~*~Jinan~*~

I know I haven't been posting much this week, but I have been crazy busy again.  I did want to do a panda in honor of Chinese New Year.  I am a little late, but better late than never!  So please meet Jinan. 

She is available on my website at http://www.blondheart.com/

I should have a new piece for you again in a week or two.  I will be getting ready for the Teddies Worldwide show in March, and I have a couple orders.  Never fear I won't neglect you though!

R will be going out of town for the next couple weeks and while I will miss him desperately, it will give me lots of extra time to work!  I am also going to make a bigger version of this new pattern.  So stay tuned!

Hacked

I just wanted to let everyone know, if you got an e-mail from me today do NOT open it.  I was hacked.  I have it under control now, but I just wanted to give you a heads up!

Why You Don't Let Little Bears Watch Scary Movies Late At Night

The New Pieces Are Up!

I have updated my website, and the new pieces (shown in the previous post) are available at http://www.blondheart.com/

Website Update Today At 5 PM EST!

I have been working right up to the last minute here!  I am going to have three pieces for you, the first is Cutie Pie...he even has a little button that says his name!

(Cutie Pie has been adopted ~ Thank you!)

Next up of course is Cupid, you have had a sneak peek at him for a while over to the right of my blog.  He has heart shaped wings and is filled with love!

(Cupid has been adopted ~ Thank you!)

(Moonbeam has been adopted ~ Thank you!)

Last but certainly not least...is Moonbeam and his little pal Starshine.  My funny little moon clown is definitely a once in a blue moon type piece.  I worked on him for almost 8 days!  He was far more complicated than you might think. 

They will be available at 5 PM EST on my website at http://www.blondheart.com/

See you then!  Hugs, K. <3

Working!

I just thought I would let you know that I have been working away and that's why I haven't posted much the past few days.  I have some interesting topics I want to talk about, but I have to finish the pieces for Wednesday's upate first. I am not sure one of them is quite going to make it in time.  They are taking so much longer than I thought they would.  But that's ok, I would rather take my time and do them the way I envision rather than rush through something.  You will see...in the mean time the pic above is a tiny hint.  No actual sneak peeks just yet though!

I am off to fall into bed very late today!  Hugs, K. <3

Little Things That Are Frustrating

I am a really generous person, especially when it comes to computer-y stuff.  I know that a lot of artists aren't really tech savvy.  All anyone ever has to do is ask.  There are people who will attest to that.  I will help you with coding, setting up a website, paypal buttons...you name it.  I will also help you make graphics.  In fact I will even offer to make them for you free of charge if I think you are having troubles.  I am happy to do it.  All I ask in return is you don't simply take stuff without asking permission.

But lets take a moment and look at where those graphics come from.  I get my graphics one of two ways.  Either I scan things in and make my own from the bottom up, the same way someone would design a bear or anything else or I draw them on rare occasion.  That means I spend time away from making bears to work on them.

The other way  I get them is to sort through thousands of images to find the thing I want, then purchase it from one of the several websites out there that offer copyright free/royalty free images intended for personal use.  (That means you don't make any money from that image, but the artist who created them gets paid for their work.)  I spend my time looking for them and then pay for them with my real, hard earned money.  While they usually aren't that expensive...$1.00-10.00 each on the average, it is still a business expense for me, and I went the legal route of purchasing them for my use.  If you would like to use the same image, then I reccomend you search for them and purchase them too.

I know that people think this is a small thing to just take images or graphics and use them for themselves.  But in fact it's kind of a big thing.  Tonight I discovered that someone had taken my mail contact graphic and used it for themselves.  Ironically they had a "content is copyrighted" notice on their blog. 

The result was I had to take 20 minutes away from the piece I am working on, and completely remake the graphic from the ground up to change the wording in order to make it theft proof, because I didn't save the base I made.  Again that might seem like a little thing for me to have to do, but it's frustrating and it puts me 20 minutes behind on my piece.  On top of that I felt compelled to spend time making this blog post.

Besides don't you want something unique all of your own that reflects your own style?  Again I would be happy to spend the time helping you, rather than being annoyed that I have to remake something that someone stole.  Please, just ask!

Edit:  To the person in question, thank you for changing it so fast.  I would still be willing to help you too, just ask.

Alone In The Dark

When it comes to household chores, I am sort of all over the place.  The one I am practically religious about is dirty dishes.  I cannot stand dirty dishes in the sink.  I have to be violently ill, or unable to walk for them not to get done.  Even then I have been known to drag myself to the sink and do them.

Clear at the opposite end of the spectrum I am terrible about making the bed.  I am not one of those people who jumps out of bed every morning (or afternoon in my case) ready to take on the day.  It's more of a slow, reluctant crawl.  The last thing on my mind is making the bed.  Now in all fairness, since R and I basically sleep in shifts, the bed is in use about 14 hours a day.  We do "tidy" it up before each of us goes to bed though.  I can't sleep messy.

The other night R was going to go to bed and we went in for the "tidying and tucking in ritual."  I had left a bear laying on his side of the bed.  He looked at it, looked at me, and said; "Really?"

He knows that it's not uncommon for me to sleep with a random bear.  While he has given me that will-you-never-grow-up-or-am-I-just-married-to-a-crazy-person look on many occasions over it, he has never come right out and asked me why I do this.  He probably thinks I am insecure or something.

The truth couldn't be farther away from that though.  Having chronic insomnia, I don't usually fall asleep for at least an hour after I get into bed unless I am bone weary or medicated.  So some years ago I found a way to utilize that time.  Lets face it, one can only think about things like the Heisenberg uncertainty principal and the multiverse/entanglement theory so much before you need something new to focus on, and for me counting sheep just doesn't cut it.

I am the type of person who likes to study something every way it can be studied.  Especially when it comes to making bears.  I have used five out of six senses over the years as often as I can.  I have smelled bears, listened to the way stuffing materials sound when they are squeezed, looked at them of course from every angle I could, and used that inate sixth sense that artists possess when it comes to making something.  I can honestly say I have never tasted one though.  Ew.

I think an often overlooked sense in creating art is touch.  Not the tactile touching we have when we like the feel of soft fur, or huggability...no.  I am referring to the type of touch the blind sometimes use when feeling a person's face.  To simply feel something in the dark gives you a whole new perspective on it.  You feel things in the shape of a piece you may not have noticed.  You might notice continuity differences in how it's stuffed, that a line in the design feels a bit off, or that the eyes protrude farther than you had realized.  There is a multitude to learn by doing this.

So here is my little challenge for you.  Take a piece of your own work, shut yourself in the dark with it for a little while.  Choose a time when you won't be disturbed and it's quiet so you can focus.  You might be surprised at what you discover when you remove sight from the equation.  If you can do it right before falling asleep all the better.  What you feel will permeate your subconscious and your sleeping brain will process it all the more.  You might be pleasantly surprised to wake up with a new idea, or a minor change you want to make.

I would be interested in hearing what you find out, so don't be shy about posting or e-mailing me if you can't leave a comment. 

Also the bear above is a little sneak peek of one of the new pieces coming for the update on the 18th! 

Now it's time for me to grab a bear and head off to bed!

Hugs, K. <3

The Happiness Puzzle

We have all encountered one of those people at some point that is nothing but a giant, energy sucking black hole of negativity.  Nothing you can say or do will ever cheer them up.  They can find something dreary in every beautiful thing life has to offer.  I knew a girl like that in college, she was in my literature class.  This girl had taken angst to an art form.

One afternoon our professor was discussing the works of Poe.  Poe is of course a master, but lets face it, he wasn't exactly a big bucket of rainbows either.  All of a sudden the professor stopped talking, stared out at us silently for a few moments, then snapped his book closed.  He turned to the board and wrote out Abraham Lincoln's famous quote;   "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."  He told us to write an essay on how people can choose to be happy.

All of a sudden from the back of the lecture hall the angsty girl stood up, and announced in a louder voice than any of us had ever heard her use before that this was the "stupidest assignment ever" and that people couldn't just "choose to be happy when they aren't feeling it."  She then stomped from the room and slammed the door behind her. 

I remember thinking how ironic that was considering it was obvious to everyone that she had chosen to wallow in a self imposed quagmire of undefined misery.  Shortly after that she dropped the class. She was so opposed to the idea of happiness that she cheated herself out of a wonderful course where she could have learned many things.

I have talked a bit lately about taking risks this year.  I think to be able to open yourself up to taking risks and having them work to your favor, you have to be happy, both with yourself and the world at large.  But for some people, being happy is taking a risk.

So how does one choose to be happy?  It's not easy.  It's not something you can sustain all the time.  Happiness is an emotion that ebbs and flows like the tide based on what ever circumstances we are in at any given moment.  People often confuse happiness and joy.  They aren't the same thing.  Joyfulness is something that lives inside of us whether we are happy or not in any given moment.  But for now I just want to focus on being happy.

So how can we decide to be happy when we aren't feeling it?  It's a puzzle isn't it?   I would love to be able to give you a defined road map of how to get there, but I can't.  I don't have one.  The Zen book I told you about a while back says that one key step is to remember that whatever situation we are in at any given moment is the best situation for us even if we can't see it at the time.  Still though, that's a tough concept when we are in the middle of a situation that is bad.  And we all go through bad situations.

I can't tell you how to be happy all the time.  However, I do know how to trick yourself into starting to feel happy when you're "not feeling it."  Did you know that if you force yourself to hold a smile for 16 seconds that the receptors in your brain will register what your facial muscles are doing and release the serotonin to make that feeling real?  I did not make that number up either.  You don't have to take my word for it, if you don't believe me, try it.  It's not easy though, forcing a smile for 16 seconds is a longer time than you might imagine.  If you can't hold the smile for the entire time you will have to start over.  But by the end of the 16 seconds your smile will be genuine.  You will be feeling it.

If you think about taking risks, and it makes you nervous...paste that smile on your face.  Hold onto it.  You can choose to take the first step to being happy.  The next thing you know, you will be feeling happy and ready to take that little risk!

Have a wonderful weekend!  Hugs, K. <3

The "Too" Factor

One afternoon while I was out shopping before Christmas I found a fascinator.  It was cute and inexpensive and I bought it.  I have always liked them but never indulged.   A bit after that I found a vintage pair of red gloves, I bought those too.  I used to wear fancy gloves all the time back in my 20's, but for some reason I stopped.  When I got home I tried on my fascinator, it actually looked good on me!  But then I started thinking where would I wear this?  Why did I buy it?   I am too old to pull this off.  If I went out into public in this people would laugh themselves silly over it.  I found it interesting that I thought that, because I rarely bother to care what others think about what I do.

Last week I bought the latest copy of one of my favorite magazines.  I was thumbing through it when I came upon a full page ad.  The ad caught my attention like a lodestone.  It promised that if you went to a website it contained a guide on how to bring forth that fun side of you that you really want to get in touch with. 

I believe that deep within many of us resides a romanticized version of ourselves.  The one where we embrace those things we wish could wear or do without looking silly.  That secret version of ourselves always does things with aplomb in our minds eye and it's successful.

I don't know about you, but I could use a little help getting to that place again.  I was that girl once.  But where did she go?  I was practically tripping over myself to get to the computer to type in the URL for this website.  Imagine my disappointment when I got there and found out there was no guide.  It was just a site to sell a product.  A fun product sure, but that's all it was.  In fact I almost bought something...then reality set in.

My brain wouldn't let go of that idea though.  I did a web search to see if I could in fact find a site that did offer these tidbits of wisdom somewhere.  I came up empty. 

I started thinking...my mental conversation went something like this; what if I...no.  Maybe I could...no.  Why couldn't I...no, what gives you the idea you could help anyone that way?  My brain argued back.  Yeah but...NO, people would laugh at you, just shut up.  (It's no wonder I drive myself crazy.)

But then I thought what if I did a blog...AND what if I used a nom de plume!  But my brain said, people would never buy into it unless you were a real person.  Nom de plume flew out the window.  I thought...hey maybe I could do a separate blog as myself and ease into it slowly.  Nope brain said, you won't do that either, we know you too well.

Hmm...I fell victim to the "too" factor.  You know the "too" factor.  It's the excuse we mask our fear with.  I am too old, too young, too short, too tall, too fat, too serious, too staid in my ways, too scared to put myself out there, too *insert your choice of excuse here.*  Good golly I finally get it when R tells me I am my own worst critic.  Why do we knit pick at ourselves so?

However...like I told you yesterday I have decided to start coloring outside the traditional lines a bit more this year.  This year is about me taking bigger risks, and while I was talking about my work when I said that, I think I am going to embrace that in other aspects of my life too.  While I don't intend to jump out of a plane or anything, I do want to finally do those things that I want to do.  I want to wear what I want to, I want to make what I really want to, and I want to be that version of me that hides inside of me.  What are we truly afraid will happen?  So something we try doesn't work...so what.  What if someone laughs...well they laughed, laugh with them and have fun. 

So I think I am going to embrace that romanticized version of myself more and let her out to play.  I am going to make an occasional post on this blog as myself, taking you on that journey.  I may not be qualified to write a guide to embracing that side of yourself, but then again...who knows I might be.  We will find out!

I will tell you this though, I wrote that list of resolutions a few posts back mainly as a humorous look at not being so serious about resolutions.  But I decided for the heck of it to try to stick to them.  I have discovered that taking five minutes to breathe and not think about anything really does revive you.  I have discovered that if you can only find a minute or two to squeeze in a little exercise, it still does give you an odd little sense of accomplishment tacked on to your day.  I discovered that R has responded to getting that extra hug in the morning and my doing everything I can to be cheerful even if I am stiff and sore from working or have a headache by the time he gets up.  I discovered that taking a few minutes to go outside and appreciate nature has a way of making you feel more in tune with the world and gives you a sense of freedom.

I have had a feeling for a while that this was going to be my year.  But I also know in order for it to be my year, I am going to have to work at it, and that's ok.  So there is your first "guidebook" lesson.  Let this be your year too, but know you will have to invest in it to be your year.  Take risks and overcome those small fears.  Get in touch with that brave, fun, out there version of yourself that you have been hiding away in the dusty box in the corner of your soul.  Take a risk, you can start with a small one.   Tell that side of your brain that says no you can't to just shut up.

Later today I have to go to the dog groomer and get my bi-annual blood test....red gloves...check!

Website Update And Follow Up

When I got up this afternoon I came down with my usual death grip on my coffee and plopped down at my computer.  I about fell out of my chair when I saw how many e-mails I had gotten.  I have been answering them for hours.  But I love that!  It tells me that you do really read what I write and that you cared enough to take time from your busy days to respond and help me out.

Every single person was very kind in their critiques and comments.  But what you said was also very illuminating in several ways.  For one thing I learned that a LOT of people are having trouble posting comments on blogger and aren't really as shy as I thought you were.  There are two things that are causing problems, one is how you have your settings and the other is an incompatibility issue with Internet Explorer 9.  This is also what was causing the problem with the blurry header images a couple weeks ago.

I use AOL (yeah yeah I know, but I have been using it for so long that I don't want to change my e-mail address) and Firefox.  While I don't technically use IE on it's own because I am not fond of it, AOL does use it in the background.  When I use Firefox, I have no problems.  The other thing is how you have users set to comment.  I have mine set to registered users as opposed to followers only and that seems to be working for a lot of people.  I also have the captcha thing turned off.  I really get very few bots posting, so it's not a problem to delete those rare advertising comments when they show up.

Now as for the bears and how I was feeling last post...I really learned some things through your comments.  But first I want to tell you that I usually make these posts right before I go to bed early in the morning, and I have been up alone all night with my thoughts and sewing, so sometimes I think my posts read like I am a crazy and/or neurotic person.  But that's what happens after you have been up for hours in the quiet all night.  I tend to over think things, and I can't quite always see the big picture.

I did figure out what was really bothering me.  It's not a desire to go back to what I used to make style wise.  But the thing is Joe (shown in the previous post) was an 18 inch bear.  I made a lot of big bears back then.  More than I did the smaller ones.  I love the smaller ones I am doing now,  (thank you Heather, that was such a great thing you did by wanting me to make those smaller bears!)  but I think I was going into big bear withdrawal.  I think that's what was at the root of my desire to get that old pattern out.  It's not that I want to go back, it's that I haven't made a big bear in 15 months!!!  You made me see this by asking if there would be more sizes of the new style and so many of you asking for larger ones.

In answer to that, I have pretty much got the new pattern that was like Cupcake, and Cupid shown above, to the place I want that pattern to be.  The next step is to draw it into larger bear patterns, which I will be working on soon!  So hopefully you will see some larger bears in that style in the coming months.  It takes a bit of time because you can't make a bigger pattern properly by just slapping it on a copy machine and enlarging it.  You really have to draw them individually.

Through reading all of your feedback I came to another interesting realization.  I no longer have an end point in mind.  Back in those old days I was working toward that "perfect" pattern.  But I have realized at this stage in life I like the bears being in a state of flux.  While I want to make each pattern I do at any given time as good  as it can possibly be, I also know that I will never have another pattern that I use hundreds and hundreds of times.  I like being able to change things a bit here and there as I go along.  I don't actually want to have that perfect pattern/end goal anymore.  I think that's a good thing, it keeps it interesting.

I don't need to go back.  I need to keep going forward.  That doesn't mean that I won't ever circle back to a style I did before, but it does mean that if I do it will be in a new and fresher way.  I am feeling content again, and I am truly happy that you liked Joe so much!  I am also happy that overall, you like the new bears better!  This year I have decided to embrace the unique and sometimes strange ideas I have and color outside the traditional lines a little more.  This is something I have wanted to do for three years, but it can be hard to allow yourself to do that when you have done things a certain way for so long.  So this year you will be seeing some interesting ideas come to life that I haven't done before, but that have been lurking in the shadows of my brain for a while! 

In the mean time I would like to let you know that there will be a Valentines-ish update coming January 18th at 5 PM EST.  Also I am still going to strive to get a new piece added every week or two along with those bigger updates!

Again I can't thank you all enough for your comments, they really did help me see the bigger picture of what was bothering me.

If It Wasn't Broke, Why Did I Fix It?

Yesterday I was having a little chat with another artist friend on Facebook.  They were telling me about a piece they were working on, and it happened to be something I had made a long time ago so I posted a pic for them to see.  I also posted a pic of a monkey I had made and All American Joe, the bear shown above.  (I made him so long ago that the pic was taken with a real camera because digital cameras weren't even a thing yet.)  I really wanted to just post those pics into my album for my friend to have a peek at, but since I am a bit Facebook impaired that didn't happen and they posted to my wall. 

I got so SO much positive feedback on Joe both in comments and in messages.  Now you would think that I would be thrilled that people loved him, and I am.   I also kind of wanted to bang my head against the wall.  But let me back up a little bit first.

Three decades ago when I made my first bear, I was incredibly unhappy with how it turned out, so I made my own pattern for the second one and was pleased with the results.  I made another bear after that from my pattern and gave it to a friend for her birthday.  She in turn showed it to a woman she knew who had a gifts and collectibles shop and the owner approached me about selling some to her.  That's how I started in the business. 

Once I was opened up to this world, as most fledgling bear artists do...I started trying out every pattern I could find to see what aspects of making a bear I liked and what I didn't.  About a year and a half in I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted to achieve and what I liked.  So I studied bears very carefully to get that perfect look I was going for.  I made notes about what I saw and liked, and I incorporated those things into my pattern.

It wasn't an easy road though because patterns have never come terribly easy for me and I was constantly tweaking it this way or that to get it just so.  It took me about 12 years to truly get to that recognizable style of my own and still make a very traditional bear, which is what I loved.  Somewhere in there I started distressing them.  When I did finally arrive at a pattern design and style I was completely happy with, I offered it in 4 sizes and I made bears from those patterns for a very long time.  I made literally hundreds and hundreds of bears in that style from those patterns.  They sold well and people loved them.  The only other thing I made was rabbits.

But one morning I woke up, got out my pattern and looked at it and thought...I have done this now.  I have done it and done it and done it...so now what?  I felt it was time for a change.  But the problem with achieving what you consider your ideal, and working for years to get there is that when you want to do something new, you don't know what it is.  I had no idea.  I was adrift for about a year.  I hardly made anything.

By this time I had the bear pattern thing pretty much down, so I sat down and designed some completely different style bears.  They weren't distressed or tradtional.  They sold, people liked them, but they never really "fit."  After a couple of years I decided it was time to go home again so to speak.  But I wanted to give "home" a little bit of a modern facelift.

I have been working towards that end ever since.  While I like what I have produced over the past six years I am still designing, re-designing and tweaking again.  I also decided I wanted to make other animals, so I keep adding those and I am glad I have done that.  I plan to continue adding animals of all varieties.  Just recently though I feel like I am at a place where I might be able to stop tweaking the bear patterns as much.  I like the changes to my patterns I have done in the past couple months a lot.  I have also been taking more risks than I used to...as in the case of Sno with his two different sized eyes.   I was finally feeling truly satisfied again...and then I posted that picture yesterday.  Sigh~

Over the past year I had actually been thinking about pulling that old "perfect" pattern out again (one of the few bear patterns I actually saved because I usually destroy old patterns or I would have them stacked to the rafters) and making it, but I never did.

A couple of posts back I talked about how doubt will sometimes creep into the minds of artists, and I found doubt creeping into my mind yesterday.  Should I have stuck with that pattern?  Is it better than what I do now?  Would people like it better?   If it wasn't broke, why did I fix it?  Of course the answer is because we always try to move forward and keep things fresh.  As an artist you cannot make the same thing forever without it getting stagnant and burned out on it.

But I also find myself wondering...is it really a step backwards to revisit a pattern?  I have never done that before.  I suspect that even if I did pull it out and make it the end result wouldn't be quite the same as it was all those years ago.  At this point I don't know for sure what I am going to do, and I could use some insight from you.  So any comments would be welcome. 

While I am probably throwing myself right into the middle of shark infested waters here...I am going to encourage your critiques of what I am doing now.  I have thick skin, I can take it.  So don't be afraid to be honest.  Afterall I want to make the best bears I can, and feedback can certainly go a long way.  That doesn't mean I will automatically take every suggestion and incorporate it, but it does mean I will certainly give it some thought.

If you're one of my many shy readers, or one of the many like me, that has trouble getting your comments to post to blogger,  you can feel free to send me an e-mail with your thoughts instead of posting a public comment.

By the way on a separate note...if you are like me and have trouble getting comments to post to blogger, I have finally figured out the reasons just this week and can help you.  Let me know and I will talk you through it.  I have had this problem for a while, it's not that I don't like to post comments on other blogs...because I do read them..I just haven't been able to.

Pop Up Sale!

The Jelly Bean Bunnies will be on sale for 75.00 each + 8.00 US shipping or 12.00 International (they are regular 110.00) for the next 24 hours!  If you would like to adopt one just send me an e-mail using the link at the right specifying which color, and with your paypal address and I will send you an invoice.  It's first come, first serve!

I am off to bed right now, so you won't hear back from me until later today.

Blue has been adopted, but Yellow, Green and Pink are still crossing their paws and hoping for good homes!

Hugs, K.  <3

Resolutely!

I was working on a new piece tonight and as I was sitting there I decided maybe I would make myself some resolutions for this year.  I didn't want to go with the normal big things because those tend to get broken really fast, so I decided to take a slightly different approach.  I made ten resolutions, and thought I would share five of them with you.  I am choosing not to share the other five because two are personal, one is a surprise, and the other two...well...maybe later!

1.  Breathe for five minutes each day.

Now when I say breathe, I don't mean the normal in and out we do all the time...I mean spend five minutes every day doing nothing but breathing.  A mini meditation.  My Grandma always said she was going to "take five" that meant sitting down from her work to have a cup of coffee.  But I am going to "take five" and just breathe.

2.  Give R an extra hug every morning.

Did you know that it takes 4.3 seconds to give someone a quick hug?  Ok I made that number up...but it really doesn't take long and it's worth it because you enjoy it and the other person feels loved!

3.  I am going to go outside for a few minutes every day that it's over 45 degrees.

Fresh air is good for you, and I can combine this one with #1.

4.  I am going to exercise every day for one minute.

You might be baffled as to why only one minute?  You might be thinking what on earth would that accomplish?  It's pretty common for people to start big exercise programs at the beginning of a new year, but all too often they fizzle.  Promising yourself to exercise for one minute a day isn't even remotely intimidating now is it?  Not even on the days you don't feel like doing it.  Everyone can do one minute a day...and the next day you might think hey I can do two minutes...and so on...until you've really worked up to something without even noticing!

5.  This is the year I am going to do it!  I am finally going to Paris!

Ok that one might not happen...but if I believe it will...maybe it just will! 

On that note, I am off to bed!  Bon soir!  Hugs, K. <3