Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

What are pulled toes? it sounds a bit painful...!

I did toepads in leather on my first few bears & that cured me of wanting to do them anymore. 
I keep seeing these gorgeous feets on so many bears though.....might try it again someday!

Bill Kurtis & Paul Winfield 

I love Paul Winfield, he sounds so incredibly drunk & sloshy-slurry sometimes. I visualize him
lying face-down on a carpet with a martini in one hand, rambling incoherently into the berber
about some Dallas socialite poisoning her husband or something.

I'm a sucker for the crime documentaries (obviously) & also Law & Orders & CSIs, & X-Files.
I need some 'what happens next??' to keep my ADD butt in the chair & my hands on my work.
I like DVDs but we've got all the same old ones. I used to listen to 'This American Life' (NPR)
episodes on the internet but their new anti-downloading solution does not work with my computer
anymore.

I don't wanna hunt for haggis for fear of finding some 

Dunno why someone would cook up a sheep's stomach to eat, when there are much more
delicious parts of sheepses to eat, like the wool or the hooves.....

I agree on a distressed ALL BEAR!
call it a 'TOUGH LOVE BEAR' lol  :crackup:

Thank you Sarah Jane re: parisian essence; what does it smell like?

Thanks everyone! I know there'd be plenty of wisdom here!
I was writing a reply yesterday & then the power went out 

Bobbi - what can i say, I like suspense. 

I'm having so much fun. I am spinning up all my old rovings that are too
coarse for felting nicely - but make lovely yarn! For Christmas, my in-laws
gave me a great big armful of gorgeous auburn alpaca fleece (how cool a gift
is that, seriously?? They are great.) They'd gotten it from their choir friends who
keep a little 'paca herd. It is a LOT to felt, though - & all one color. So I'd seen some
neat little instructions online for making a drop spindle, for yarnmaking - so I tried that
out! Here's what I made:

The brown is the alpaca, the raspberry/blue/purple is wool.

Spindle is tooooo slow, though - so I 'invested' in a cute little double treadle
spinning wheel  :twisted: with which I made the stuff in the original post!

I'm having tooooo much fun     

What is parisian essence?

I love seeing the little old teddies in this thread - thank you all for the pictures!

Paula I find that different mohairs might inspire different bears, but I'm already revved up by
a more 'vintage' vibe & your guys are so pristine! I think I start out at the scribbly end of
the spectrum to begin with 

Thank you deb! Beamish's fur is so dense I didn't even age him down - just trimmed his paw fur.
It felt weird to leave it at that!  But he's so rumply by nature, he already looked like he'd knocked
around a while.

So I'm learning to knit (and spin on a wheel, but that's a whole nother post).

I got ambitious today - bought some cute patterns for cardigans & other little clothes.
I'm not touching these patterns til I can do more than garter stitch! But I know when
the time comes, they will make super neato bear accessories. I got really excited
by some of the very cool stuff out there!

So if I make a OOAK bear to sell, which is my usual thing, is it ok to make him a sweater
from a boughten pattern, or does that violate some etiquette or worse, legal issue? I don't
usually make anything from boughten patterns. ("But they show a photo of how it looks on
the cover - why should I bother making it if I already know how it'll look?" lol)
I'll probably end up changing stuff on the sweaters except for the most basic ones. BUT
I'd be more comfortable if I knew what's proper if I want to dress a bear for ebay.

Thoughts? thanks!

I like sparse, short, matted, any or a combination of all (right now, anyhow)
for distressed bears.

I don't distress the mohair before cutting/sewing. I cut out the pieces & then if I want
to dye, I dye. Before sewing if I want pawpads to contrast,
after sewing if I want them to be colored too (as with tea).

You guys who don't do distressing don't know what fun you're missing! It's totally
the best part. So much character comes out of it!

After I stuff the bear I do all his 'anatomy' except sewing his claws. Then I trim his
muzzle, ears, & paws, sew & wax his nose - the basic finishing. Then for 'breaking
him in' I start with an overall spritz with some diluted walnut dye/ink/acrylic mixture.
Rub it in, comb it through, let it dry in spots, or make it more washed out in parts by
spraying plain water too - anything goes, except getting it accidentally on a plucked
muzzle lol

After that, I do the detailing with copics & prismacolor pencils with lots of colorless
blender. Then I trim & pluck the "rub spots" - forehead, ear edges, tummy, toes, ends
of paws, & darken those if necessary. Claws are the last thing I do.

I have a ball doing my guys this way. They look way too sparkly otherwise! 

May the waiting be the very worst of it - I wish for everything after to be a breeze.
I am greatly encouraged by the vigilance of you & your doctors though - nothing is going
to get by you guys! There's been so much progress in treatment since we lost my gramma
to breast cancer in 1977. Best wishes to you all!

I need to post thebearguys-relevant questions more so I can see that floppy eared skater dude more often! 

It figures the one I like is impossibly rare, but fine by me ultimately if it's gonna go bald!

would make a fabulous old-fashioned victorian sorta bunny, though.

Does persian lamb come in creamy ivory white, ever?

rofl - didn't realize this was a zombie thread 

The Complete Book of Teddy-Bear Making Techniques by Alicia Merrett & Ann Stephens

It's a GREAT book but I don't need TWO copies! I'd be happy to send it out to whoever wants it
for $30 shipped in the US/Canada, maybe a $5 extra for shipping overseas.

It's hardcover with a perfect dust jacket.

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Ted … F8&s=books

thanks! -

update, the book's been snatched - thanks J, watch your mail! 

you can stick it in a big bag with baking soda for a while - shake it up, get the powder
all penetrating the fibers. Leave it there for a while, take a sniff every so often to check on
the scent. I know dumping white powder on your nice fabric is not a delightful thought but
it can be shaken/beaten out. I have done this with some synthetic fur & it worked fine.
But as with all things YMMV!

You know, they teach camels and elephants to "kush" - kneel down to make mounting easier -
why not horses??  Charlie is a TALL boy - I can't fault you one bit! He's a handsome fellow
to be sure and you look quite at home perched up there on him! How did it feel? Is your bottom
sore now?? I love riding. That's not to say I'm any good at it. It's been years though. My horse
owning friend is 8 hours' drive away.

awesome topic, sorry to hear the damage that has had to occur for us to learn, though.

I do thread the leather cord eyelids all the way through the head & just use the superglue to hold em
tight to the eye itself - I would not mind a better sort of glue or process for the same effect though. I have
some various GOOP type glues but to use them for something so small.....ergh. Maybe applied with a toothpick.
Maybe a couple fine-thread stitches in the corner of the eye? Hmmm

Other glue stuff I've done has been decoupage, or for wood or paper accessories. those at least ought to be ok!

WOOOOW! Great - she's wonderful!!! I love paperclay - it makes a delightful surface. You use it like
a pro - she is a wonderful character! Great job with the acrylics, too - what kind did you use? I love
GOLDEN brand best - their fluid colors are awesome & have wonderful smoothness & pigment.

She's great, you ought to submit her to Art Doll Quarterly magazine!

Thank you!! Yes she did love him 
& on advice of TT'ers, I did give him with a hangtag just like a sold bear - & everyone did
think the tag was SO COOOOL! my instinct would be to give a gift without it but they really
liked having it so that's neat 

thanks again!!

AWWW! I am petting my very own boxer while I look at this gorgeous baby!
I will have a white one someday, too - I adore boxers & yours really captures their
sweet soulful expression  well done!!

Months ago I made a little bear in overalls & listed him on ebay - my sis in law
fell in love with him but she got outbid. she said "I'd love for you to make me a guy,
I don't care what - but give him overalls!!"

Fast-forward to later, they did adopt a sweet black kittycat. So I decided to make
her a kitty in overalls. I planned to give it for her birthday, but her b-day was 2
weeks before her wedding, & I was making the jewelry for the wedding! It was too
busy for me to make a proper sort of guy. So she gets him at Christmas instead.
(well - a week later - they were at the other in-laws for Christmas!)

It will be a surprise, I give him to her tomorrow 

of course if you want an excuse to have a lovely sketchbook, you can certainly paste your scratchpaper
drawings INTO one! Then you get to have your cake & eat it too 

sometimes I feel so triumphant for outsmarting myself...pathetic isn't it?? lol  :crackup:

It's not cheating, it's learning! 

The only thing to go over a finished oil painting is varnish. The oil paint will be dry to the touch in a matter of
days, but it takes the paint a matter of months to really cure. So six months to a year after finishing a painting,
it ought to get a coat or two of varnish over it. You put glass over a watercolor, but an oil painting is exposed to
the air. Oil naturally attracts dust, smoke, grime, etc from the environment - as anyone with a stove knows!
So after years & years, your painting will become dirty. To clean it, a restorer will strip off the (dirty) varnish,
revealing the pristine painting beneath, & then paint new clean varnish over.

If you don't wait a few months for the paint to cure before varnishing, the varnish will bond to the uncured paint &
not be removable after all. Depending on where the painting lives, you can wait a while to put varnish on. Sooner
is better if you smoke or you want to hang it over the fireplace or something like that.

The only surface I'd use oil paint on is primer or gesso of some sort. I was taught that oil paint will, over a long
period of time, eat away at the raw cotton of unprimed canvas, so the gesso provides a stable ground. *I do not know if the
thickness of the paint layer is relevant to the cotton getting disintegrated - a light wash versus a thick buttery smear?
I do not know if it is the mineral pigments or the linseed oil or what element of paint would do this. I also don't know if it
would eat away at protein fibers, or if, relatedly, the amount used to tint a bear would degrade the cotton backing
of mohair fabric or the hair itself. So I don't oil paint on my bears, even though it does look so awesome when people
do. I would love to hear from anyone who had oil paint wisdom AND bear-tinting-with-oil exp about this!)

One last thing about oil painting - your mantra will be Fat Over Lean! Thin your first layers with thinners
or other additives (stuff that speeds drying). As you do subsequent layers, use your oil additives like linseed or
whatever (stuff that slows drying = has more oil in it). Have your  'oiliest' (fattest) layers be the last ones. Painting
the 'lean' paint over the oily paint will make your painting liable to crackle. Which is why acrylic, which has no oils
in it at all, can't be used over oil paint 

hope I was helpful!

you can do oil-based over water-based, with a fixative between or not. I might use a fixative for watercolor,
but no need for acrylic - that stuff is pretty tough & indelible when it's dried.

Don't do anything over oil except more oil, though. Ever. It will crackle/flake/peel/be a ungodly mess.

You will cry.

In fact, if I had a canvas with an oil painting on it that I wanted to recycle, I would only gesso it to use
for more oil paintings. Acrylic really never wants to be on top of oil. Even for wall paints, you use a lot of
primer between em!

have you tried the water-based oils? They are SO. COOL. hooray for not having to breathe turpentine stench!

Yikes.
a few thoughts occur to me.

1. I'm pretty sure that my mom's first impulse would not be to grab the camera & snap a photo.

2. were I that child, I would not be smiling in the photo. In fact, I'd probably not be here today!!

3. of all the stuff covered with paint, there appears to be virtually NONE on the childrens' own toys.

4. the little one's got paint all around his mouth. How'd that stuff taste, buddy??

5. that looks like (it used to be) an expensive couch!  :clap:

Some mass-produced stuffies are really well-made & cute.
Steiff comes to mind 

I always liked the zodiac dragon beanie baby but never got him - the
dog would totally steal it anyhow.