Connor

Good morning!  Thank you to everyone who has bought my teddy bear pattern!  I am hoping I will see some of the results, but it's difficult to keep track of customers sometimes.  Some people like to chat; others I never hear from again(!)  

This little bear is called Connor, and he's from the same pattern that I have up for sale in my Etsy shop - just in a different mohair.  I made him a while ago - when I was timing myself to make 10 bears, to try to work out the costs.  I must have got distracted whilst making him because one of his legs ended up higher than the other.  He has been sitting on my desk all this time looking sorry for himself.  I finally got around to fixing the leg last night, so he is now ready to go!  He is destined for the Brett Gallery at Monks Eleigh, Ipswich.

I have also finished another bear - a little white viscose polar bear called Orville.  I haven't had the chance to take photographs yet, but I did post a phone pic on Instagram the other day if you'd like to see him!  You can follow me on Instagram @bigfeetbears.  If you are an art and crafter yourself on Instagram (or just have particularly fabulous pictures!), let me know and I will follow back.

It's been a really strange time recently.  I am still all about the bears, but I have been thinking about food a lot too lately.  That's hardly unusual - I'm always thinking about food! - but I mean about actually cooking and baking food.  I am considering doing some kind of course on the subject, so I have been trying to read more, and practice more.  I don't know whether to post the pictures on here, or to start a second blog for food-related posts.  On the one hand, I'm aware that my 11 followers might not be interested in cooking and baking.  On the other, it's hard enough sometimes keeping one blog updated - I'm not sure I could manage two!

Lenny

Hello - back again!  I'm sorry for the lack of posts: things have been weirdly up and down here recently.  For a start I have a horrible cough/cold thing, so I'm stumbling around being really clumsy, with the constant sensation of being about to sneeze.  It's difficult to concentrate on anything, which is very annoying.

Things were rather low even before that though.  Back in October, I was on a bit of a high: I discovered Tara Swiger's podcast and was getting enthusiastic about the idea of going back and looking more carefully at the fundamental stuff in my business - stuff like, how much does it cost me to make the bears, and how much profit am I making.  I was thinking about pricing, productivity, how to become a better designer, how to write better Etsy descriptions; it was all rather exciting.

I heard a episode of the brilliant After The Jump podcast with Grace Bonney, about how to deal with negative comments on your blog, and I was thinking about this vis-a-vis craft fairs.  Not that I get negative comments about the bears themselves, but sometimes about prices - or indeed, the very concept of teddy bears for adults.  Of these comments, I could say - with Swiger - the people who say these things are not 'my people'; they are never going to be my customers, so why worry about them?  Why not just move on to the next person?  Of course, it's not as easy as that - you have to find a way of putting the negativity behind you, before you can move on.  In a different discussion, Swiger has spoken of having a 'script' for dealing with certain types of commenters, and this appealed to me.  I was planning a blog post along the lines of what my script might look like for dealing with negative comments at craft fairs - what to say to people who gasped over prices, and asked me what the bears were for, if not for children.

But when I looked at how much it cost to make the bears, prices had to go up a little, and sales slowed (although this could be partly due to the time of year).  And there was a post on Abby Glassenberg's blog, While She Naps, titled 'When The Product Is The Problem'.  The thrust of it is that while you might be able to sell some of your products, there may well simply not be enough of a market for them, to make it a sustainable business.

She writes:

"Some handmade items are incredibly time-consuming to create and have to be priced higher than the market can bear.  And sometimes the handmade item itself is not made in a quality way or with quality materials.  I think there's a market out there for almost everything, but that market might be so small that it can't sustain a business.  Or it might be very difficult to reach."

This is of course, absolutely true - although I do struggle with the implications of the argument.  It would seem to suggest that I should have taken those negative comments at craft fairs seriously, rather than thinking about how to get beyond them and focus on the people that are actually potential customers. However, it was a very useful article and did make one thing crystal clear to me.  It is not possible for me to make a viable business out of making and selling stuffed animals.

It's rather difficult to know where to go from there - I am suddenly standing here empty-handed.  Teddy bear making skills are not particularly transferrable.  I do have other qualifications, but none of the all-important experience.

Anyway, after moping for a while, I applied for a part-time job as a washer-upper in a local restaurant to tide me over.  It was amazingly good fun.  :-)  Possibly a bit too part-time - but its certainly given me something to think about.

Of course, I will continue to make bears and other creatures (I have two big shows booked this year), and I'm still determined to give the patterns a try.  At the moment, I am sitting at home trying to get a new design off the ground.  He's proving rather tricky!  Here is what he looks like at the moment.  Any guesses?  :-)

And I haven't introduced my new bear yet, have I?  The blonde bear is called Lenny, and he is 17 inches from ears to toes, and now available in my Etsy shop!  

Anyway, back now to the job-hunting, and the new design and the almost but-not-quite sneezing!

Rhoda & Jennie

Good morning!  Well, I finished my little set of 10 bears.  It didn't quite all go to plan, but I got there eventually!  They took longer to make than the hedgehogs, although I suppose that shouldn't be surprising.  With the hedgehogs, there's only one thing to stuff, and one opening to sew up.  With the bears, there are six of each - counting the limbs and the head.  And although the hedgehog design has its own complications - like wiring and wrapping the legs - stuffing and sewing up openings always seems to be particularly time-consuming.  Then there are the embroidered noses - they took me 25 minutes for each bear.  Am I becoming time-obsessed?  Good grief, how boring.  :-)

Anyway, the result is that I've had to increase prices slightly for Rhoda and Jennie (above, left to right).  They are still fairly averagely priced when compared to mohair bears made by other people though, so I'm alright with it.  Both bears are in my Etsy shop now.

Rhoda is made from mohair remnants - a hand-dyed blue and the remainder of the lovely fluffy grey mohair that I made Leon from.  Jennie is made from a gorgeous tousled blonde mohair.  Excuse her photos (below): she came out quite pale and pasty with my Nikon, so I ended up taking phone photos.

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Did you see my Etsy Treasury this week?  You can find it here.  It is a collection of handmade and vintage Christmas decorations - the best kind, in my view!  In addition to my robins, there is a lovely set of little copper foxes (in galloping pose), some primitive snowmen tree decorations, dried orange slices, a gorgeous paper mache goose, a vintage Soviet Russia glass trumpet ornament and lots more. I'd be really grateful if you'd take a moment to look and 'favourite' it.

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Aaaand, once again, I have completely failed to get a Friday Design Challenge finished!  I am aiming to do two for next week, to make up for it.  Now that all the shows are finished, I am starting to think about new designs for next year - like, entirely new creatures, not just a new feature here and there.  I'm expecting that Design Challenges from now on will all be different parts of a whole design.  So, watch this space!

Design Challenge 6 & 7: Trevor!

Okay, I'm completely out of sync now!  This post represents my Design Challenge numbers 6 & 7 - from last Friday and the Friday before(!)  This time I made Trevor (above left).  He is a re-design of Bingo (above right).  I do actually still like Bingo's design - he has a very narrow, doll-like body - but Trevor has the lovely, cheerful, plumpness of a traditional teddy bear.  And he's pink!  I always get asked if I have pink bears!

I re-designed all of him except his face, but my favourite part is definitely his arms.  Take a look at the pictures below: his paws pads face down rather than inwards, which makes his arms look much more realistic.  I need to make a big bear with these arms!  (Or rather, with a bigger version of these arms.)  Anyway, Trevor in now in my Etsy shop.

Some other stuff that's being happening to us recently...

We've been accepted at the Brett Gallery, which is part of Bridge Farm Barns in Monks Eleigh in Suffolk.  It's a really lovely place!  Among all the other beautiful things, you will now find two hedgehogs, my last crow, and two little bears.  I highly recommend a visit.  After all, they not only have bears, but syrup sponge and custard in the cafe!

I created another Etsy Treasury - this time on affordable art.  It's called Buy Some Art!  Do take a look, and like and favourite, so more people see it.  Ta!

Finally, I am running a Christmas give-away on Facebook, to win one of my little robins (below).  To enter the giveway, you just need to like and share the giveaway post on Facebook - use this link here.

Frankie

This is Frankie - made from a really, lovely, soft, pale pink mohair.  She has the same face and body pattern as Mouse, but I have redesigned her limbs to be shorter and chubbier - a bit more cub-like.  You can find her in my Etsy shop.

I am getting ready for the Bradfield show tomorrow.  It is going to be our last outing of the year, so we will be there with bells on!  I was hoping I was going to have 10 little bears finished, but the joints I bought for them are the wrong size(!), so I made Frankie instead.

Once again, I am going to be late for this week's design challenge - no change there!  Anyway, hope to see you tomorrow if you live anywhere near Bradfield.  We are in the Community Centre - post code, CO11 2UU.  Otherwise, have a great weekend!

Vincenzo, moon bear

You know, when I was writing posts about running a business recently, I was actually worried that I was going overboard and not focusing enough on the bears themselves.  Lately, it seems that I can't stop talking about them!

This is Vincenzo, a realistic moon bear.  I made him a while ago, and for some reason, took no photographs, and made not a squeak about him online - neither here, nor on Facebook, nor Etsy.  What the big secret was, I don't know.

Possibly I had some qualms about him.  Vincenzo is the second of two of these bears I have made.  The first one was called Arthur, and he found a home last year.  I did actually make several substantial changes to Vincenzo's design, but you'd never know - they are two peas in a pod!  There is lots to love about them - their feet, the shape of the arms, their serious eyes, the long shaggy fur on the back of their heads.  They have a lovely neat way of sitting too - which sounds weird, but is totally true.  

I wonder if it might be their long necks I wasn't sure of.  Real bears do seem to me to have long necks (polar bears particularly) - or at least, they seem often to be photographed stretching out for things - but it always looks strange in teddy bear form.

When I was taking photos of Vincenzo this morning however, I was really taken by the image above - and some of those below, where he is looking upwards.  

I follow Animals Asia on Facebook, and they post lots of gorgeous pictures of rescued bears in their sanctuary in Vietnam - all looking fat, happy and chilled-out.  They can be quite... ambitious in their athleticism too, but because they're such bulky bears, it often looks quite comical to me.  This is what Vincenzo reminded of this morning - a well-padded bear with a very active mind, stetching to sniff the air and investigate his surroundings.

I am a convert to my own bear!  You can now find Vincenzo in my Etsy shop.

Belinda

At 7 o'clock this morning, there was frost on the roofs, and the most beautiful bright sunshine belting down.  Thanks to the quality of smart phone cameras, I was able to take some pictures of it.  I'm absolutely mad keen on my phone camera!  It's rather embarrassing.  Yesterday I shame-facedly took a picture of my lunch, which seemed to be looking particularly gorgeous.  Often, when I go into Dedham, I've got my phone in my hand as I walk up from the car park, and I've taken 20 pictures before I get to the Centre - not of anything interesting: just of the road, the hedges, the sky...  I'm hoping it's just the novelty of the thing, and that this madness will wear off soon, but it's showing no sign of doing so, so far.  There's something particularly clever about the camera phones that allow them to adapt to the changes in light, which my Nikon D300 just doesn't do very well - not in my inexpert hands anyway.

Anyway, this is a phone picture of my beautiful avocado plant (grown from a stone!) on the window sill this morning.

But this is what I really wanted to show you!  This is Belinda, the hedgehog...

I knew as I saw her unfinished face that what she really needed was eyebrows.  For most of her time on my little homemade production line, she had this note pinned to her...

Having painted in the eyebrows, I couldn't resist adding a little smile too!  Not very subtle, but never mind.

She looks wonderful sitting on my desk among piles of books (a paper-weight perhaps?) so I have styled her as my bookish hedgehog.  Here she is, almost finished Margaret Forster's fantastic book, Significant Sisters.

You can find Belinda in my Etsy shop.  

In the meantime, I am working towards the Bradfield fair next weekend, on 28th November.  I have another lot of 10 bears on the table, and it's touch and go whether they are going to be finished on time(!)  It does seem to take so long this way.  In spite of that though, there is something wonderful about watching them come together as a group, and I think I probably work harder on their individual personalities when I have several of them in front of me.

Anyway, must get to work - have a great day!