Santa's Sack is now open!

I can hardly believe we're nearing the end of 2009 already ... the year has raced by!  Christmas and bears go hand in hand and I love the festive inspiration this season offers, but I do have a problem at this time of year because taking photographs while the weather is so dark and the garden so bare, is a nightmare!  I recently had a long chat with my sister Tina and she pointed me in the direction of a set of basic studio lights to enable me to take the bears' photographs in my lounge - perfect!  Needless to say, I also had to master the manual settings on my camera with Tina's guidance and after several long hours yesterday, my first three Christmas bears had been photographed and uploaded to 'Santa's Sack' on the All Bear website.

My indoor photographic studio

Creating new web pages for the site is also very time consuming and I must admit, I do occasionally wonder if collectors realise how much work is involved in presenting new bears online.  To give you an idea, yesterday's photo shoot and website update took all day and well into the evening to present just three bears!  Then as soon as the Christmas bears went online, email enquiries had to be answered and sales processed ... I finally logged off and staggered from my swivel chair to bed, at about eleven o'clock last night.

23" Christmas Rose

I nervously submitted my first studio shots to Tina for assessment and you could have knocked me down with a feather when she cast a critical eye over them and gave them the thumbs up!  There's hope for me yet!  I must admit I have missed being able to visit Tina in Hampshire this year because it's lovely to catch up in person, but we're both so busy with our businesses, this seemed a sensible solution to my immediate problem.  I'm happy to say Tina will be popping up for a pre-Christmas visit in mid December and we're looking forward to having a good ol' natter over a festive mince pie then!

21" Yuletide

By the way, I am absolutely delighted to be able to tell you all three of my Christmas bears were adopted from Santa's Sack last night and they will be spending Christmas in Singapore and America!

17" Robin Red

Time for me to head up to my workroom now to work on my next Christmas offering, a pretty lilac bear this time ... I will let you know when she's ready to hop into Santa's Sack!