Santa Cruz Bear - High-quality, iron-on embroidered patch.
Iron-on or sew onto your jacket, backpack and more.
Top of the line threading. These patches really pop! (3 x 2" )

Made In Santa Cruz® is an authorized dealer of Tim Ward stickers, key chains, magnets, patches, and pins.

Santa Cruz has undoubtedly embraced Tim Ward's art as a symbol of pride for their hometown, and many guests and visitors to Santa Cruz agree. As an accomplished artist, illustrator and graphic designer, Northern California native Tim Ward is among the vanguard in Santa Cruz art. In much of his painting and drawing work, Ward strives to share the serenity and the beauty of the ocean and sky. These images are striking and subtle all at once.

What you may not know about Tim Ward's stickers, magnets, patches, keychains and pins is that a portion of the proceeds fund Ocean Conservation, Education and more! As of 2015, over $25,000 has been donated and the next big goal will be $100,000. So buy a Tim Ward sticker and feel good knowing it's for a good cause.

ABOUT THE ARTIST - TIM WARD

These hugely popular stickers are the work of Santa Cruz graphic artist Tim Ward and if you don't recognize the name, you surely recognize the artwork. There's the Mermaid and the Butterfly, the Shark and the Starfish, the Wave and the Otter.

Santa Cruz is one of the few cities able to market its own name as a kind of attractive totem for locals and tourists alike. 

"Santa Cruz is unique," said Ward, 45, who was born in San Francisco but moved to Santa Cruz as a boy with his family. "There's a lot of local pride here and a desire to identify yourself with your home."

Logos and branding are Ward's business, and even before launching his line of Santa Cruz stickers, he put his stamp on local iconography with his well-known logos for Santa Cruz Surf Shop "" a continuous swirl that spells out "SC" in a triangular field that resembles Superman's symbol "" and Paradise Surf Shop "" the silhouette of a long-haired woman riding a wave against the backdrop of an upside-down teardrop.

Of course, the Santa Cruz stickers are not advertising a particular business. They are instead evoking a kind of emotional state associated with living in, or just visiting, Santa Cruz. The stickers are designed to connect Santa Cruz with specific icons of the area, many of those icons having to do with the natural world, particularly the ocean.

"Santa Cruz is absurdly full of good qualities," said Ward.

Ward sets aside a portion of his profits from the stickers for environmental causes having to do with the particular symbols he's working with. The popular Butterfly sticker, for example, raises money for the California State Parks system, which administers Natural Bridges State Beach, which is a famous migration spot for the monarch butterfly.

Proceeds from the sale of other stickers such as the Otter, the Mermaid and other ocean-oriented images go to marine preservation, mainly the Surfrider Foundation and the Blue Dolphin Alliance. Some local school programs also benefit from the sale of the stickers.

The ocean is a particular area of interest for Ward, a longtime surfer who started surfing with his father at Cowell Beach at age 12. "You really can't get much more aesthetically pleasing than the ocean. The planet is full of beautiful things, but the ocean itself is a massive kind of life form, and it's always in motion."

A few years ago, Ward produced what was to become his first Santa Cruz sticker, the Shark. Because he had developed strong relationships with local retailers as both a designer and a screen printer, he was able to create a line of stickers and the Shark became the first big-seller.

The stickers are an increasingly common sight on cars around the county, but they aren't just for locals. 

Article by Wallace Baine, Santa Cruz Sentinel, 10/27/11.

Made In Santa Cruz®