Jan 21 - Cooking

I thought today should be a post of the Zachary Bear® design, Cooking. Since the idea of blogging the way through the Zachary Bear collection was inspired by the movie Julie & Julia, it is most appropriate to personalize this design for Julie.

This design has two places to personalize. The name goes at the bottom in the frame where we have put Julie. The frame on the back wall with "I (heart) French Cooking" can be personalized for your favorite cook. It could be the name of a cooking school they have attended or any school they have graduated from. Personalization can also be a favorite phrase (ie. Kiss The Cook) or simply Sarah's Kitchen.

The whole idea of the Zachary Bear collection is to celebrate or commemorate the things that people love to do. What do you love? It could be a sport, a hobby, an occupation or a family life event that you wish to celebrate. The pink that you see around this picture represents the mat around a matted or matted and framed print. We offer three sizes of prints which come in a mat with an outside dimension of 5"x7", 8"x10" or 11"x14" in size. Our standard mat colors are pink, blue, red, green, tan or ivory. We offer frames that are gold or silver tone metal or walnut colored wood. If we put a picture on a t-shirt or other gift product it is printed without a border around it. So you could have this picture matted, framed and personalized to hang in your favorite cooks kitchen. You could also have an apron or a mug made with this fun design. Lori has fun drawing these designs and you should have fun giving them.

283 designs to go / 344 days left

Jan 19 - Meteorologist

When you live in Rochester the weather is always changable. Around here we say, "if you don't like the weather wait five minutes and it will change." With that in mind we pay tribute to Lori's meteorologist design. As hard as they try, they can't get it right. It is a science that is subject to the "winds of change." Meteorologists predict as best they can, they model all the possibilities and the determine the most probable based on science but are always at the whim of nature.

As you see in the designs, Lori usually does a male and a female version of each design. She pays great attention to detail and finds as many facts as possible to pay tribute to the profession, hobby or special occasion that she is depicting. She will also have a content specialist review for accuracy.

To further clarify, Zachary Bear and friends live in Webster, NY which is a suburb of Rochester, New York. We have been told that there are very few cities with fewer gray days than we have. I believe Seattle, Washington was one of these.

If you have a friend who is a meteorologist, this would make a great gift in one of many ways. They can be matted and framed for the wall. They may be printed on a mug or mouse pad. They can be printed on a shirt along with a favorite saying. Just give us a call or send us an email at zachary@zacharybear.com

284 designs to go / 346 days left

Jan 15 - Happy Birthday

After celebrating Lisa Fox's birthday it seems like the perfect day to do the Birthday Bear design.

While you see the design here with the banner filled in with Happy Birthday, this is an area that may be personalized in many ways. We have used it to say Happy 50th are any other significantly large birthday number. You could have a name or a favorite saying in the banner. There are times that you need a second area of personalization and in that case we write on the table cloth. This area may be used for a name, a favorite saying, a special date or dedication.

As you can see this group is having a great time being together celebrating a significantly large birthday. This birthday is so large it can not be represented with individual candles, here the whole cake is ablaze!

This design has been used for many years in our shop, printed in three sizes with mats and frames. We have also printed it on mouse pads, shirts and mugs. Because it works so well from a group, this card has been a favorite as a business birthday card from a group. Click here to see our business birthday card at Greeting Card Universe.

285 designs to go with 350 days left in the year

Jan 13/14 - Snowmobile

Day 3 of blogging, today we will look at the Snowmobile design and its variations.

You can see from this design some of the great diversity the Lori puts in the artwork is also induces a great level of frustration for the rest of us. There are at least seven ways to print this design.

The variations that can exist are:

1. Adult Male
2. Adult Female
3. Adult Couple
4. Male with son
5. Male with daughter
6. Female with son
7. Female with daughter

The sign in the woods can be personalizes with the place where you usually go snowmobiling or a favorite phrase (ie. Think Snow). Then on the sled is a banner that can be personalized with a name, initials or favorite phrase.

All of Lori's designs are about celebrating and commemorating special times. You will see great fun and humor in all of this artwork.


One of our fun things to celebrate at Zachary Bear is birthdays.
Today, Jan. 14th is Lisa Fox's birthday - she is our calligrapher at Zachary Bear and we wish her a wonderful day!

Day 12 - Bubble Bath

Bubble Bath was one of the first Zachary Bear® designs that I remember seeing from Lori. This design is copyright 1983 so it among her first creations. Lori first started selling her art at places like the Park Avenue Festival in Rochester and art shows in the local malls. At that time she had a black and white outline printed on art paper that she would add water color to. These pictures were matted and framed to a finished size of 11 inches x 17 inches.

When she brought Bubble Bath to me we started making full color prints in three sizes. These sizes framed out to 5"x7", 8"x10" and 11"x14" in gold metal or wood frames. In the early days of Zachary Bear® Lori's father-in-law Don Aman would hand cut all the mats. Today would have been Don Aman's birthday, a great day to mention him in the blog. Lori's husband Bill carries on this tradition of hand cutting all the mats for the Zachary Bear® prints. He learned from the best...

Today you can still buy this print in three sizes through the Zachary Bear Store and Studio in Webster, New York. It makes a cute addition to a bathroom and may be personalized in the white space below the wood tub. You may have it personalized with an individual or family name (ie. Jane's Bathroom or The Smith Family). Over the years we have added many products to the line of gifts that we print in Webster. We can print this design on a ceramic coffee, a mouse pad, shirts and many other products. We have also made our designs available at Zazzle and CafePress.

This is day 12 of the New Year and my second day of intentional blogging. One design down and 287 to go in 353 days to go. Click below to start following our journey through 2010.

So, what do I do when I am not blogging? Yesterday I added new Kaleidoscope designs to our Zazzle site and scanned new dog designs by Lori. As of this morning there are 9 new dog cards available at Zachary Bear's Store at Greeting Card Universe and more in the pipeline. I have added the Bubble Bath design today so that will be available in a few days.

Peace,
Ed

New Year's Resolution - To POST...

Wow, I have been remiss on posting (but I am not sure if anyone is out there).

OK, so now I am inspired by Julie & Julia it was a fun movie about two amazing women.
Similarity ends there....
I am not going to blog through a cookbook
But I do have a goal, to tell you about all the Zachary Bear designs over the next year.

OK, first problem determining how many designs there are, I just counted 288 titles but I think that Lori has created some new art that did not get a title header. So the goal is 288 titles in 365 days. Let's change that already and say by the end of 2010. We are already into the eleventh day so make that 288 titles in 354 days.

I also want to tell you about the cool kaleidoscopes that Lisa has been making so there may be more than one post a day depending how busy the store gets. This store/studio is never static and Lori as an artist is never still so I will also be telling you about the dogs she has been drawing for greeting cards. We make cards in our studio and we license the artwork to neat web site in California called Greeting Card Universe. They sell you bulk cards or send them out to individuals for you.

As we travel through the designs in the Zachary Bear® collection you will learn more about the four of us that make up the Zachary Bear® Store and Studio.

I am Ed, the computer guy at ZB. (I'll use ZB as a way of shortening the Zachary Bear® Store and Studio.) I started doing desktop publishing in 1988 and needed a copier. At that time I saw a color copier and dreamed of the possibilities of providing a link between art and technology. In most cases the tech people don't understand the artists and at the time I started most artists didn't understand technology. I considered that link to be a segue or a transition between art and technology. I called my company Segway (long before the famous scooter) and went looking for artists. Bill Aman came to have Lori's artwork reproduced and the rest is history... enough back story.