The Steiff Teddy Bear StoryWritten by Sharon Lauer
In 1847 in a small town in Giengen, Germany a baby girl was born. She was named Margaret Steiff. Her childhood vigor was cut short when she contracted polio at age of 2. Although confined to a wheelchair for rest of her life, she became a model for strength and determination. Margaret excelled in sewing and needlework and became proud owner of first sewing machine in Geingen. In 1879, she started her dressmaking business. Her dresses, coats and other clothing products were quickly in demand. In December of that year she came across a pattern for a toy elephant in a magazine. She made these as gifts for her family and close friends. Margaret used her expertise to develop other animal patterns and 1883 added them to her price list as a range of felt items. Her business continued to grow and in 1892 she began making soft filled bears, which would later be referred to as Teddy Bears. These bears resembled real bears, posing on all four paws with humped backs. Richard Steiff, Margaret's nephew, helped his aunt with design and production of her teddy bears and soft filled animals. An avid art student, he was a regular visitor of Stuttgart Zoo where he got ideas for animal designs. While touring America, Richard was inspired for a new design during a circus performance. The dancing bears gave him idea of designing a toy bear which stood upright and was jointed, similar to how dolls were made.
| | How To Make PerfumeWritten by Richard Wong
Whether it’s for personal or family purposes, marketing purposes or intended as a gift for some friends or family, perfume making is in fact an easy task that you can do by yourself or with others. Creating something personal, of good taste and really useful such as perfume is a truly great thing, not only because it teaches you a couple of new things, but also because it’s bound to boost your confidence, not to mention maybe most important aspect… having fun. If you try to google your way to some perfume making knowledge, you’ll notice you have a lot to choose from, just because there are plenty of ways and different recipes to try. The most important thing is for you to know what you’d like to obtain: 1. What type of perfume would you like to make? (eau de cologne, perfume concentrates, maybe even after-shaves or whatever crosses your mind) 2. What would you like perfume to smell like? (soft / strong smell, sweet / manly odor / unisex, long lasting or not, and so on and so forth) Depending on your answers to previous questions, you should make out a list of ingredients. When compiling this list, you should have in mind characteristics of ingredients you’d like to add to your recipe. If you’ve already got a recipe to follow, that means you won’t bother experimenting and giving much thought to ingredients you should add, maybe slightly adjust quantities to obtain a more personalized perfume, but if you haven’t got your ingredients list yet, here are a couple of things you should know. The first rule of perfume making is that you should experiment as much as you can. It’s a fact that some of greatest perfumes were created because somebody said something like… “and what if I put these two together?”. Perfume making an art and that’s why imagination and a great sense of smell can overcome a lack of experience or knowledge.
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