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Artist bears differ from manufactured lines of bears in many, many ways. While a manufacturing company may produce a line of several thousand identical teddy bears using automated processes, artist bears tend to be just the opposite. Artist bears are handmade; they are often one-of-a-kind, or may come in a very small limited editions (editions of 2, 5, 10 or 25 are not unusual).

From learning basic skills to developing advanced techniques, the journey to become a bear artist is not an overnight process. Bear artists need to develop their own patterns from scratch, this is a learning curve in itself to translate a two-dimensional paper pattern into a three-dimensional animal! With patterns in hand and techniques solidly learned, bear artists will also, over time, develop their own unique "look". The "look" of a bear artist's work is what makes one artist's bears uniquely identifiable from any other artists' bears in the world.

With time, determination, carefully utilized techniques and no small amount of effort, teddy bear artistry becomes a form of sculpture; "soft-sculpture art" is a descriptive term often used in the industry. While anyone might be able to make a teddy bear shape with two eyes, a nose and a mouth, it takes a teddy bear artist to give that bear a soul, character or personality. A good teddy bear artist can make that bear come alive for you, at least a little bit!

Time is another factor in the cost of an artist bear; some artists can take days, weeks, and even months to finish a single bear. While many artists use sewing machines to speed up the bear-making process a little bit (and help save strain on their wrists and fingers!), other bear artists sew every stitch on a bear with their own hands. Even some of the most productive bear artists might feel lucky to consistently finish one or two bears a week! Compare this to a manufacturer's line of bears, where any number of identical bears may be cranked out in a single day with the involvement of numerous workers and machinery.

For a bear design that is on all-fours, we measure both the height of the bear (feet to top of head), but also the bear's length (tip of nose to end of tail). The bear's size is determined by the longer measurement; for a bear on all-fours, the longest measurement is likely to be its length.

Better yet - how about FREE shipping? If you join our mailing list, we will be happy to give you free shipping on your first purchase. Or are you a repeat buyer of ours? If you have ever purchased from us directly before, whether through our web site, at a show or on eBay, we will ship a bear to you anywhere in the world for FREE! Please don't hesitate to remind us if you are a repeat buyer, we don't always catch that ourselves (especially if you have purchased from us at multiple venues - we can't always link a name, to a face, to an eBay ID, to an email address!)

• The bear must be postmarked back to us within 7 days of the time you received it.
• The bear must be returned in the same condition that it left us.

Pack responsibly to prevent damage on the return trip (package like we did to get it to you). We're sorry, but refunds cannot be granted if the above conditions are not met.

* Please note the following two exceptions:

• Deposits that have been made on custom bear orders are always non-refundable.
  
• If we made you a custom fur bear from your own fur garment, the bear is both non-returnable and non-refundable.

• 2 bears = 5% discount
• 3+ bears = 10% discount

There's always fine print, right? We do need to stress that this offer only applies to the purchase of soft-sculpture bears and animals, such as those found in our gallery. This offer does not include any other items we may sell, including CafePress merchandise, artwork and jewelry. For custom fur bears, the multiple-bear discount will be applied only to the price of the bears, and cannot be used to reduce the fee for preparation & conditioning of the original garment.

If you require a more customized payment plan, we may be able to help, but we will need to discuss it with you first. Examples might include taking a shorter payment plan on a lower valued bear (for example, we might accept two payments on a $100 bear), or creating a longer payment plan on our most expensive bears. We cannot agree to every request, but we will try to work to meet your individual payment needs as best as we are able.

Please note that once a layaway contract has been signed, the bear (or bears) on the contract must remain in our possession until payment has been made in full, with no exceptions. Again, please email us with any questions or comments at any time, we look forward to hearing from you.

However, if there is something specific about the bear that you love (perhaps colors, eye features, pattern or style) we may still be able to help! While we cannot make you a "twin" of the original bear, we may be able to work with you to create a "cousin", a custom and equally unique 1/1 bear who might be even more suited to your tastes! You are always welcome to contact us with your interests, and we can discuss some options with you.

The most common reason that a bear is not shown in our gallery is the simple fact that our photography skills have their limits. When the best photo we can take of a bear still doesn't do him justice, we don't want to insult any lovely little bears by posting inferior photographs. After all, we wouldn't want it to happen to us, so why do it to a bear?

Of course, if you have visited our new Gifts section, you'll notice that this is the exception to that rule. Sales of our gift items come through the online marketplace CafePress; if you place an order in our CafePress store, you will use their shopping cart and proceed through a traditional online checkout process. Remember to visit our Gifts page to find out more!

When you shop in our CafePress store, the designs are all created by us, but CafePress deals with the entire shopping experience and sales transaction. When you add items to the shopping cart in our CafePress store, checkout and pay for them, this all goes entirely through CafePress, not us. They create each item that you order when you order it (this is what makes them a print-on-demand company). In other words, if you order a shirt in our store (a specific size with a specific design), they create that exact shirt when they receive your order, then ship it to you directly.

When you purchase items through our CafePress store, you are not dealing with us directly; CafePress does all of the work in processing, creating and shipping the order. If you needed customer service or to return an item, that would go through them as well. (If your next question is "how do you make money on that?", the answer is that they send us a commission check.)

If you are attending some of the same shows that we are, you may get the chance to see some of our products "up close" and buy them directly from us. When we are allowed to, we will bring a sampling of our products with us to bear shows. Not every show allows every product, however, so if you're hoping to see something specific, contact us and make sure we can bring it.