About Beryl and Sarah McCartney

After more years than she cares to mention as a primary school teacher, Beryl retired and was finally able to devote her time to painting. She started teaching art to adults, exhibiting her pictures, and writing and illustrating children's books on North East English history. She told Teddy Stories to her own children, the imaginary adventures of Sarah's first Merrythought Teddy Bear (imaginatively named Teddy).

She started to paint her Teddy Mac bears around fifteen years ago to amuse her three grandsons, then took commissions from her friends and neighbours. A card company engaged her to paint a series of teddy cards but unfortunately they disappeared without paying Beryl for her work, so she decided to set up on her own with the help of her daughter, Sarah, a writer who also teaches yoga.

Beryl is painting her way through a series of yogasanas, with Sarah as technical adviser to make sure that the skilful Teddy Bears demonstrate beautiful postures, despite their chubby figures. They will be adding to the Yoga Teds series so if you would like to be kept up to date about new cards please let us know. We'll email you as soon as we have new ones ready. Feel free to tell us which postures you would like to see and we'll put them at the top of the list.

We launched YogaTeds at the Yoga Show in London, September 2005 with a very colourful stand and we were delighted to hear that it had "a nice energy around it".