Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Jenny,

Your bear has a great personality. He is a bear that can really speak to you. I love him!
Good work!!!

Kathy

Beautiful...absolutely beautiful!

I know how hard it is to work with real fur...your bears are amazing!!!

Kathy Myers

Hi Clare
I can definitely relate to the need for motivation...especially just before a show. I have been a Teddy Bear Artist for 17 years now and I love it but I have reached "burn out" more than once in all that time. I worked many 16 hours days just before a show just to get enough bears for my table.

Since most Teddy Bears Artists are true artists in other medias also, I think that many of us do the same thing by creating something in a different media. I will draw, paint, or make some jewelry...it all reflects in my bears. The last time I reached burn-out I started making jewelry...now all of my bears are wearing handmade polymer hearts...and those hearts inspired me to turn my little bears into jewelry...my little mink bear necklace! 

I will also go to the book store and browse through art, craft, wearable art, or any magazine that may have ideas that could inspire me. 

So my answer is to distract yourself but stay creative!

Good Luck
Kathy

Hi Kim
Thank you so much for looking at my About Me page and for the positive feedback. I am definitely not good on the computer (I drive my teenage daughter crazy asking for help when I get confused, which is often). But HTML is so simple, it is just simple tags. I just made my basic page using the eBay template (no HTML) but after you post your page and go back to edit it then you have to know enough HTML to be able to insert new tags to insert extra photos and color. 

Most artists are visual people so the book that I use is Teach Yourself HTML Visually. All pictures....it is great! I also found some really good tutorials when I joined the About Me group in the eBay community and all that info is free.
Kathy

I am so happy that I found this discussion. I'm at exactly the same point, I want to put my bears on eBay but I was told that summer was a bad time because sales were too slow so I was waiting.

Now with the current Katrina disaster I wasn't that this would be a good time to list a bear either. I was considering listing a donation bear with the proceeds going to help the disaster...I just wasn't sure about the organization that eBay uses, I was still researching them. But I thought that it would be a good way to introduce my bears to eBay buyers.

I just finished my About Me page on eBay. It's a great option...it's like a mini website. I always look at them when I am shopping...I like to know who I'm buying from. I'm just surprised that not everyone uses About Me.

I have  Photoshop 7 .... more than I will ever need and so far I've just used the basics but I wanted to recommend the book that I found the most useful. Since most artists are visual I found the Teach Yourself Visually series of books the most helpful. They have one for Photoshop. Instead of reading a lot of words they show you how to do things visually...all pictures, few words...works for me!