation of all of the above wisdom!
And eBay would be the last place to market them, from the Seller's standpoint. But a Buyer can do very well there!

OMG! YES YES!!! This town does have its ritzy bits... More dollars than sense/cents. Can you hear me HARUMPHING!!! That site is Ridiculous!!!! To create a conspicuous consumerism in this day like that is criminal.
'Gently spot clean..."   "Wipe with a dampened cloth..."
COME ON ppl - these are for kids and they're gonna beat the tar outta them! That's why this one's missing the tray. The owner probably tried to sit in it herself - - or put her baby brother in it.

The following was what I first wrote, before I looked at the whole site you gave, Daphne. I feel no mercy now! It's on the parents' heads.
__________________
The swing-over tray was missing so that's prob why it was out for the garbage. I was actually feeling a bit guilty before that, thinking that a little girl may have been being punished for something..
Mom: "OK, if you won't take care of your things and you're not cleaning up this mess then I'm putting your doll's high chair out on the curb!"  and then before there was time to retrieve it (there was no other stuff out on this curb yet at this house, along comes Bobbie...)
Everything is disposable for too many ppl, some of my own kids included!!!
_______________
It reminds me of our recent power loss, the late 40-Somethings next door, who are well on their way to a 3rd finished basement in 5 years.
They built one of the McMansions that fills every allowable inch of their property; way over-powering these suburban lots laid out 150 years ago.
6 months later came the first outage and sump pump failure caused everything to be stripped out in the finished basement and replaced: carpets, walls, furniture, the works.
A year later, same thing. That time they called in Don to help them with their new generator, as we were all sharing power from our generators to keep everyone's freezers & frigs going. Don cautioned him on how to treat it in after-care, to make sure it would be ready for the next time he'd need it.

Sure enough, last month we got blasted again with a sudden 25° temp rise overnight and Mr 40-something comes knocking "Can you help me get the generator going?"
Don sees that nothing was done to clear the lines last time or whatever you have to do to get it ready for the next time: he shows him how to give it a spritz of ether to jump start it now ... while Mr stands there sipping a COLD bottle of water chatting with another neighbor Don's helped (Don, who's now down on his hands & knees, the Sr citizen here who has had his back fused with rods & screws over 5 vertebrae) and says, "Do you think you should bend down here again to see what I'm doing so you can carry on?"

As Mr continues sipping and chatting, Don hands the almost empty can of ether to his pre-teen son and says "Good Luck, guys, I've got to go check on my own freezer now."
Never so blind as those who will not see.
It's just too easy to think of everything as replaceable instead of 'what do we need to do to preserve what we've got?' So that high chair is mine, with no regrets!
I know I know, I'm sounding like the stodgy old lady I've become. And I'll never earn bucco bucks nor will/did Don as a union hourly worker. But we put in our time and were happy to give our bosses an honest days' work for the $ we were paid. We didn't think in terms of replacing the same furnishing at least 3 times, especially after someone was nice enough to show us how to stop it from happening again after the first time. I wonder what is happening to the initiative of many of the young families today....

I got your e but it was a crazy week, Daphne. On top of everything else, like making applesauce for the freezer and installing an oak floor in the bedroom, I took a header into a door frame and dinged up several body parts: I'm getting too old to do this (ALL of it!)
Must learn to get my feet under me before I go charging off....
Next week is better.  I'll e my phone # and email pix of suggestions for a 3 hour and a 5 - 6 hour.
Wed or Fri afternoons best to talk. Looking forward to it!!!!

We had a free day to put anything out a few months ago on our garbage pick-up day—Spring Clean Up—another to come in the Fall, and someone put out this perfectly nice little doll's high chair.
While I cannot use it for my work, I have another idea for it.
I don't know the name of the brand - no labels - it has a cute beribboned rabbit on the seat pad and on the upright side  of the chair back.

But for the Moms out there with their finger on the pulse of the current brand names, I'm sure at least one of you know; can you tell me if this is a recognized brand-name that's being sold, or something that's 27 years (my luck...) passé but not yet vintage.

TIA!

About 18" tall -

The decal on the reverse side -

The print on the seat pad -

And isn't it funny how you have to leave the gardens/property through the Gift Shop!!??
SOOO many precious Must-Haves in there!

Our DD Anne, was born on Ms Potter's B'day, 28 July but 101 years later!
I've always felt a special affinity with Hill Top House, too, and love wearing the sweater I bought there in '89 during  our first visit, with many of the characters knitted in in Fair Isle style bands.
Thx for the memories.

Lynette, you are a one-woman powerhouse in your own right! Thx for giving others another venue!

A few thoughts... mostly off the top of my head and on timing.
Is there a window of time that you're looking at?
Is this an ongoing offer or a one-off?
Will the bear(s) be a visitor and returned at the end of a contract period of time (as in 'On Consignment') or will your shop have bought it as wholesale?

Bestest hugs for your tireless work, especially in continuing to open up and bridge the gap between the European/US and the Asian markets,
Bobbie

Thx Melissa, that's an excellent suggestion, I'll put that into my template now!

Wouldn't the Color Blenders tone down any of the stronger shades, to be more acceptable colors or more what you were looking for? Custom colors or blended shades of several colors?
That's always worked for me and the color blenders from Copic have worked on Prisma & vice versa....

Doooh! I feel stuuuupid now! I'll delete this thread! I didn't know this had changed for everyone - I figured it was just me!! And I agree!! It belongs on the page right next to our Feedback scores!!
Thx Joanne!!

Have I missed something? I've had only 3 auctions this year, but somewhere in all of the changes at eBay, my About ME page has come un-linked.

I've got the actual url to the page, and can bring it up myself; in fact, I made update changes to it just yesterday.

But in uploading the last 2 auctions, I haven't found the spot that says 'Upload the About ME Page'.
Can someone tell me where that link or button is now located?

There are 2 main pages for uploading an auction, even to give me a hint of what it's near: on Pg 1 - the html code window, where you input details about price/reserves/duration/shipping/etc.. or the next page where the extra features are listed?

I sure cannot locate it and if anyone knows I'd love to find out, before having to contact LiveChat!

I have 2 deck-of-cards cameras, they're the only ones we use now. Even DH has stopped bringing his 45 lbs of cameras & lenses on vacation... preferring the (4 year old) camera I bequeathed to him when I moved up last year.
Yes we miss the long range zoom close-ups and top-of-the mountain:look-at-that-baby-mouse images.
But we took those years  ago....and how many more do we need? (We repainted our bedroom this week: all of those thousands of slides and just as many prints came down off the shelf... I don't think they're all going back up again!)

We now want to carry the cameras in our pockets - to capture our (grand)kids at play/B'days/fishing/riding bikes and close-ups of the bugs on the flowers in the garden, an excellent sunset and my bears.
And we need to be able to see the images on the screen as we focus! And not pay for processing while we shoot a series of 'bracketing our shots'.

The Cascio Exilm (sorry! 8 MP) is 4 years old, about $200 then, and what I like about the digital cameras in the last few years is that the User Book is now built into the camera!!
The Menu button brings it all up and you catch on pretty quickly to the settings you usually need to nightshots, Macro, lighting, white balance, etc.
The Macro close-up focus on this one is about 4" away but it has only 20 minutes of movie time and I need to insert a new card.

So I bought another camera for $200, when friends were all buying the Flip (with crap resolution, pardon my French..) 'movie' camera for $175 because they could plug that right into their computers. But that's all it could do!

This is an Olympus Stylus (also 8 MP because Consumer Reports gave it a better rating than their 10 MP model at the time) again everything built in, needing no dock to import the data to the computer as the Cascio has, just connect a cable into the side and push OK, and this has a Macro plus Super Macro, focusing down to about 3/4" away.

Now one of us is taking the still shots and the other is filming the same event and we're not missing anything.

For your purposes Alison, the only downside would be recharging. But I never remember my phone charging either, because I don't use it and forget to charge it. But - you could just as easily forget to bring extra memory cards, or have fresh or extra batteries along with you. So I don't see that as a trade-off reason to avoid the small pocket digis when there is a world of advantages balanced against this one disadvantage!!!

PLUS! I found that I no longer need a tripod! I rest my arms against the edge of my photo shelf set up (I make only minis) and can SEE when the images are hair-sharp in the almost 3" across (diagonal) screen and snap away. I can move into positions around the bear that would be impossible to attain when I was limited by the 3 standing legs.

I am so much freer and take so many more images now; literally hundreds in an hour, to save perhaps 20 great shots online. Then Photoshop those at 300 res for printing and again at 72 for online.

Photography has become almost effortless now, just knowing and bringing forth a fraction of what we learned from our SLR experiences. 

The best thing you can do is take in a (cloth?) back drop and one of your bears into every shop you visit and tell them that this is what you want to see on the monitor/screen/computer. If they're interested in selling to you, and know their equipment, and who wouldn't be interested in a Sale these days? they should allow you to set up your bear with a bit of draping to block out the background junk and use their different models to see how they perform, then plug them into a monitor to see what they look like online.  You won't understand how to use all of the functions but you should be able to take a point & shoot under their directions, even at a Best Buy or similar store.

That's the best test of what each camera will do with Your work!

There is a parallel topic going on on the board - claws out of other-materials-than-the-polymer-clays )Sorry 'Oly'~
The Apoxie Sculpt and All Game are just are easy to work with—actually easier because they're not hard and in need of softening first. They are like window putty and just need blending together thoroughly.
This makes a huge difference on our finger joints which already suffer from arthritis due to all of the hand work involved in this arena.
Read here for links, opinions. etc:
http://www.teddy-talk.com/viewtopic.php?id=31573

SOOooo many TTers highlighted again in Teddy Bear & Friends mag & our very own Edie B made the cover with her winsome Amalia.

I've only peeked at the TOC, but  - -  a NICE-looking treat to take out to the porch swing tomorrow!!

Apoxie Scuplt!!! Love it!! So EZ to use!
When I made larger pieces 3" to 4" long and 1" thick - I was impatient for them to set up firmly enough to hold its shape and had to carefully prop them up for an hour or so until a neck or leg was firm enough to stand on its own and have its surface finished.

I'll have to look up All Game - Thx Joanne, always interested in alternate products.

Here are the two web sites:

http://www.allgamepoxy.com/servlet/StoreFront
http://www.avesstudio.com/Products/Apox … culpt.html

'Stargazing'
2 & 5/8" Polar Bear
Needle Felted - Tiny Metal Claws
2007 URSA® 1st Pl
2007/8 TITA® Nominee

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi … 0358158439

How would I get the font size increased in this title? And where to I put the qualifiers for just this title?

<b>
<b>STARGAZING
<b>
</b>

the rest of the code, referring to size, is written like this:
<div style="font-family: Comic Sans MS,Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
<script language="JavaScript">

You can see why that doesn't give me a clue as to what to put in for a Title font size. Or where to designate a size
If I had to make a guess, according to other auctions I've had built in the past, I'd say the 'large' text is in now font-size 4 (out of 1 to 6)

I've been working on this auction for over a week; this one is worse than giving birth!!

T I A!!!