Nevada City trinkets

I'm frantically getting ready for my mid-April bear show and it occurs to me that I might not have enough bears to fill my table space. I usually take about eight and since they're big that suits my table fine! But this time I'm behind schedule with them AND working on Boyds stuff (very enthusiastically, I might add) so I want to be sure to have something interesting and bear-related for my table in case I come up short with the teddy bear thing.

I'm enamored of paper arts and mixed media and recently saw some "captured fairies" in a Somerset Studio magazine so I thought, "Why not 'captured teddies?'"

Here's what I came up with on that theme, tries #1 and #2, with more to follow. They'll be part of my table display in Nevada City this April.

NEWS! Announcing my partnership with Boyds Bears!

I've been sitting on some really, really exciting news for many months now, and I've been so arm-chewingly excited to share it, but it's not been the right time to make official announcements... until now. Having been given the go-ahead at this point, let me giddily share my exciting news!

I've formed a partnership with Boyds Bears, a teddy bear manufacturer here in the US and based in Pennsylvania. So in addition to my self-representing artist bear business, Potbelly Bears, which will continue unchanged, I'm also now going to be designing a small line of plush for Boyds, which I'm sooooo incredibly excited to put on my resume because they make THE cutest bears and have such a warm, friendly, recognizable brand. I have not joined the Boyds design team as one of their designers; rather, as a freelance artist, I'm working on a small collection patterned after my original designs. If I can come up with some ideas that are appealing and workable for both mass production and for their market (no small task!), Boyds will be looking to produce my bears in big numbers and at great prices, to what we all hope will be a really welcoming and receptive collecting audience.

My line will not be marketed as Potbelly Bears or as "artist bears." Rather, my small contributions to the Boyds family of bears will simply mingle among the product lines that Boyds has already established, and put in place. This avoidance of the "artist bear" label for my Boyds work was actually very important to me in my negotiations with them. That's because, as a maker of high-end artist bears myself who hopes to continue producing high-end, kinda-pricey artist bears over the long term, I never want to do anything that might undercut myself, or my fellow bear artists -- especially surrounding our one-of-a-kind pricing structure, which reflects the skilled labor, attention to detail, and cost of materials for our bears.

I absolutely hope and believe that my Boyds line will be darling and affordable and have my uniquely Potbelly "look," but what they won't ever be is handmade, by one person, with meticulous attention to every last detail, because, by definition, being mass-produced, they're simply not created in that way. Boyds really got it so right in their thinking on this, I think, and I'm just delighted that we're of the same mind in this area... and that with this partnership there's the possibility of reaching a wider audience with my work, and of hopefully drawing some new collectors to our hobby, and for Boyds!, all while protecting the "artist bear" designation (and pricepoint) by reserving it for soft sculpture pieces that truly are one-of-a-kind, artist-created, hand crafted works of art.

It's a long, long process to go from design concept to product at retail, but at some point the idea is that all the stars align just right and my bears will be on your local retail shelves with the famous Boyds label attached!

For now, I'm screamingly busy, busy, BUSY with the design process and prototype construction, as well as prepping simultaneously for my once-yearly show in mid-April (the Nevada City Teddy Bear Convention), so please excuse any spotty updates that may follow for the next month or so. I'm still accepting graphic design clients and trying to fit it all in... I'm just sleeping a heckuva lot less!

So, so exciting and fun!

Visit Boyds Bears at www.boydsstuff.com or at www.boydsbearcountry.com.

Recent design work

I've been a busy little bee, whipping up some designs for myself and other bear artists this week. Some of them are approved and finalized and others I just like but am not yet sure they're the "final" version. I really enjoyed these!

I also added a new page to my website which contains flat rate pricing for my design services. I'm offering a tiered discount to my clients which is tied to the number of designs they order at one time. I think my prices are really reasonable... maybe too reasonable... but advertising budgets for self-representing artists are super-tight, which I know from personal experience. So I hope this makes design products more accessible to the bearmaker hoping to improve presentation and develop solid branding without breaking the bank!

Gettysburg, PA and Washington, DC

I've posted a long thread about my trip back east at the Teddy Talk forum. Rather than repost everything here, I'll just point you there for a look. I hope you'll enjoy the experience as viewed and retold thru my eyes.

Back from Iceland...

... also known as the East Coast this last week!

I had a great trip but I'm totally physically exhausted. The jet lag's not too bad and happily, I got a good night's sleep last night. I'm really invigorated and excited about creative stuff and found so much to be inspired by on my travels. You'll see lots of new bears coming out of my studio in the next month because I've now got to really buckle down and get ready for my mid-April show in Nevada City, California. I hope to have at least eight new pieces to take with me when I go.

I'll post photos of my travels when I get a minute!

More later...

In Support of All Things Bear

I love teddy bears. Really, I do. But why?

Well, to start with, they're just so dang cute. Some have the sweetest, most evocative expressions. I aim for that winsome innocence in my own bears; for a certain plaintive quality that absolutely beseeches you to take another look. I appreciate it in the work of others. When a bear has that "awwwwwwww" factor, something just clicks -- that unmistakable gotta have it thing. Maybe that's because there's a very real, soul-feeding reward to be found in embracing the kind of wide-eyed, earnest enthusiasm that the most evocative of bears both express, and inspire.

I love bears, too, because they're something to wrap my arms around and hug. I think if the world spent more time hugging and less time bickering, we'd cure so much of what ails us. What a great feeling of comfort and safety there is to be found in a hug, isn't there? And who couldn't use a little more comfort and safety in their life?

I love bears because they're nostalgic. Even the most contemporary bear owes its very existance to historical beginnings circa the Theodore Roosevelt era, so it's hard to think of bears without reminiscence and fond remembrances of teddy times past, as well as our own.

I love bears because they allow me to reexperience the simple joys of childhood. Life can be so complicated and sharp at times, can't it? It's such sweet relief to reflect, even just for a moment, on how little it actually takes to find true peace and contentment and bliss in this world. It takes a bear -- and sometimes, that's enough.

I love all kinds of bears. I love antique bears; artsy contemporary bears; and new bears styled to LOOK old, equally. I love that there are gifted artists of vision out there in the world whose efforts at bearmaking create a friendlier, happier, more beautiful world, and I support and applaud their honors and achievements with everything I have, even when I feel a little threatened by or jealous of their successes. I hope it's reciprocated.

I also love both one of a kind artist bears (the kind I make) and mass produced bears. They're so much more alike than they are un-alike, in all the ways I mention above. It's my belief (for what it's worth) that it behooves the entire bear loving community, from individual artist to huge corporate machine, and including the heart of the industry -- the bear lover and collector -- to unite in earnest support of all things bear. And wouldn't that kind of universally supportive community spirit be EXACTLY what you'd expect a teddy bear to propose if it could, anyway?

Just one more reason to love teddy bears, that is. They're full of wisdom!

Flying east today...

... and NOT off to a good start! Writing from Sacramento Airport right now. Hubby and me were supposed to have been on a 6:30 flight to Salt Lake. It's 8:21 so obviously that didn't happen.

First problem:
Apparently the TSA randomly tags passengers for "extra security inspection" as boarding passes are electronically issued at the kiosks. Mine was one of the tagged boarding passes. Typical.

But the people at the security checkpoint missed the tag entirely and cleared me. I passed thru both the metal detectors and the x-ray machines with no problem, so the security folks sent me thru the security checkpoint to the gate.

When I handed my pass to the agent at the gate, however, it was declined. Thence followed a series of concerned phone calls from the gate desk to the security folk.

Long story short, within a short while two separate security people arrived at the gate to "handle" me. Said "handling" included a full body frisk and handheld metal detector pass, and a thorough inspection of my carryon luggage (and I do mean thorough.) As this happened it became apparent that the process of "handling" me was holding up the plane; we were literally the last to board! Kinda... embarrassing.

Second problem:
After I was publicly frisked at the gate (laughing here; I actually handled it with a smile) we boarded the plane and sat for a few minutes before the captian announced a "right engine" test. That lasted five or ten minutes at full-bore, deafening blast. Then the captain came BACK on the PA to announce that there was an oil leak and it was being "investigated by mechanical personnel." Five or ten minutes after that we were told that the situation required further investigation and that it would require deplaning and the relocation of our plane to another gate.

So we disembarked, at which time we realized that we were definitely going to miss our Salt Lake connecting flight to Baltimore/Washington International.

The ticket agents were having to rebook almost an entire plane of folks with connecting flights at this point; I really felt for them. We were nearly first in line but we still waited about 30 minutes to get to the desk because it takes so long to rebook connecting flights. We were told that the ONLY option available to us for arrival today was a 12:55 flight (fully EIGHT HOURS after we arrived at the airport; aargh!) with an east coast arrival time around 11:00 p.m -- fully six hours later than we were originally scheduled to land. We'll still have about 1.5 hours of driving after arrival before we get to the hotel. Can you say, "LONNNNNG DAY"...?

I'm already feeling sooooooooooo "less than fresh" since I've been at the airport since 4:00a.m.; you can imagine the frustration I'm sure. That part is more manageable, however, than the feeling that I am stuck inside an airless, overcrowded tin can (the terminal) with a bunch of very fragrant and impatient others. The guy next to me must have just finished an onion sandwich on onion bread which he seems to have washed down with onion juice.

Help!

We received meal vouchers for food during our layover time and the gate personell were perfectly nice and helpful and all, but it sure is a nuisance to have to spend one entire day sitting in an airport. The far worse outcome, of course, would be a quick and explosive death due to the hydraulic fluid leak that was discovered in the right engine. That plane still sits on the tarmac and the people booked to Salt Lake ONLY are still awaiting news about whether they can board or will have to rebook on other flights.

Please keep fingers crossed for the rest of my itinerary! I'm feeling doomed right now. Doomed, I tell you... and reeking of onion perfume.

MySpace

I've joined the MySpace revolution -- gray hair and all -- and have created a page there in the hopes of drawing attention from the younger crowd to this marvelous thing we call artist bears. These younguns are, after all, our future collectors, and there's a huge art presence at MySpace (although some of it is rather edgier than the soft-focus world we bearlovers are accustomed to.)

The good news is, I like edgy just fine and in fact have some rather edgy edges myself (being a suburban tattooed soccer mom creative type; I'm way hipper than you think!), so I'm hoping to meet some folks there, of any age, soft-focused or entirely pointy, who appreciate fine, handcrafted objects d'art, period.

I don't have any FRIENDS at MySpace yet which makes me look sheerly pathetic, but the truth is I don't personally know anyone at My Space (except my stepson) and I don't have the time to figure out how to meet and invite new people at the moment. A project for late February!

If you wanna read my new MySpace page, please visit www.myspace.com/potbellyarts for a peek. Better yet, read it, and then take a minute to sign in and become one of my FRIENDS there so I don't look like such a complete dork amidst all that youthful, energetic coolness!

Yours edgily,
Shel

High fevers & business deals

I have been absolutely laid out with some horrid sickness thing since midday Tuesday. Thought it was a horrendous allergy attack at first because of how it came on but it morphed into a temp of almost 103 and a truly miserable inability to breathe thru my nose; the main symptom of this particular sickness is that it fills me with GOO. I'm grateful for Sudafed, Mucinex, and Advil. Enough said.

My son Toby came down with something last night, too; he was up at midnight with fever and chills so I've kept him home today. We've actually been hit hard this winter with bugs compared to years past; we usually skate thru winter fairly illness-free. Don't know what's changed but I'd be happy if it changed back to the way things were before!

The teddy-bear bummer in this is that I cut out two bears that I wanted to have finished by Sunday for auction and sale, and I'm now thinking I'm not gonna make that deadline. Will try to work thru the misery if I can.

Switching gears... On the "incredibly awesome news" front, I've got a business deal cooking that I am absolutely BURSTING to share about... but my lips must remain sealed for a while longer, still. It's very, VERY exciting and different and wonderful and hopefully will do good things for the teddy bear industry. Sorry to tease but I had to share something! I'll dole out the details just as soon as I've been given the go-ahead to do so ...