Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

gosh thank you catherine  :redface: drawing is lots of fun! you're never ever done learning - it's just that
the challenges change over time.

that struck a note with me - I won't even touch new art supplies for a couple days once I get em! Bright
new materials give me performance anxiety. They gotta lose their novelty until I can be working on an
idea FIRST, & then say "hm, I think I'd like to see how this new markers/paint/fancy paper/whatever
works with this idea I'm putting together." Then I can just use it as a tool, finding out the neat stuff I
can do with it, without getting all flustered.

the trick is to relax. Use materials that you can waste without feeling bad. My old favorites are still
a regular #2 pencil & a handful of printer paper! I even went back to it when I started making bear
patterns, cause if you throw some away, so what? you don't need the stress of "OMG I MUSTN'T WASTE
MY PRECIOUS ART PAPER" ya know? By all means art supplies are fun & useful, but only if you can
feel comfortable with your materials. Some people say that the best things they've drawn have been
on lined notebook paper during school lectures - this is why!

good luck & have fun - you will surprise yourself I think!

wow. Renae said everything I'd have said, right down to the exact same book recommendation!

tracing is totally ok so long as you are doing it for practice & not publishing it or presenting it as
your original piece of work. After all, an essential lesson in art school is copying the old masters
to 'feel' how they painted.

best of luck and HAVE FUN! permit yourself to do 'bad' drawings. an old axiom is that every artist has
~ten thousand BAD drawings in them to get out of the way before you get to the good stuff, lol - so
forgive yourself the 'ugly' ones just as much as you'd encourage a new bearmaker to forgive herself
crooked, cockeyed 'ugly' first bears!

Oh my....!
New Years Resolution: I have GOT to cut back on the 'Nog  :crackup: cos I don't remember
a bit of that  :crackup:  :crackup: woohoo me & Michael J! What fun this was - you did a great
job! I hope it was fun to draw, cause it was a ball to look at     

I do not have a [INVALID] sewing machine - but I don't use it for bears. I hand
sew my bears.

Mine is just a $150 Kenmore from Sears with a vertical bobbin. It is a couple years
old. It only does about 8 stitches but I only ever use straight & zigzag anyhow.
I had an 80's singer (plastic all over - but it was a gift) that tangled up constantly.
the drop-in bobbin in the singer hopped out all the time too. I vowed I'd never
have another drop in bobbin! But the Kenmore runs like a champ. I figure, it is
what Home Ec classes use. so good enough for the abuse it might get from me.
I was told that Janome was making the Kenmore branded machines that year
(Sears gets companies to make products that they put the Kenmore label on)

I really like the Kenmore sewing machine manual - always easy to understand.
that was a big factor.

I'm a Grinch......!
I fall for individual bears & critters. Some artists DO push that button in me more often,
but those same artists also do bears that leave me very 'meh' 

But when I love em, I really REALLY love em 

I like stuff NOW that I didn't like a year ago. I never thought I'd like red bears! Now I
can't wait to make one.

wow, he is utterly enchanting. extraordinary!
every time I think you can't outdo the last one, you come up with
something else remarkable!

why she looks like a perfectly adorable wallaby to me!
kangaroo + petite & adorable = wallably 

WOW Bonnie what a looker! She's gorgeous!!  is she a saddlebred or something?
I'm terrible with horse types. wish my legs were that long...  :crackup:

all I got to share is my friend's rescue mule, who I got to name.
He's half draft horse, so he's ginormous.
Here is Malcolm, admire his bunny ears:

he's looking to be placed in a permanent home 

YAAAY!!!!

Apple slices for that tough girlie   

what? we can order them fat?? how did I miss that? is it the same price? how do I request it?

little slow to catch on sometimes, me  :doh:

oh man....Santa brought her?????
I am NEVER gonna be that good......    :crackup:

there is a twinkle of hope though - Andy's got a new job that can
finally let us think about moving & buying a place...

a place with acres...

You guys who are still agonizing over decisions you'd made in the past...
You KNOW how forgiving our animal buddies are. & there are things you
learned from Ringo's & Rascal's passing, which could never have
been learned in a better way. I have ones in my past too - I say a little
prayer about them in my heart that is something like, "please forgive me.
but thank you for teaching me." pets forgive us so much it breaks my heart.
But making the experience into a lesson, I honor them & give it value, &
because of them I don't repeat the mistakes, & every animal that's come
after is better off for what I've learned.
I hope these thoughts bring you some comfort - please stop tormenting yourselves  :hug:

I agree with printing it direct out of Photoshop - what are you doing to it in Word?
Text?

She's so lovely!! I am so envious.

this is me:

I dunno. I've syringe-fed baby food & Ensure to pet rats who'd had strokes, because they were still
getting joy out of 2 out of their 3 favorite things. But then other ones have looked at me & I could tell
they were ready to go. I really think it depends on what the individual critter is telling you.

*ask your vet
*ask your bunny.

I'm sorry it's happening, it's hard when their parts stop working right 

Is it a .gif? you can't reduce .gifs or they get icky.
Save it in another format (.jpg, .psd or whatever) & then reduce it to print.

ah - thank you Eileen! I am pretty sure my email prog doesn't compress photos  -
it just takes forever cause of dial up. & I am stuck with choosing from 'old' photos
because my 'best' bear is long sold...not that I am complaining about that! 

mine is uploading.....very slowly....lol...dialup stinks 
I hope my photo is alright. My camera is kind of crap.  :redface:

I don't know stuff about bolts - I'm a cotter pin girl - BUT
Congratulations on having rekindled the creative spark!! Isn't it a great feeling?
I am so sorry you were without it for such a LONG time. That sounds quite frightening
to me, actually! Do surround yourself with bits of stuff that excite the urge to create -
keep that fire burning, even if you have to feed it with trying out new stuff. Being allowed
to PLAY is what keeps it fresh for me. I have many irons in the fire right now but every
so often I need to do something completely unrelated - this time, it's making altered art
out of Altoids tins. No one can tell me what it's supposed to look like, & it isn't anything
being made to sell, so I can just have FUN & try stuff out. I used to think this was frivolous
& feel bad about it when I had projects to do, but it is what my mind NEEDS to keep going.
It's the mental equivalent of stretching your legs every so often after being chained to
your desk. & honestly.....it is how I learn the most valuable new stuff & spawn new ideas.

Do whatever you gotta do to keep your Muse happy! 

What everyone else said!
I go in Photoshop under Image > Image Size to see the dimensions (width & height - in inches,
centimeters, or pixels) & resolution (dots/pixels per inch). Your screen can only display 72dpi, so if you
upload a 300dpi image to the web, it will translate the level of detail by showing the picture to be GIANT
(& making my dial up modem cry, lol)

It is worth noting!!! you can reduce resolution - convert a 300dpi image to 72dpi, for the web -
BUT you can't go the other way & turn a low-res image back into a high-res one! It will get blown up,
sure, but your formerly crisp details will be fuzzy & blocky - just as if you were looking at your smaller
image under a magnifying glass. So ALWAYS save your high res photos on your hard drive - or better
yet backed up on a CD! - even if you make resized versions for the web. 300 dpi is the minimum for
printing, so it's really valuable to save those nice images!

I concur with Daphne's assessment of this dude....  
Does he give any reason for why he thinks his idea is better design?

jeez louise. just cos someone learns HTML doesn't automagically give them design skillz.
stick to your guns Bobbie, your original idea is gorgeous.

do you think you might be better served by buckling down to just learn to make the site
yourself? It's dead easy with a nice editing program like Dreamweaver.

easier than learning to knit, by far  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:

I do distressing in-between - I sew my bear pieces & then dump em in the tea bath or whatever.
If dye wants to settle more in the seams, so be it, & the thread gets it too. It saves me on tea
& not having to always use the most HUGE pot, too.

After a bear is sewn up & with eyes, ears, nose, etc all on, I spritz with an aging solution
(ink, walnut dye, acrylic, water) & rub him down.

Only a couple times have I started out KNOWING what head shape etc I absolutely had to have
(both for toys that were recreating actual living pets) & I think I did 3 heads for one & 5 for the
other. With bears I aim for an ideal & then work with whatever I end up with - that's way more
fun for me - the multiple heads technique really really dulled my enjoyment - YMMV. I prefer
to let the bear tell me what he wants to look like - this is fine for me cause I am still learning
how pattern alterations affect the final outcome.

I love your avatar by the way, LuLu - have you got a website where I can see more of your guys??

I know, it was so convenient. I imagine people who earned money per click-through abused it by loading
up on irrelevant keywords just to get traffic. I know I hate to look something up only to find the results are
all just stupid junk sites with the entire dictionary in their keywords.

Maybe I should look up less obscure stuff  :crackup:

Hmmm that boxer looks familiar...  :crackup:

what's your most favorite gorgeous most impressive piece of work - or your top
three? put em up there prominently! Take up at least 1/3 of the space with art.
Don't make people click through pages to find out if they like your art or not!
Your site is like Playboy, we're not looking at it for the articles  :crackup:
I see a sheep & totebag but they're a tiny piece of 'real estate' on what is
essentially an art site - right? Gimme art & blow me away with it!

almost 1/4 of the page is the form to join the members club - asking for a lot of info, too, with 'sensitive' info
like street address & all. Heck I'm usually too paranoid to sign up just for email newsletters because of spam.
But there's nothing to convince me WHY I'd want to join or what the club is. Convince me it's worth it! As it
is, it's taking up a big chunk of your page & I dunno why I'd join - so maybe you'd be better served with a
bold text link that says 'Sign up for members club for contests, discounts, etc' or whatever it is the club entails.
then link it to a page all about the club where you have the room to properly give detailed info.

I see Webbie's point - the days of hiding keywords in meta tags is past, sadly. So yeah, page content
is important to google et al.

BUT you gotta maximize what you're offering. What's there now is very detailed mini-bio. But
if I had seen your stuff & forgotten your name & wanted to find your site, I would search words like
'needlefelting', 'felt', 'wool' 'felting kits' 'polar bears' etc. & these words aren't there. You are going to
get hits for "knitting, crochet, tatting, lace making and needlework" but that stuff is not really relevant
to the site. I suggest thinking of all the keywords that apply to your work, & work them into a smaller
paragraph or two - for instance, keywords bolded:

Bobbie Ripperger has been a teddy bear artist for 15 years, creating original heirloom quality bears from the finest of materials such as mohair, alpaca, and wool felt. Specializing in the new technique of needlefelting, Bobbie uses special barbed needles to create felted wool soft sculptures. Her polar bears in particular have earned such honors as Blah Blah Blah Bear Award, and Other Famous Teddy Award. Her work has been featured in Thus and Such Bear Magazine. In addition to creating, she also offers courses in needlefelting as well as original patterns, and complete kits which include wool roving or batt and felting needles.

Do you see what I mean? Think of it backwards: "people searching for me will use these words." OR, "I want people
searching for needlefelting teddy bear artists (or whatever) to find MY site." & choose what words you will use,
accordingly.

does that make sense?  It's a great About Me page but I think an index page needs to be
punchier with eye candy. But then, I am the MTV generation