Meet the Artist:

I am a 60 year old wife and mother of two grown sons, happily living with my darling husband, two dogs and a cat in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina.

I have moved a lot in my life and, in the process, had more than a few professional incarnations.  I have been a midwife with a home-birth practice, waitress, classroom teacher, computer programmer, secretary, bookkeeper, and even a car sales person.  I have always loved sewing and managed to use my skills in that area to put a little money in my pocket since I was seven and started making doll clothes for friends in the neighborhood.

A little over eleven years ago, a friend drug me to my first bear show to get my mind off a health crisis in the life of my younger son, Seth. 

I made Mickey with his lady bug, took him to a show and the rest, as they say, is history.  Now I am hooked on bears and happily designing and making the furry critters as fast as my little fingers can stitch them up.

In the last eleven summers, my bears have appeared on the Rosie O’Donnell Show and found display space in six different retail stores in North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia as well as from my web site and at shows

To e-mail me for information on availability of bears, (*click here and a blank message form will pop up.)  Please be sure to include your snail mail address in your message if you want to be on my mailing list for upcoming events.

I would like very much to hear your comments.  If you visit this site and like what you see, please let me know.  If you don't like what you see, please tell me that too and explain why.  Maybe I can fix it.   I can promise that I will at least try.

Back Home Again in My Beautiful Mountains

It is two years since our older son, Aaron came home.  He survived the war but his marriage did not.  It was a devastating loss to all of us but most especially to Gabriel.  Since then, we have all been helping father and son adjust.  

Before the economy crashed, I was focused on my sons, their wives and our grandchildren and the joys and sorrows of our daily lives.  Now, as I watch the news, I realize that we are among the lucky.  We still have a roof over our heads, plenty to eat, clean water, adequate clothing and the support of one another in loving and raising Gabriel and Sarah.  It is more than enough for my life and heart to be full. 

After all the terror of September 11th, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the devastation of Katrina, Aaron’s sadness and the increasingly frightening news about the economy, I have wondered if anything would ever be right again.  Like many of you, I have been obsessively watching the news holding my breath, hoping and praying that the worst was over, but terribly afraid it isn’t.

Aaron is home safe but I have friends whose sons and daughters still serving in the Middle East.  Somehow it doesn’t seem fair.  I didn’t have answers after 9-11 and I don’t have them now. I have only fear for the safety and future happiness of all whose lives are touched by this war and an ever worsening economy. 

It is spring again in my beautiful mountains and my faith teaches me that, “we live in two worlds; the one that is and the one that might be.  Nothing is ordained for us; neither delight nor defeat, neither peace nor war.  Life flows and we must choose.  We can, if we will, change the world that is, into the world that may yet come to be”. 

I choose to keep living in this majestic and peaceful place, making endearing teddy bears that, hopefully, bring comfort and smiles where so many tears have fallen, and to keep believing in the hope of a future that can be made safe from the insanity of September 11th, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the as yet unresolved impact of Katrina and the grave state of ours and the world’s economy.  As bad as things are, we are a tenacious and hard working people.  I believe that we can and will join hands and ride out the current storms of fortune while we pull together to make things better for one and all.

I have designed new bears for your viewing, and hugging pleasure.  One of the things I like best about being a teddy bear artist is meeting all of you so please, come visit me on the internet or at the shop in North Carolina and say hi.

By popular demand, I have added thread bear and bead knitted pouch kits and patterns to my this web site so if you have a hankering to make your own bear, please be sure to check them out.  Now all I have to do is sew like a crazy woman to have enough stock for the rest of the show season. 

 

Shelley