Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Hi Catherine!  You can do the joints with whatever you prefer, cotterpins or bolts.  For smaller bears like this one at 8 1/2", he's jointed entirely with T-pin cotterpins:

The big bear in my avatar is 20" and is jointed entirely with bolts.  Either way, I insert the cotterpins or bolts from inside the neck wedge with their ends sticking out (this is why it's important to use T-pins if the bear is small, so the ends of regular cotterpins don't rub against each other and interfere).  With the pins inserted that way, sticking out both sides of the wedge, you'll be turning the end of one cotterpin inside the head and the other inside the body.  Hope that makes sense!

Regarding the fabric circles on the sides of the wedge, you will definitely want to mark (or initially poke a hole through with your awl) where the centers are.  Easiest way to do this is to use the size hardboard disc you'll be using, size your fabric circle to this and poke a hole through the center with the awl while you're at it.

As far as finishing the head goes, I joint everything together first with everything unstuffed.  The head goes on the neck wedge, the neck wedge goes on the body, and all the limbs go on the body.  Once it's all in one piece, I start stuffing things in any particular order.  As soon as the head's stuffed, the eyes and everything go on, but sometimes that's pretty late in the game.

Hope this helps and best of luck with your new bear!
Kelly

Good idea for a thread, Shelli!  Someone asked the other day about fake fur suppliers, here are the two I gave out (other than Edinburgh):

FAKE / FAUX FUR SUPPLIERS
Fabulous-Furs: http://www.fabulousfurs.com/search.asp?t=c&c=9

PreFurs (carries Tissavel brand): http://www.prefurs.com/10Browse.asp?cat … y+Tissavel

Hey Louise, excellent job!  Very well organized, too, I really like how you did that.  If you get a chance on your next update, on your link to us it should be Kelly with a 'y', but not really important... nobody ever agrees on how to spell my name anyway   I am spelled equal parts Kelly, Kelli, Kelley and sometimes, for some reason, Karen.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm spelling it wrong.  LOL!  I think from now on I will stick with a name that everybody agrees on.

Best wishes,
"Bob" aka Kelly

Hi MJ, I just added your banner to my links page, too!  I don't have a banner yet, but if you wanted to text link back to us, we are at

http://www.cannabearpaint.com/

Cheers,
Kelly

Thanks to everybody for your kind words about my avatar bear, Kirby!  I wanted a big baby grizzly bear cub and I'm very excited about how he turned out.  I wound up trying a bunch of new techniques in the process and he took me a whopping 3 weeks to complete.  Inset pawpads, glass claws, the list goes on, and at 20" long he was completely handsewn so I could tweak as I went.  I am hoping somebody falls in love with him at Binghamton in a few weeks, but if not do I get to keep him?    I do love his fur and found it VERY nice to work with, it is Edinburgh's 1 1/8" honey-tipped synthetic with guardhairs, #S918-5389.  (Intercal, don't feel bad, we just placed an order with you for some of your lovely alpaca!)

Now why did I start this thread, again?  Oh right... links.    Did I miss anybody's links?

Cheers,
Kelly

I had mentioned on the All Bear Networking thread that I was in the process of adding an (overdue) links page to my web site.  I think I caught up with the people that had posted on that thread.  Did I miss anybody that wants to swap links?

http://www.cannabearpaint.com/links.html

Thanks!
Kelly

Hi Louise,

Let's see if I can get this trick to work   For a text link (in this case to your site), the code would be:

<a href="http://www.bearsbybeesley.com/">Bears by Beesley</a>

after a href= you put the full web site address in between quotes.  Where it says Bears by Beesley you would put whatever text you want to show, here it is the name of the site.

To use a banner (or any image, I don't have my own banner to use as an example so I grabbed one of the thumbnails off my own site) as the link, the code looks like this:

<a href="http://www.cannabearpaint.com/"><img src="http://www.cannabearpaint.com/bears/sleepyhollow_tn.jpg" width="100" height="100" border="0" alt=""></a>

As before, the full web site address goes after a href= and in between the quotes.  The difference here is that instead of text (such as "bears by beesley" in the above example) we are linking to an image.  The best way to do this is to right click on the image and save it to your own computer.  You then need to upload it to your web space (wherever you have your own site data) so that everybody can see it, just like with any image you include on your site.  After img src= in the code you will include the full link to the image's location.  Specifying the exact width and height of the actual image is always helpful to make your page load a little faster.  Here I am also setting the border around the image to 0 so there isn't an additional big black line around it.  The alt= tag would be where you can put some descriptive text which would appear when the mouse is over the image, here I am leaving it blank.

Hope this helps!  (And I hope my examples work the way I want them to!)
Kelly

I seem to do an awful lot of double jointed necks, so here's my $0.02.   Yes, the 'neck' portion of your head piece will need to be shorter if you are adding a double-jointed neck.  If you think about it, your regular head pattern piece (for a non-double jointed bear) already has a neck.  If you take it as is and add the wedge for a double-jointed neck... you will wind up with a bear who closely resembles a giraffe as he will have the length of two necks.  Remove the neck from your head piece, your neck is the wedge. 

BTW, SueAnn is correct above avoiding gathering, you would get more of a rounded snowman effect at your joints.  Use the circles instead.  That is not JUST for the neck wedge though.  For the smoothest join, the top of your body and the bottom of your head also need circles that are the exact size of the circle in the side of the wedge you are attaching it to.  So the bottom of the head needs to have an exact size match to the top of the wedge.  The body needs to have an exact match to the bottom of the wedge.  Measure, measure, measure.  What fun!  Only other thing I can think to add is that the circles do not need to be mohair (hey, mohair is expensive and you have to worry about cutting it back and so on and so forth).  I use ultrasuede, it is tough enough to do the job and maintain its shape, while smooth enough to help the joints move freely.  Do not do the mistake I once did of using wool felt for the circles, we're not even going to discuss how much it distorted and pulled apart when the neck piece got stuffed.  Oh, the pain.

Hope this helps!
Kelly

Wow, thanks to everyone for the great input!  Looks like an overwhelming 'no' vote on the candy.  That's OK by me   I was never entirely convinced if candy would encourage people to stop anyway, a lady near me at a show last fall had a dish of candy.  By the second day of the show, she was complaining 'they just grab the candy and keep walking!'

Lisa - I do love the idea for using the guestbook addresses for Christmas cards.  My mother is an artist and makes fantastic cards, I know she could be talked into doing a custom festive teddy line of cards!  And thanks for the input about making sure the business card holder is not distracting, that's a good point.  I'll bring both it and a plain little one to the next show, if the bear one is too much I'll swap out for the plain one.

Sue Ann - I'd love to see your brochure, if you get the chance to post an image of it.  I don't think I ever got to see the entire front of your table at Schaumburg, every time I tried to walk past and take a peek you had too many customers in my line of view   In the future, please try to be less popular so I can snoop more easily.  I did, however, get to admire the backside of one of your amazing roosters for two whole days!  At least we only had a few minor collisions back there, I think it was just great minds thinking alike "I'll get up and go do something... NOW! <bump>"

Daphne - hi right back at you!  That's a great idea to keep your own little notes on people's interests and queries in their guest book comments section.  I had a few people at the last show that I needed to get back to with information, to send something to, etc.  I kept grabbing one of our own business cards, wrote information on the back and put it in the cash box, but keeping all of that in the guestbook sounds like a much better idea.  After all that, at one point after returning from the show, we managed to misplace those business cards for a while anyway... proof of an imperfect system.  Your friend had a great idea of the framed 'bearmaking' collage image, what a great supplement for conversations!  I wonder how well this would work for a 'making a fur bear' collage, with pictures of the original coat and such.  We seem to have a lot of conversations with people at shows about how to make fur bears, I think my mother has even inspired a few women to go home and try it themselves.

Jane - oh, melted chocolate horrors!  I had been thinking about some wrapped hard candies as a possibility, I can see where chocolate would be a *nightmare*.  We always try to have some pure white polar bears at shows, I can just see someone leaving handprints all over one!  AUGH!  I think you folks have officially talked me out of the candy idea.  Love the thought of hand-painted tees, I bet they are popular!  If there's one thing I've noticed at bear shows, it's that almost ALL of the collectors are wearing bears in some way.  Bear shirts, bear purses, bear necklaces, and so on.  Someone suggested that my mother put some of her art on tote bags, that seems like a good idea in this vein as well.  You also mentioned smaller inexpensive bears, this is a great suggestion.  We've been wondering about even coming up with an unjointed bear pattern that could be made very quickly and easily to be an inexpensive purchase option for people.  I've also been mulling over the thought of bear hand puppets, what fun those would be!

Here's another question for everyone - has anyone ever tried selling (or seen someone else offer) art involving bears at bear shows... meaning actual prints and paintings?  I know I mentioned above that my mother is an artist, I think this would be a fantastic way for her to combine the two.  Just wasn't sure if it would be well received.   We could also look into putting her bear art onto mousepads, note cards, mugs, t-shirts, or some of the other great suggestions made above.  Hmmmm.  So much to think about!  I love all your ideas, thanks to everyone for their $0.02!

Hugs,
Kelly

Definitely very unique look, and that can be a good thing!  I will join the crowd voting 'yes'.

Cheers,
Kelly

Wow, what a bear!  That one would sure stand out in a crowd, I can see why he was chosen for a cover :)

Good job!
Kelly

Wow, big congratulations, Kirsten!  Best wishes for smooth sailing from here on out!  As someone with a St. Paddy's birthday myself, just tell little Kirsten Jr. to get used to green birthday cards :D

Cheers,
Kelly

I just remembered something I'd been wanting to ask about... OK, so sometimes it takes me a while   I am still fairly new to the show scene, and have a couple more shows lined up in the fall.  Beyond the basic 'how am I going to display my bears' question, I would love more input on what sort of 'extras' people have on their sales tables.  The sad thing is, every time I go to a show I'm so wrapped up in admiring the bears and meeting the people, I forget to look at the little details like that.  For example, I do have business cards on the table, I figure this is a must.  And now I've even found a gorgeous little grizzly bear holder for my business cards at the next show.  To our last show, I also took a 5x7 photo album with pictures of our bears in it.  This was really useful to have around, as we could use it point out examples of certain features, fur types, etc.  But it got me to thinking... what other good extras do people have on their sales table?

SueAnn mentioned in another post that she has brochures of her bears available.  SueAnn, if you don't mind me asking a few questions... what information do you include on your brochures?  Is it just a photo collage, or photos and prices, or lots of information included?  Does the brochure only cover bears that you have available at that show?

I have heard that other people also have some sort of sign-in or registry book.  For anyone familiar with these, do you encourage just anyone to sign in?  Or just people that buy your bears?  Is this linked to a print mailing list of some sort?  What sort of information are you gathering, anyway?  Just names and addresses, or do you give people an email option or space to write comments, or what????  I've never actually looked at anyone's sign-in book, it's just something I've heard about.

As long as we're playing 20 Questions... what are peoples opinions regarding offering a dish of candy?  For or against?  Sorry for all the questions, but I figure I can't be the only person who will benefit from the answers
Kelly

When my mother started up her bear business, we thought long and hard about a name.  We came up with some wonderful, clever bear-themed names.  Then I researched them... and found that every single one was already taken.  This is what happens when you come into the industry 20 years late   Eventually, I just started crunching words together from her various interests and background to find something unique.  I think the final vote came down to Piccadilly Paws (she's English) and Canna Bear Paint (she gardens - canna lilies are a flower, she also paints traditionally).  We figured nobody in the US would figure out how to spell Piccadilly (I'm not even sure if I'm spelling it correctly), so... Canna Bear Paint it was.  And yes, eventually she has plans to answer the question of 'Can a bear paint?' with a bear working on a real painting to go together as a vignette.  Some day!  Anyway, right now I am working with her under the same business name.  If I ever decide to branch off in the future, I'll have absolutely NO idea what to do about a name.  We'll just have to wait and see.

Cheers,
Kelly

Pretty bear, Marie!  He does have that special 'pick me up, please' quality   Good job!

Kelly

Hi Catherine, I can't help you with any suppliers in Europe, but here are the three suppliers I've ordered synthetics from online.  The two 'garment fur suppliers' will have fabrics with a more stretchy back, but I don't think they are too stretchy to make bears out of.  I have sample swatches from both places and the fur is really lovely.  PreFurs carries the Tissavel brand, which I think is a French brand?

Fabulous-Furs: http://www.fabulousfurs.com/search.asp?t=c&c=9

PreFurs: http://www.prefurs.com/10Browse.asp?cat … y+Tissavel

That having been said, I can't answer this question without mentioning that I order most of my synthetics from Edinburgh.  They have a fantastic selection these days and the furs are all really gorgeous.  I've been on a kick of more realistic bears and bunnies, and I can always find suitable faux fur for any project at one of the places mentioned above.

Hope this helps!
Kelly

Here's a bit more info on the way my mom embroiders noses on fur bears, hope it helps people!

Step 1. Use a regular needle, NOT a leather needle.  Unless you would like to watch your perfectly completed nose fall off your bear's face and leave a big jagged hole where it once was    And yes, that's exactly what happened the first time she tried to sew a nose on a fur bear.  Live and learn!

Step 2. Make sure you have properly lined your fur pieces with muslin, so that they are completely adhered to each other.  This way, when you are sewing the nose you are not just piercing leather, but also a strong muslin backing.  I imagine this helps with stability quite a bit.

Step 3.  She cuts a template the exact size and shape she wants the nose to be out of either leather or ultrasuede, then uses leather glue to attach this to the muzzle.  Let it dry completely.

Step 4.  Sew the nose as you normally would.  She does advise that you don't 'push it too much'.  You probably shouldn't aim for a 4" nose with intricate curling details and 100 layers.

Anyway, hope this helps.  This technique works very well for her, her fur bears' noses are rock solid in construction.  This reminds me, I need to keep working on my own nose-sewing skills, LOL.

Happy stitching,
Kelly

I also got this... and know nothing about them.  Anyone got the dirt on Hugglets???

Kelly

Unfortunately, Microsoft and its products can be lousy quality at times.  I heard they had come out with anti-spyware software, and I have been avoiding it like the plague.  I also have issues with Norton products, but then I am picky   However, I know a lot of people who are happy with either Norton or McAfee packages, so they're certainly solid choices.  I am currently running the McAfee package with their firewall, and using two of the best free anti-spyware products out there.  My favorite is Ad-Aware, which can be found here (I use this regularly):

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/

Occasionally I will run Spybot just to make sure Ad-Aware hasn't missed anything (hasn't happened yet, but I do understand that sometimes one program will find something the other has missed). Spybot can be found here:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

As with all anti-spyware programs, however, keep in mind that they may sometimes remove files that you actually use.  If you are the type of person who downloads a lot of 'free' stuff on the internet, tool bars, media players and such, you may find that anti-spyware programs will delete components of these programs so that they won't run properly again.  (Because... well... a lot of free programs aren't free... they do contain spyware so that they can spy on you and generate revenue for the person who 'gave it away' in the first place.)  Ah, well.

Hope you get everything back in working order soon, Nanc!

Cheers,
Kelly

Eileen, I'll check with her and make sure I'm not missing something, but I think she just swears by the regular needle.  But I will make sure :D

Cheers,
Kelly

My mother does far more with real fur bears than I do, however, I do know her secret for embroidering noses on them.  It's a pretty simple solution, really.  Just don't use a leather needle.  The blade tip of a leather needle going in and out (and in and out and in and out) of the same general location will eventually slice off part of your muzzle.  Use a regular needle.  Here's a few fur bears with embroidered noses:

Give it a try!
Cheers,
Kelly

Oooo, I vote for the 2" long golden tan!  I would definitely buy this if it were available from Intercal. It can be hard to find long mohair without resorting to the ultra-expensive 3" Schulte.  I love the golden tan, but shades of gold, brown, black and white would all be good.  I think this fur would be lovely on not just teddies but also cats and dogs.

<Drool>
Kelly

Our bears range in size from about 6-22" usually, and I find that they all have their place with collectors.  Small bears can be very appealing to people who have too many bears and not enough space to expand their collections.  The smaller bears are also appealing to people with limited budgets, as a 6" bear will almost always be less expensive than a 16" or 26" bear by the same artist.  That having been said, some of our most enthusiastic sales have been for BIG bears.   I don't really think you can go wrong with any size, stick with what you like and what does well for the venues you sell in.  If you're not sure what will do best for you personally, all you can do is try a variety of sizes out and see how it goes!

Hope this helps!
Kelly

I need to add a list of links to my site, something that I realized too late had been left out of the original design!  I will be adding one shortly, however, and will include anyone on this thread   Haven't gotten around to designing a banner either, so here's the text for anyone that wants to add us in turn:

http://www.cannabearpaint.com

Cheers,
Kelly

We've not encountered any problems with activists when listing fur teddies, though have only been doing fur bears for about a year, so maybe someone with a longer history has had other experiences.  I even make sure to list 'fur bear' or specifically the variety like 'mink' in the title as these are search terms to help people find your auctions.  I think if the activists wanted to find and tamper with fur bear auctions, it would be very easy for them to do so.  I'm hoping the fact that they don't seem to be around means they're just not interested.

I did have one lady at a show look disgusted when she asked about a bear and we responded that it was from a vintage minkpaws coat.  I think it was the 'paws' part that did it.  I will never again mention specific body parts in reference to the original animal...

Hope this helps,
Kelly