Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Hi Jane I am in a similar position busy making things for my daughters wedding which is in 7 weeks this Saturday.

How about making some flowers with a flower loom( you can find them on craft sites and ebay, but hobbycraft don't seem to do them)in the relevant shades of blue and cream wool, maybe do different sizes and layer them, then attach to some ribbon and tie around the napkins

I have found that when I make larger bears (I usually make bears less than 4 inches tall) quite a few have ,what I call "left leg syndrome" I think it has something to do with the fact I am right handed and the way I joint the legs, It may also be to do with the way the legs are stuffed.

Here is a photo of Benji & Bob who I made last year around easter time I think.Benji was made from lovely Sassy frosted fabric.

I shall be exhibiting for the first time at Hugglets!
I am very excited but also a little nervous. I shall be on stand 144A in Hall 4 upstairs. Do come and say hello 

I always state the prices. Like Clare, if the price is not stated, it makes me think of those exclusive jewelery shops where they don't display the prices and you dare not go in to enquire, because if you need to ask the price, you probably cannot afford it.

Potential customers need as much information as possible, first they will look at the pictures and that will determine whether they then look to see if they can afford the item, so they need that information at hand. If they have to wait for an e-mail with a price, they may well have gone off the boil a bit and have decided that really they don't want to spend at the moment or will have looked at other bears in the mean time and have bought one of those instead.

Hi Emma,
I remembered something about a character bear being mentioned along with other unusual sorts of categories which were quite specific. I think the competition you are talking about is the National Teddy Bear Awards, run by Brewins Bruins. I think they had the first one this year at a show in the new Forest?

Congratulations to all the finalists! I have finalists in category 1 and 10 too! I am so happy This is the first time that I have entered the competition and shall now be making plans to visit Brighton in December 

Hi Ariane,
I have tried both methods, but I prefer to use the inset mouth method, so that the side head pieces have a cut in them to insert the, roughly, diamond shaped inside mouth piece. I didn't explain that very well. Here is a picture of my latest open mouth miniature. He is approximately 4inches (10cm) tall.

I was so thrilled when I read Paula's message to find out I had got two nominations!! I had a huge grin on my face  I also made such a high  pitched shrieking noise that my family came rushing in to find out what the matter was LOL. Congratulations to all the other nominees, I expect they are feeling the same. Any way , here are my two entries( if I can remember how to add photos) Prince Charming who is 3.5" (9CM) tall and Dexter who is 3.3"(8.3 CM ) tall.

(sorry if the photos are a bit big  )

Brenda,
I also use a Mac and was getting booted off every time as well, but I got my hubby to upgrade the version of Safari I was using to 4.0.5 and it now seems to work OK. I had wondered if it was an incompatibility problem and that seems to have been what it was. I hope this helps.

I love hamsters too,  :love:
we had lots as children, well they were really my sister's.
Please be careful if you do let it out in the bathroom, thats how we lost one of ours!

I was about 14 and my sister was 12, it was the summer holidays and both parents were at work.We decided to let the hamster out on the bathroom carpet....big mistake. She found the tiniest of holes in the floor, right where the water pipes came up at the back of the sink and made a dash for it. She had disappeared before we could do anything. There then followed frantic searches for tools in the garage with which to get the floor boards up and tearful phone calls to parents, who could obviously not drop everything to rescue a hamster.

I would imagine that somewhere in the cavity walls of that house there is still a little tiny skeleton  unless somehow she survived and managed to escape into the wild.

So do be careful.I am sure you will soon manage to tame your little friend

Well I went all excited down to my local WH Smiths and it was nowhere to be found! I asked at the desk and they couldn't even find it on their system    Whilst not the largest WH Smiths it is a reasonable sized one, so I came home a bit disappointed. I have therefore ordered it  direct from Warners Group Publications www.collectors-club-of-great-britain.co.uk  as there is no postage charge for deliveries within the UK, its £1.95 for other european countries and £2.95 for the rest of the world. There was also a space for additional comments on the order so I wrote about how much I missed Teddy Bear Scene and hoped they would bring it back again. I shall now be watching the letter box untill it lands on the mat

Aww how cute.
He looks as though he is biting the leg of the invisible postman

Congratulations Dawn  :clap:  :dance:  :clap: 
You must be very excited!

Oh thats brilliant! :dance:
I have really missed it, I do hope it does get going again. We need a choice of magazines in the UK, not just one.

Energetic lively earwigs parade HAZARDOUSLY along narrow twigs 

Not every virtuous employee refers to her elocution lessons, eventually STUPIDLY swearing!

Here is something to join the last two together:

Untried new inventions tragically eventually disappear

and

Eventually childish hollering is definitely not allowed

Games requiring endless mind loops invoke nonsense sentences!

I like mental gymnastics LOL

Hi Peta,
I use a mac and find it really user friendly, we have never had a virus and I would not go back to a PC now.I use IWeb to do my website and that is very easy to use(it must be, because I can do it on my own LOL)There are mac versions of most of the usual programs,it just seems to take a little longer for new versions of things to become available, but I can wait.
Hope that helps you to decide

Tiny hugs
Gail

This will be my first on line show (and first 24 hour one ! ) I will have sweeties and tea and coffee on hand and I am getting very excited about it all :dance: I am not sure if I will be able to stay awake all that time, but I will be having an afternoon snooze today so I can be awake to keep up with the chat on the forum!

Hi Brenda,

I have used a mac for ages, but I know exactly what you mean about changing computers, it becomes very disorientating. Even when my little old blue iMac gave up and we got another mac, I felt awful for a few days as the operating system was an upgrade also and it all seemed to change. My husband (who is the computer savvy one in this household) just said to me ,have a play around with it see what it can do, you won't hurt anything, and that's what I did. I love my mac and the fact that you don't get all the viruses like you do with PCs.I suppose that at least if I want to do something, and I am not sure how to, I just have to ask hubby and I know he will know, but if you hit any problems and are not sure, just send me a message and I will ask him for the answer. I am sure you will love it after having used it for a while(but as others have said ,it sounds as though it needs to be set up for you personally)
Good luck and don't give up with it yet :hug:  :hug:

I saw this on the local news too. The intrepid space teddies took off from Cambridge ,which is 15 miles in one direction from where we live and later landed in Ipswich, Suffolk which is 42 miles in the opposite direction, meaning, that they must have flown right over our house!!!!!

I  think I am right in saying(I may be wrong, its a long time since I did science at school )that lead is not magnetic.So you could do a quick test with a magnet to find out if it is lead or steel.

Hello
Sorry you are having this problem. If you want the stripes and pile direction to match it is never going to happen with a three piece head because as you say the gusset will have to have either the pile or stripes going the wrong way. Had you thought of making your bear with a two piece head? this will eliminate the difficulty you are having in matching everything up as the stripes can be matched across the centre seam and the pile direction will be going in opposite directions falling away from the bears centre seam "parting"   I hope I have explained this properly, I know what I mean I am not sure I have explained it enough though.