Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Hello Jared!  I was at Schaumburg as well, but don't think we've met.  Mind you, my list of 'people I have not met yet' is gigantic, so maybe next time!

Anyway, wanted to add to the topic that our Schaumburg sales consisted of one each of cash and check and all of the rest were credit cards.  Interestingly enough, most of those were Discover cards.  I guess Discover has some sort of cash-back offer going on now?

Cheers,
Kelly

I've got the smallest sized washer that Edinburgh carries, it's less than 4mm.  I'm sure you could find something that small at a hardware or craft store.  That aside, I do prefer T-cotterpins for littler bears for two reasons... one, popping through the washer is just not likely to happen and two, there is no 'bump' in the limb where the end of the cotterpin head would normally be.

Hope this helps!
Kelly

Yes, if you open an additional account it does unfortunately start as a brand new zero-feedback account.  It sounds odd to have multiple accounts, but I do prefer to keep everything separated.  When it comes to the bears in particular, having them apart from EVERY non-bear purchase and non-bear sale makes recording eBay and PayPal info for tax season remarkably simple.   I know that every eBay charge on my bear sales account is from listing bears for sale.  And I know that everything I paid through PayPal with my bear-supply buying account was purchases of bear supplies. 

As an interesting note, I believe that it is possible to merge two or more of your accounts into one, I believe that all feedback is merged as well.  For the record though, you can't go the other way and split one account into multiple accounts.  It's nice to know that if I ever get tired of separating everything out and want everything on one account, I should just be able to merge them all into one.

Cheers,
Kelly

Careful Deb, I think it is actually the December 2005 issue that you want if you're looking for the latest issue.  They come out early.  I did have fun looking through both magazines this month, lots and lots of Teddy Talk folks!  Congrats to everybody published, and those of you that haven't ever submitted anything for publication, go for it! 

Cheers,
Kelly

Yup, it's completely fine to have multiple accounts.  I'm in charge of quite a few, for myself or some family members as the official 'eBay geek'.  I think I have two in my mother's name and several in my own.  I use them for different things.  I buy general items on one, sell general items on one, buy bear supplies on one, sell bears on one, use a 'secret' one to buy gifts for friends and family.  Nothing sneaky, I promise.  I figure I prove that I do NOT shill bid whenever I have an auction that goes unsold.  What self-respecting dishonest person would let that happen?     :P

Cheers,
Kelly

I don't do much in the way of commissions, purely because my more selfish 'I want to try this and that and that' list for myself is way too long.  But I have done a commission as above, with no deposit down and then they can purchase the finished product or not.  That having been said, I think this will be changing.  I think I will include in my commission wording that a deposit MAY be required in certain circumstances.  Those circumstances would be if (1) I would have to go out and buy expensive or difficult-to-find material just for that project or (2) the item is so specialized, that I think I would have a hard time selling it to somebody else.  In that case, I would probably take something along the lines of 1/4 or 1/3 down, non-refundable.

Hope this helps!
Kelly

I'm glad you asked this question, Roxanne, it's one I've been wondering about myself.  Traditionally, I've always thought of private auctions as a tool people would use for selling 'adult' items (not that I ever have)  :redface:  However, now that I've seen several prominent bear artists always use private auctions, I've wondered if there really was some advantage to using them.  I have also heard the talk about bidders wanting their privacy, competing against each other weekly, and so forth.  It's a big HMMMMMM for me, still haven't made up my mind if I'll try it.

Shelli is right, shill bidding is unfortunately pretty easy for people to pull off whether the auction is private or not, and I suspect it is, unfortunately for honest sellers, fairly common.  I remember a year or so ago when eBay nominated a 'Power Seller of the Month'.  The article about him mentioned his three powerselling eBay accounts.  People on the eBay message boards quickly discovered that back in his early feedbacks, his IDs had left feedback for each other.  Shill bidding.  The guy quickly got pulled as 'Power Seller of the Month'.  Ooooops!

Cheers,
Kelly

Thanks to everybody for their input!  I actually hadn't even thought about a deposit, so I've been mulling over the options.  In my (limited) show experience, I think people usually request holds when they make their first trip around the show room.  I think they're choosing their favorites to buy with their set $XXX that they have available, then they make their decisions after a few trips around the room and decide on their purchases.  Unfortunately, they don't always get back to the artists who have bears on hold to say 'no thanks'.  So here's what I'm thinking of as a policy, I think it would be appropriate and fair for most people (and not unfair to us, either), though I wonder if it is too complicated.

First hour of the show each day... NO holds. 

After that, I'm thinking I could hold a bear for a short time (15 or 30 minutes?) with no deposit.  I figure this gives people the chance to walk all the way to the other end of the showroom and check on other bears they'd been interested in.  Or that would be enough time for them to go check with the husband to see if the funds are available, as I have also seen happen   

If you want the bear held for more than 15-30 minutes (whatever I decide on above), I need a deposit.  The deposit is not refundable if you do not return within the time we agree on.

What do you folks think?  I like it in theory, but in practice am worried it may be a logistical nightmare.  One way or another, I will not be putting a HOLD tag in front of the bear on the table as I did before, I think it turned people off.  I'll keep my notes on bears being held behind the table and out of sight.
Kelly

So here I sit at 1am on a Saturday, working on finishing as many bears as I can get away with for the Schaumburg show.  (The only thing that consoles me is that I suspect just about every other participating artist is doing the exact same thing.)  I just realized I have a question hanging over me though, so here goes.

At our last show, we did well but actually would have been able to sell two more bears, except for one slight hitch.  In both cases, potential buyers requested that their favorite bear from our table be held for them until they could return to purchase it.  We agreed, and put a little HOLD sign in front of the bear on the table.  By the end of the show, neither person had returned and the bears remained unsold.  Other potential buyers expressed interest in those bears until they saw the HOLD sign, then moved on.  So here's my question.  Do you ever agree to hold a bear for someone at a show?  What are your limits as to length of time or any other restrictions?  Obviously, we were way too lenient at the last show.  I feel certain that the bears in question would have sold easily to somebody else, if not for the fact that they were on hold at the time.  Our loss, unfortunately.

Any input would be appreciated!
Kelly

I was just looking up more current info on digital watermarking (ah well, my knowledge was a few years old).  I guess these days not all are created equal, some tag on the information, others embed once or embed many times over.  Not all last equally well, and some are more easily removed than others.  Oh well, there's nothing that works so well that it can't be ruined eventually.  I'd just count it as one of many potential options to protect your images, none of which are foolproof.  I know National Geographic and Playboy used to swear by Digimarc to crack down on people swiping their content, but who knows what they're using these days.

Cheers,
Kelly

Hi Terrie,

My understanding is that a VISIBLE watermark is pretty easily removed these days.  An invisible watermark (such as digital watermarking) is a difficult thing to tamper with, purely because it is repeated so much throughout the image data.  I got this off the Digimarc FAQ:

As far as disabling right click, I think that is much easier to get around than removing a digital watermark.  With one key on my keyboard, I could do a print screen and then crop down to the image you're trying to protect in less than 60 seconds.  Just something to keep in mind.

Laura, that site is doing a neat trick!  The images at the top are actually all part of one background image as part of a big table.  Here is the background image (P.S. You did not hear this from me):

http://www.dhsdiecast.com/_images/graphics/hdr_full.jpg

So they have a series of smaller tables inside the big table, and are using clear gifs for links within the smaller table.  Very clever!  I guess it would be possible to do something like this with bear photos, but anyone that tried it would have to be handy with HTML.  And, as evidenced by the link I just gave you, it is not difficult to get around by anyone else that is handy with HTML  :D

Actually, I like Laura's suggestion of putting a disclaimer that the bear is being offered directly from the seller if the ID is _______.  Sometimes the simplest solution is the best.

Cheers,
Kelly

P.S.  It is probably possible for a determined crook to get around ANYTHING you try to block them with.  Any of these techniques would at least discourage a less dedicated soul 

Terrie, thanks for the heads up on this.  I guess when I go back to selling bears on eBay after my last show of the year, I'll have to keep a close eye on eBay China  :(

If you are really interested in protecting your images as personal property, there are two ways to prove they are yours.  One would be to file for copyright on your images (it is possible to submit a ton of images all at once to the US Copyright Office for $30).  While you technically hold the copyright to all images you create, filing with the US Copyright Office is the only real way to prove you are the copyright owner in a court.  Personally, I have filed my mother's artwork with the copyright office, but have never bothered to do this with bear photos.  It would not be easy to, in this instance, say 'hey eBay, check the files at the copyright office'.  So this is good for some things, but not best in this case.

The other way to help prove that you are the owner would be to put a digital watermark on all of your images.  If you look through the toolbar of your nice graphics program (PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, and such) you will find an option for doing this.  However, you do need to pay for the service that registers and maintains the watermark info.  I have used Digimarc before, their site is http://www.digimarc.com  Prices have gone up recently, I see their lowest subscription level currently is protection of up to 1000 images for about $80 a year. I guess it depends on how important this is to you, as to whether you would want to shell out that kind of money on your pictures.  A digital watermark, by the way, embeds copyright information into the actual data that forms the image (it attaches it to pixels in the image that are invisible to the naked eye, or some such jargon).  You will not see a difference to the look of the image once you have watermarked it.  However, with watermark reading software (as is contained in programs like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro), the watermark data can be read.  Watermarking takes your copyright information (this could be something like 'copyright 2005 Kelly Zimmerman DO NOT COPY' and stores  it repeatedly and invisibly in the image.  It is almost impossible to remove once the image has been watermarked.  (I say almost because it is possible.  If you were then to, for example, take the image and resize or generally manipulate it multiple times as a lossy jpeg AFTER watermarking it, the data would become so corrupted the watermark would be damaged and may not be readable by the proper software afterwards.  The good news about this is that to damage the watermark that badly, the image itself would be damaged and, theoretically, noone would want to steal such a shoddy image any more.)  If you do use a watermark, use it as the LAST step in your image optimization process, once you are completely done resizing and such, as I mentioned it can be damaged if you keep manipulating the image after the watermark is installed.  Watermark it and save it.  Two watermarks cannot be stored on the same image.  So if you watermark your image with your data, it is a very good way to prove it IS yours.

Now then, if I wanted a totally free way to mark my images, I might just put plain old text of my own across the actual image.  I hope it doesn't come to that, I hate images that have text all over them!

Anyway, good luck!
Kelly

My philosophy with getting my picture taken is usually "catch me if you can".  Needless to say, there are a lot of photos of me as a child darting around a corner, with just one foot visible and hair flying  :D

Cheers,
Kelly

Hi Ginnie!  The fabric was a black velvet (intended for mini bears, it has a nice strong grid backing).  I got it from the supplies dealer Spare Bear Parts, I forget exactly how much the yard I bought was but it was less than $20 and very nice quality.  The hooves are ultrasuede and the mane and tail are mohair.  The armature gave me fits, I must say it looked like a T-Rex before the horse went on it!  Guess it's nice to know I could come up with a dinosaur if I ever needed to.  Just can't think of a reason why I'd need to do a dinosaur  :)

And thank you for the kind words, by the way!  Horses are a nice different thing for me to work on, I rode for years as a kid and must admit I've missed it ever since I stopped.  Maybe some day...

Cheers,
Kelly

Hey, I looked up the brand of the epoxy that I use in case anyone is interested.  I bought it on the glue aisle at a local hardware store.  It is Loctite brand, I use the general purpose stuff in a red and white tube, and it says it is good for wood, metal, ceramic, glass, plastic and tile.  There are also variants that are specifically for one type of material (just metal, etc., they also have one that is good under water!).  Very nice stuff, highly recommend it.  I also use just a little of this epoxy on armature used in bear legs / arms, to make sure that the ring terminal at the end of the armature wire never, ever comes loose I just dab a bit where the two meet.

Cheers,
Kelly

P.S. Thank you for the kind words about the horse, you nice people give such a boost to my self-confidence

Shantell, your bears are lovely!  But if anything you do for the fun of it ever becomes a chore, it may be time for a change of scenery.  If you like a challenge, go out on a limb and try something completely different with your bears.   If you don't normally work on other animals, try one!  Or work on a roly poly bear with a round base.  Do something just for the sake of trying a new technique you've been wanting to try.  If you want to skip the bear for a little while, that's OK, too.  The fall colors are lovely right now, perhaps an inspirational hike outdoors might be good to get the creative juices flowing.  I'm sure you can find something appropriate  :thumbsup:

Best wishes,
Kelly

Not too new, Dilu, I am behind on photographing the newest critters!  I have at least half a dozen sitting here and staring at me, and several who would volunteer to be a more recent avatar.  I'm starting to feel bad for them, I may just have to photograph everybody this afternoon  :)

Cheers,
Kelly

A really good 2-part epoxy will stick just about anything to just about anything, just look on the package to see if it will specifically stick to plastic / wood / glass / metal / whatever you are planning to stick it to. (By 2-part, I mean it comes in separated tubes, you squeeze out a little from both and then mix the two.)  I usually squeeze out the stuff onto a disposable plate, then mix the goo and apply it with a plastic knife.  When everything is done and set, I just throw out the plate and knife.  Let the item you just epoxyed sit overnight or for 24 hours, just to make sure it's really set.    Epoxy takes some getting used to, but I have found it to be more effective than anything else.

Just for some fun, here is a commissioned piece I just did using a fixed metal armature with epoxy in appropriate places for added stability.  There are also six very strong magnets invisible in this photo, three are epoxyed to the base of the armature at the horse's hooves and tail, and a matching three are epoxyed to the wood base.  The horse snaps on and off his base to make it easier to ship and move him, but once he is snapped on he is strong and secure enough to carry the weight of an appropriate rider. 

Have fun and good luck!
Kelly

Not sure what you had in mind for your bauble, but would magnets work?  You can get really, really tiny magnets (I think Sassy Bears carries super strong mini ones).  One could go in the belly of the bear if he is lying down.  The other could either be tucked inside of what he is laying on, or glued / epoxyed to its surface.  When the bear is lying on the magnet, it should not be very visible, if at all.  I have been on a magnets kick lately, can you tell?

Hope this helps!
Kelly

I went thread-shopping a few months ago and got some 'extra fine' sewing thread.  Coats & Clark brand, I think.  My trick for using it is to double the thread.  When I had previously tried a single fine thread in another brand, it drove me crazy.  I couldn't see where the stitches were, and the thread kept snapping on me.  Double fine thread works like a charm.  I have used this very successfully on small bears bordering on true minis and also some very tempermentally backed fabrics, those with loose backings and/or that fray easily.  I use a smaller needle than I normally would, but not a really small one. 

Cheers,
Kelly

No photos of me on my site, I'd hate to scare off the collectors    Nah, I'm just with Danni and Deb on this one, I am too camera shy.  That's why I'm always the photographer... if you take the photos, you don't have to be in them!  I was working on an almost perfect 10-year record of avoiding being photographed when Mindy Kinsey caught up with me at TBAI this year.  Oh, how I suffer for my art. 

Kelly

Do I make a living with bear making.  <snicker>  <chuckle>  BWAH HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA! <wipes tears from eyes>  Now, what was the question?

:rolleyes:
Kelly

Hang in there, Rita!  My mother is working to complete her divorce at age 58 (36 year marriage), don't even begin to worry about your age being a factor in how well you can move on.  In fact, I can honestly say that that my mother wouldn't have gotten involved in the bear industry if not for her divorce.  And if she hadn't gotten involved, I certainly wouldn't have.  So that's two good things that have already come out of that.  Now if New York would just process her paperwork and finalize everything, she'd be in excellent shape about the whole thing.  (Hello, NY, 3 1/2 years worth of paperwork for a mediated divorce is a bit much.) 

Best wishes and best of luck that everything goes smoothly and as well for you as possible!  I know everyone here is pulling for you.

Kelly

Couple of thoughts from an eBay veteran.  Before I say anything else, let me just state that I don't agree with their policies when it comes to things like this, but I think I know what the problem is.

Keyword spamming is a big problem with brand name items.  I know people complain about it a lot in clothing auctions.  Someone might have a cheap imitation handbag made to look like a brand-name handbag, we'll say Prada in this example.  If they list it as 'Prada style handbag' in the title, this is keyword spamming.  It means that every person searching for a Prada handbag (who wants an ACTUAL Prada handbag) is also going to come up with every fake Prada auction who used wording such as 'Prada style handbag'.  It's just the way the search works on eBay.  According to eBay, you are using the word Prada to sell at item that even you acknowledge is NOT Prada.  I presume what is happening in this case is that 'old style mohair artist bear' is that eBay perceives that someone searching for an 'old bear', 'old mohair bear' and so forth would get your listing in their search, for a bear that is not actually old.  Thus the keyword spamming slap.  (And no I don't agree with it, it's petty and I think it's ridiculous of them to do this.)  And yes, eBay is also awful at being consistent about enforcement of their rules... some people seem to always get away with things, others get slapped hard for minor stuff.

On another note... I am not aware that eBay does ANY searching of auctions on their own for auction violations.  My understanding is that you must be reported by another eBay user.  If numerous bear artists have been having problems with being reported lately, I can only presume that there is someone (or multiple people) that browse the bear auctions currently and have nothing better to do than report people for minor infractions.  Very sad.  On the plus side (if you can call it that), if multiple bear artists have had auctions pulled for this kind of thing lately, then NONE of you should take it personally. 

Gina, fee circumvention is another 'biggie' that they like to slap people for, and it could a lot of things.  Without seeing the auction in question, I can only say that they'll get people  for things like what is perceived as 'too high' a shipping quote, a high handling charge, offering a choice auction (such as, the winner can choose whether they want this item in pink or blue), saying that you have other items that the auction winner can choose from for additional discounted purchases after the auction is over... the list goes on and on.

It would be nice if eBay had some stiff competition in the online auction world, maybe it would force them to offer better customer service  :rolleyes:

Best wishes to all,
Kelly

Real fur shouldn't really smell like anything in particular.  For what its worth, we did find a way to successfully eliminate the odor completely from one VERY stinky (moth balls, in this case) vintage fox fur coat.  This coat really stunk, it could have caused your to pass out completely from 50 feet away the smell was so bad.  It was such a gorgeous coat for such a good price, however, we decided to try to remove the odor.  First we took it to a professional fur cleaner.  This cost quite a bit and didn't do a thing for the odor.  Lesson learned.  The furrier told us 'you'll never get rid of that odor, throw it away!'  Always up for a challenge, we took it home and tried our own method, which worked perfectly. Here it is:

Step #1 is to remove the lining completely and discard it.  You will find that perhaps 90% of the odor is stuck in the lining.  Step #2 is to hang your coat somewhere with very good ventilation, take care so that it is not in direct sunlight or anything like that.  Just somewhere it can hang open and undisturbed for a long time.  Step #3 is to hang some pleasant-smelling things with the coat as it airs out.  We used mostly scented Bounce fabric softener sheets, just tucked them up the sleeves, in the pockets, anywhere we could.  When the odor wore off the Bounce sheets, we went out and bought sachets of real dried lavender, and hung those in paper bags along with the coat.  After several months (can't remember how long, may have been 3-6 months) the coat had absolutely no odor at all.  We've still got scraps of that coat left to use on another bear, and it still smells like nothing at all even though it now hangs in storage as opposed to hanging out in the open.

Hope this helps somebody!
Kelly