Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

tee hee....I know the feeling.

I've added everyone (I think) to my blogroll....if I have missed anyone let me know.

Right I AM off to sew : )

Yep indeedy....I think for me that's the key thing.  I live literally a world away from most of my collectors and at times like now, when I am super busy sewing bears...but not putting them on my website, as they are for shows/bid4bears  it's a great way for me to keep connected with my collectors, and reassure them that I AM still alive and sewing.   Also, it's a way for me to show some of the other creative things happening in my life and a great way to connect with like-minded people in those crafts where I don't have a teddy talk type forum for inspiration.

You won't be finding too much of me and my personal life as such on my blog (i am a repressed middle-class anglo-saxon after all!  ) plus it's just too sad to inflict on anyone  :crackup:

Sooooo.....no bears done, but I've added Shelli, Jennifer, Laura Lynn and Aleta to my blogroll.  Who else lurking out there is blogging???

Heather and Lynn...good questions and I'm not sure that there's any one answer.

Heather, I think the essential difference between blogging and websites is the sense of community - there's an intrinsic look and feel to a blog page that somehow makes it different to a web page.  It's partly to do with the sidebar things like blogrolls, links, widgets etc and maybe also because blog pages are often text heavy which you don't want your bear website to be    I don't know quite how to put it into words...maybe because we're offering up a little bit more of ourselves and our personalities than on a website?  And...yes you could do that coding on a web page, but on a blog, the comments field is on every individual post rather than as a whole thing overarching your site - so the comments are specifically targeted to your days posting.  I think I've made my answer clear a mud...sorry!   :redface:   If anyone has ever watched the Aussie movie The Castle, they'll understand when I say "it's the vibe" 

Lynn...if you want to get a look and feel for how a blog works and how you could make it work for you, you can play around with a free online version on blogging site and keep your blog private until you feel ready to release it into the world!* Try one out at www.wordpress.com  It might be a good start to your online life while you get ready for a website.   To be honest i haven't looked to see if there's a good instruction file but I know that they've published a book in the Visual Quickstart series (good computer books) on Wordpress so I'm trying to get my hands on a copy! 

To make a blog private in wordpress -  you go to the options tab once you've logged in, then find the privacy tab  which is in the dark blue row of options.  Click on that and check the box that says you want your blog to be visible only to users you choose.

Hahaha Heather, that is the 64 thousand dollar question!!  I've been planning one forever, but the ubergeek in me chickens out when I see all those flashy blog out there.  I think it's like that new kid in the playground phenomenon.  However....as of today you can read it over at
http://honeythorpe.wordpress.com/

It's not pretty yet -- that needs to wait until after my show in June and I'm not sure how often I'll be updating in the next few weeks.  There's a pile of unfinished bears lookng besseechingly at me and the deadline for my Ausie show is looming ever closer and I won't even think about bid4bears!

.

You're pretty much bang on the money there Shelli!

As with everything on the web there are a million different names for things. 

Firstly, an rss feed and a blog are not the same thing.  Blogs are just one of the things that can be turned into feeds.  A feed is actually a techy thing and not designed to be read by humans at all.  It's the xtml computer language that sits behind the scenes.  It's similar to a web page - in that the actual page is written in html and we need a web browser like Firefox or IE to interpret that for us as and turn it into pretty pictures and words.  You'll see this if you click on one of the orange rss buttons on a page - you'll get something that looks like this
http://www.moh.govt.nz/rss/mediareleases/rss.xml

You'll see rss aggregators referred to as 'news readers', 'feed readers', 'aggregators ' and so on.  Basically they act as a service to interpret rss for us and present it nicely.  The idea of a news reader is that you can tailor exactly the information you receive from newspapers, stores, websites, blogs, to be precisely what you want.  It's pretty much like the difference between junk mail and mail order catalogs - with a catalogue, you subscribe to the service, and get only what you want.  You don't get spam or any of that stuff in your aggregator - only the content that you choose.

Say you follow a particular sport like NASCAR.  You can go to several different newspapers/news sites etc and ask for stories on just that topic to be delivered to your aggregator.  That way you don't have to visit the NYT, CNN, BBC etc  each day to catch up with the latest news- they deliver it all up on a plate specially for you.

Or there are 10 different bear artists with blogs that you like to read.  Instead of locating each individual site and seeing if they've posted anything recently, your news reader shows you at a glance whether they've been updated, tells you how many posts there are.  So if you don't get a lot of time at the computer, it's a really quick convenient way to see what's new.

There are loads of different aggregators out there and everybody has their favourites.  Some are browser based (eg bloglines, googlereader) and some you can dowload onto your computer.  Personally, I favour the browser based type.  For one, they're not using up hard drive space on my laptop, and secondly, I can check them wherever I am - at work, at home, away on holiday etc

Now there is a whole wealth of information that you can get on rss - it's not just newspaper stories and blogs.  I can get the screening times at my local movie theatre delivered to my news reader, books in my area of interest at amazon (I can even track sale prices on books there).  Bloglines plays podcasts as well, so I get the rss feed of my favourite radio show delivered to my newsreader - I can listen to it when I want not when it's on the radio!  new books at my local library.  At work I can get journal table of contents delivered right there, and even email and newsgroups that I belong to online, freeing up my email box....there is more than I can even get my head around

So...how do I use my feed reader?

Well...I have a few key interests and I'd be all day every day on the computer if I visited all the sites.  I tested out a whole lot of aggregators at work and bloglines (www.bloglines.com) is my favourite.  It's not the prettiest or flashiest but it offers the most functionality for my needs, and if you're like me, and have a whole lot of different areas of interest and not a lot of time on the computer, it's the easiest to customise into folders making it easy to look at a manageable chunk of information each time I'm on the net. 

So, I have a few different folders - one for children's literature, which is mostly just professional blogs and few fun things chucked in, one for card making, one for bear artists (rapidly growing too!), one for recipes, and a few other miscellaneous things like movie times, radio programs.

When I open up bloglines, there are two parts to the window.  On the left is a list of my folders and feeds  and in little brackets it tells me how many new posts each separate site has. If I only have a couple of minutes, I chosse the smallest one and go have a quick read.   Once I click on the feed I want to look at, the posts from that blog open in the main larger winder of the reader.  Say I haven't looked at Shelli's blog for a couple of weeks, then, I can see that she's posted 6 new items since I last looked.  You can determine how they appear in your reader.  You can select to just have the headline of the entry (fastest loading) or you can have the entry and all the text.  Because it's in the reader, you don't get all the pretty bells and whistles of the blog as it appears on Shelli's site (- though photos and videos do come across) and if it's a super long post then you won't see it all.  But, should you wish to link out to Shelli's blog to read it, you just click on the headline and it'll take you there.  If there's something that really catches my eye, then I tick a little box called "keep it new" which is in the bottom corner of each post, and every time I open up Shelli's entry in bloglines, it'll stay there until I remove it. 

Adding something to my bloglines account is easy as pie.  You can either download a bookmarklet to your toolbar or create a "sub with bloglines" button in your favourites/bookmarks.  When you come to a page or blog with an rss feed that you want to add, simple go to your favourites, hit the sub with bloglines button and then choose the folder you want it to go in et voila! you are subscribed.

My only warning, once you find one blog, you find another and another and another and so then you're addicted!!

Back to blogs rather than rss feeds, but the thing I love most about blogs is that they connect me with so much that I'd otherwise never discover or spend hours hunting for.  I've just in the last couple of days been reading a few card making blogs and I've discovered all these small rubber stamp makers, and little tiny shops who I'd never find in a million years.  Only downside is, I'm so intimidated by all these amazing creative bloggers that I'm even more chickened out to make my little private blog public!!

Dilu, a blog shouldn't mean any more viruses - usually it's hosted on a remote server.  It's no more vulnerable than anything in this day and age.

And feeds should actually be faster.  For example in bloglines, which is the "news reader" that I use, you receive all your feeds into one place, and they load without all the fancy doodads that may be on the blog, so they load quickly even on dial-up.  Maybe you're thinking of "live feeds" as in the traditional newscasting style?  A feed in techy language is basically the computer language (xtml in the case of rss) that does the background work to present the information to us.  You need a feed reader (also called a news aggregator or news reader) such as bloglines or google reader to interpret the feed.

It's kind of like the way html and the web works.  A page is written in html code - we need a browser like IE or firefox to interpret that code and present it to us in a way that we recognise (and hopefully looks pretty!)

Heather, you ask a really good question, and forgive me if I go on a bit  :redface:

Firstly, in the last few years there's been a bit of a cultural shift in what's happening on the internet.  Shelli hit it on the head when she said

Traditionally websites have stood alone.  Each website contains set information and the website owner dictates what content appears on the site.  In order to find out what's new, you need to visit the site and see if it has been updated.  As a user, your 'interaction' with the site is largely limited to viewing or reading content.  If it's a commercial site, you can of course purchase from it and if you need to contact the site owner or wish to make a comment, then you need to find the email address and email them.

You might have heard of a phrase called "web2.0".  Now there are many arguments and definitions as to what it exactly means and just what is and isn't a web2.0 site but essentially it involves a shift towards websites where 'end-users' can share, manipulate, interact with and even control content.  It's not just blogs, there are all sorts of social networking sites like wikipedia, flickr, youtube, librarything that make use of these technologies.

So that's kind of a very brief overview of the techy stuff..what's the advantages over a website.

The thing I love about blogs is the sense of community.  We are very lucky to have teddy talk but lots of other areas I'm involved in don't have such facilities.  So the blogs that I follow in kidlit for example are the best way I can keep up with what's happening, new reviews of books, links to good websites and to have conversations with people that I will never in a million years get to converse with otherwise. 

Blogs are instantaneous.  I am lucky in that I have a really basic website that I can update in a few minutes, but a lot of people don't - with a blog you can literally spend 2 minutes making an entry.  For example you can  post your work in progress.  It's much easier for me to comment on someone's blog, than it is to visit their site and then maybe send them an email if I can be bothered. 

Blogs are a great way of sharing information that wouldn't neccessarily be put on your website.  I do other crafts that aren't related to my bearmaking and wouldn't make it onto my website.  With  a blog, I can share those without taking attention away from the bears on my site.  That great ribbon store you found?  Stick it on your blog and talk about your new purchase and your intention for it  It involves your collectors and readers much more in your creative process.  Discover a new technique?  do a quick tutorial on your blog, you'll get heaps more ideas out of the comments field.

To be honest, there are a whole raft of bear artists and other websites that I no longer visit because I have simply forgotten about them, or can't be bothered to search them out...and get frustrated that when I visit them there's no update.   A blog is a bit more in your face but it is far less agressive than a bunch of emails from a store or artist. If you subscribe to it via an rss aggregator, all the posts will stay there until you are ready to read them.  If people can read your blog posts, then they'll know what you're up to and that you haven't dropped off the face of the earth.  It creates a much more personal experience between you and your collector.

Sorry my head is a bit fuzzy and I haven't explained as well as I should,  I will try and collect my thoughts more!

Good info Shelli!

When I'm teaching people about rss at work, I tell them that it's the information I need to know, when I'm ready to hear it.

Heaven only knows how much time we can waste on the computer simply catching up with news and information.  I like that with a bloglines account,  I can decide that for this little window of time I have on the computer, I'll catch up with what's new in the card making blogs I follow - By having all those blogs directed into my rss feeder, I simply need to open the reader and open the card making folder - and there are the 15 or so blogs that I follow right there for me.  I don't have to sift through my favourites going to each blog.  And, if there's an idea that I really like, I can just check a little box in the reader that says "keep as new" and that post will stay there until I decide to remove it - no sifting back through archives trying to find something.  And, again if something like a week full of sewing keeps me away from the computer, I don't need to worry that the newspaper has removed the page, or that I can't catch up on the blog etc.

I also love this "rss the oprah way" post over at the back in skinny jeans blog
http://cravingideas.blogs.com/backinski … lain_.html

Shelli

Coming at this from the perspective of someone who uses blogs as a professional tool - Blogger infuriates me.  I use a couple of different rss aggregators (eg Bloglines) to pick up stuff for work and time after time, I can't get peoples' Blogger accounts to pick up. If I can't add it to my rss aggregator, it doesn't get read.  I tried adding your blog and it wouldn't pick up. 

I don't have a personal blog (yet) but I have been experimenting with some blogs for our staff.  I used WordPress .  One of the key reasons I like it, is that there is a free, easy to use online version that doesn't require you to have a web host.  So it's great for people who want to try out the blogging thing.  However, if you have the design skills and time, you can download the full version and customise it yourself.

I needlesculpt on mohair but I don't on the sassy fabric.  I use monlycke topstitching thread for putting in my eyes - it's nice and fine but strong too.  I don't like using the upholstery or beading threads for eyes as I find they slip a little when I'm tying off the knots and it's hard for me to maintain tension.  (and they cut my fingers  )

Use the pad of your thumb to push the eye into the head as you tighten off the first tie of the knot - that will help to sink it.

Hi Catherine

I see you're getting truly bitten by the mini bug!      In my smallest minis, I use one of the tiny discs from sassy's with a jewellery head pin rather than a cotter pin.  I get it into place and then cut off a good lenth of the pin with pliers, then roll down the remainding bit.  It's tricky to get them tight enough but it leaves much more space in the body cavity.  I thread joint the limbs on my smallest (2 inches and under ) minis.  I find I can get them nice and tighter than cotter pins - it also brings the top of the limbs snugly into the body thus avoiding that bulgy bulky look you can get with minis. 

If you thread joint, do it from the inside of the arm rather than the outside - that way you avoid the dimples.

If I'm using upholstery velvet or rayon, I use invisible thread and for mohair bears I use the superlon beading thread or this nice fine sinew that I have (it's white not the natural colored stuff)

and yes I ladder stitch too

I don't want to bang on about minis again....but, I like knowing the standing height just out of curiosity's sake     

For example, just this evening I was flicking through some old issues of the Teddy bear and friend's annual mini issue.  I haven't read these issues for a few years, and not since I began making minis again.  I found it so fascinating, I'd look at a bear and marvel at the tiny knitted something assuming the bear was about 2.5" and then I'd read the description and find that the bear was 4" which is a whole different kettle of fish - even knitting challenged me can knit something for a 4" bear!!      I like to marvel at the skill of people who make amazing dressed bears that are super tiny - there's one amazing bear in my mag that is 2.5 inches and is wearing a traditional smocked dress - that dress has got to be all of 2" big and that anyone can smock something that small blows my mind. 

And to be honest, I think lots of people that collect minis DO use size as part of the basis of their collecting, yes appeal is certainly the primary factor, but just look at the prices that some of those mini micro crochet bears get...there's a wonder in the tiniest things that capture peoples' imagination.

A very loud AMEN to that Bobby....I am so over mini artists who measure everything seated and mostly don't state that they do so.   It can only be confusing for buyers. 

there is one seller who really cheeses me off by selling 'micro' minis that measure just under 2" according to her auction title...when you read further down her auction pieces her bears are measured seated and standing they are often about 2.5 inches and bigger which is not micro.  It probably doesn't seem like it to 'big' bear makers but there is a world of difference between a 2.5" bear and a 1.5" bear.  My favourite bear I make is sized  1.75" standing and I don't even call that size micro, though I possibly could. 

Although, I have to say as one who has teensy hands and fingers...my bears often suprise people by being much smaller than they seem in my photos.  I need to find me a person with normal sized hands for photography purposes!

way cute Catherine...I love the soft colors you've used on Pip...and Mother Goose is absolutely too cute 

Hee hee, I'm working on a fairy tale series for my up coming show...great minds and all that!!

the little lambie is way cute Ilze

I love your bears...my friend has 3 and I have spent many an hour gazing at all their intricate details

Deborah

It looks to me as if your fabric is vintage rayon.  It's a dream fabric for making the tiniest of bearies - as it absolutely doesn't fray and is a dream to turn.  I've made one inchers from this fabric. 

For those of you who've nabbed this fabric, you'll find that it'll probably mat down as you use it.  It looks all flat and aged which is great if you want an old looking bear. ..if you want your bear to look brand spanking you can use an eyelash brush/comb to bring it back to fluffiness.  it works better than anything else I've tried (toothbrush, fur-comb etc) and is gentle on the small fabric

A Few Things you may not have known about me.....

jobs I have had in my life:

  1)document supply librarian
  2)nanny
  3)bakery assistent
  4)university research assistant (linguistics)

Four Movies I have watched over and over...

1) Strictly Ballroom
2) The Castle
3) Princess Bride
4) Emma

Four Places I have lived......

1)Rotherham (South Island, New Zealand)
2)Rangiora (South Island, New Zealand)
3)Raumati Beach (North Island, Nz)
4)Palmerston North (North Island, NZ)

Four TV Shows I love to watch.....

1) Gray's Anatomy
2) Midsomer Murders
3)  House
4) well....it would have been Coronation Street but I have finally broken my life-long addiction!

Four Places I have been on vacation....

1) New Caledonia
2) Sydney, Australia
3) Melbourne, Australia (my fave)
4) Auckland,New Zealand

Four of my favorite foods.......

1) wholegrain toast spread with feta and spinich dip and topped with tomato and cracked pepper
2) roasted veggies (kumera, yams, pumpkin) with homemade gravy
3) ginger kisses
4) anything lemony dessert...pie, flan, custard,

Four Places I would rather be right now.......

1) in London with my sister
2) home with my mum
3) seeing the snow in the US
4) anywhere but here listening to the neighbours loud music!

That's a great photo Patsy!  And I have that song in my head now too Carolyn.

Denise, I have both fond and horrible memories of magpies.  When we lived on the farm they were one thing we were petrified of as kids.  Very very territorial - my Mum used to have to go down to the mailbox with a broom to beat them off her, as they would swoop and peck the back of her head...and though we kids roamed pretty much freely all over the farm, we never ever went anywhere near the "magpie paddock" in nesting season.

However, when we moved to town, we had a wonderful 'pet' magpie who would come and visit every day.  We called her Maggie, and she would talk - as in real words.  Not long after we moved, my mum could hear someone calling out "hello" and she couldn't see anyone at the door.  After a while, she noticed Maggie the magpie sitting on our verandah railing.  She would get on Mum's arm and be petted.  We never found out where she came from or who had orignially befriended her. 

Magpies have a great song as well - one of our most 'iconic' New Zealand poems is called "The Magpies" And though my parsing will be wrong, the first verse goes like this...and it really is what their song is like. 

When Tom and Elizabeth took the farm,
the bracken made their bed
and quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
the magpies said

Laura Lynn

You can easily re-edit your listing and change them over to art if you want - just open your store and look at your active listings view and click on the edit button. 

If you utilise all 14 tags, you can have them show up in a number of places - and if you use tags like 'artist' and 'art' they will show up when people search a string that looks something like  'art, bear'

I would say that the majority of people who search etsy don't search the "traditional" way of categories but search by tag

Hi Daphne

I have just started using Etsy (made my first sale today!).  I have had my bears on there but don't see it as a main selling avenue for my bears - but it is one more way for making people aware of artist bears.  I mainly sell my cards and other paper things.  I'm still trying to build up a decent inventory but in that respect it's great.  Anything you list is there for four months - so you can build up to a shop and not worry about having to relist items.

Also - it's so darn cheap that I have decided to abandon ebay all together - as an overseas seller it is so not worth my time and more importantly the money that I spend putting up an auction. - on etsy it's only 20 cents to list an item - and then I think 3.5% of the final value no matter what your selling price is.  I might feel differently if my bears routinely got $$ of dollars on auction, but  If I want to auction, I'll use bid4bears.com

I like the alternative handmade-ness of etsy.  I like that I'm not trawling through piles of commercial crap and I am always discovering new treasures.  There are some very very talented artists there and I intend to do all my present shopping on etsy in the future.  I am all about instant gratification and so the fact that it's not in auction format appeals to me.

I really really love the functionality of searching and the whole 'web 2.0' aspect of it.  Once you get used to tags and searching them (every word must be separated by a comma) it's sooooo much easier to find specific things you're looking for than trawling through somewhere like ebay- if you want a yellow baby card  just enter the search string yellow, baby, cards and that's what you'll get.   I love the different ways you can search and looking at what people heart opens up a whole new world of stuff to buy!  (You can keep your favourite items private if you wish).  It's also fun to use the color thingy and click on a colour and see what is there.

I think it helps to have a decent inventory, especially if you are selling low priced items.  People do sell their patterns etc on there - but check the rules on that as I know it's primarily finished hand-made items.  People complain in the forums about how quickly their stuff disappears off the front page, but I think that's a very retro view of how shopping works in today's digital world.  Buyers are much more savvy searchers than they used to be - and if you utilise the tagging features well then people will find your stuff. 

I'm having fun there - and my sister has been using it too for her art prints and she's been selling pretty well.  I've linked my etsy store below - as I said it's very bare at the moment and I took my bears off for my summer sale on my website so you can't see how I've tagged them.

Well...I think Bobbie pretty much covered it all....

my mother (being a sewing/quilting teacher) was the same as Bobbie's - I can't tell you the number of times I unpicked a shirt cuff once, when I was learning to sew!  I am just the same as you Bobbie, and was totally aghast when I saw some professionals sewing their bears once.  I remember reading about several artists in magazines who estimate their minis take them between 2-4 hours from start to finish.  I am a painfully slow sewer and take at least that long just stitching my bear let alone stuffing and finishing!

But back to your original question Eliza.  I think tension is one of the key things - it's one of those things that you learn as you go.  Your stitches need to be firm but not so tight as they pucker the fabric.

I use invisible thread to sew minis from upholstery velvet.  The one I use is a very high quality slightly textured very fine but strong thread and once you get used to it is much easier to sew with than regular cotton.  However, I completely understand that most people don't like it.

On my mohair minis (as small as 2 inches) I use regular polyester sewing thread - usually metrosene brand.  I use 1 strand if the bear is under about 3.5 inches and a doubled strand if it is over that. 

I use a small backstitch - though technically it's not quite a backstitch as I don't go back into exactly the same hole as I came up at - I usualy go a bit further back...someone told me that was a good way of hiding seams.
I average about 1-2 holes per stitch on the mini velvet and on mohair about 2mm stitch length.  NOT a fast sewing method but it works for me.

I use a fine piecemaker's brand needle (they are my favourite) - I think it's an applique needle, I'll check the packet when I get home - they're longer than a quilting needle, but not too thick.  Using a "crowbar" as my friend likes to call them, will create bigger holes in your fabric and make the stitches easier to see.

and the foreign transaction fee is only .50 - surely waaaaay less hassle than a money order???

I'd be out of business if I sold only in NZ  :crackup:  :crackup:

won't help so much in this particular case as it's the "verified U.S." bit that's the sticking point not the postage outside of the states. 

You can add additional shipping adresses onto your account.  I have added a friend's as my thieving neigbours take my mail     and I now have a US address for those pesky sellers who won't sell outside US...and that person kindly forwards them to me.

Are you verified on paypal?  I am even though I'm not a US seller.  I really don't see what difference it makes if you are Canadian or US verified.