The new rose themed jewelry is officially a hit!

I've sold several pairs of earrings of the rose sculpts, and everyone loves them, I even got the highest praise with a pair of blue rose earrings. Danilatham of etsy said this about them: "These are exquisite. I am SO happy I found them; they are exactly what I was looking for. I will be wearing these on my wedding day! Thank you so much!"

Each pair of earrings are different, so the ones in the picture are exactly what are available for purchase. I look forward to when my handiwork becomes more uniform so this becomes less necessary.Also in a few weeks check my shop for a new line of stamped pendants I'll be producing. I received many wonderful tips from MissFickleMedia on how to produce top notch pendants, and I'm currently waiting for the proper materials to ship in so they will have the perfect glazes and bails. Expect many Fern, Rose, and Flower themes in the stamps themselves.

I can't wait to see how they'll turn out!

Ah, real life, so real, so life-y,

currently I'm wrestling with a number of computer viruses on my sister's computer, it's 3:40am and my computer guru has long since gone home. So it's just me, my sense of logic and the simplicity of tril by error. Oh boy are we in trouble!


I could go on about my strategy and attempts, but we've all been there, and we all realise halfway through the epic virus battle that our story is not interesting in the slightest to anyone else. So I will save you and speak on other matters while the poor computer's antivirus software runs on overdrive.



Next week I will be at Otakon, for those of you who aren't anime fans on the east coast of the US, Otakon is an anime convention that has somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 people visit every year. Basically all of Baltimore will be a playground for anime fans, dressed as their favorite characters.

I am really excited about seeing the voice actors there, one I've hung out with after another convention, one I've met before and one I've been dying to meet and talk with as she directed the english dub of my favorite anime show.

I will be wearing a costume (or cosplay) of a character from that show, imagine a bridal gown made of liliac satin draped with sashes that trail feet behind the train, and a light green wig which is 48 inches long. Oh yeah, this is one serious cosplay!

The costume is the character Harmona from the anime show Wolf's Rain. I wouldn't reccommend it for everyone as it is a serious drama with an odd morbid fantasy twist. The entire show focuses on a pack of wolves hunting for paradise that will be opened by wolves at the end of the world. The entire show is bathed in snow and everyday people are feeling something drawing closer, and the few who have read the banned book "The Book of the Moon" can see the signs for the end of time. The Wolf will seek out the Flower, a Lily white supple maiden made from lunar flowers, and the appears the wretched beast.

The first time I saw the show in bits and pieces on tv, I didn't think much of it until I saw one episode. The youngest of the pack of wolves, had spent most of the journey falling behind and generally being useless. The pack are attacked by a giant walrus as they were crossing a frozen sea, and something in the youngest wolf snapped. He charged in and latched onto the walrus's eye, and held even as the walrus shook all of the other, stronger wolves off and dragged the the young wolf through enough frozen underwater terrain that the walrus actually caused his own demise.

The change in character caught my eye, and the closer I look at this series, the more rewards it has given me. If you like to turn over shows in your mind for months after you've seen them, then this is the show for you. To say anything more would ruin it for you :)


I've rambled enough about my show, I'll post again soon.

Buisness tip was a fluke, the person never paid so I had to cancel the sale. So my little watermelon slices continue to receive no love. Oh well.

Things are quiet in my world right now, I'm bashing through thousands of unfinished projects that have been literally sitting around for months. Fixing seams of clothing for friends, sorting and storing seasonal goods that noone will be interested in until winter, and desperately trying to complete the commissions.

Had some friends over for a classic gaming night Sunday, and we got farther in the classical Castlevania game than we ever had before (for those nongamers, the game is for a console that came out in 1985, a true classic) and the house is obsessed with classics. My sister is playing through a 10 year old zelda game, and screaming and enjoying it as much as when we first got it.

Now I'm running back to work, just wanted to update the blog quickly!

Yay!

I was swimming through all of the business tips threads on etsy.com, and one suggested that you convert everything to free shipping. Apparently a woman had trouble selling a very nice vase at $20 with $10 shipping. She changed it to a $30 vase with free shipping and it jumped into someone's cart immediately.

Since I offer international shipping, I carefully added "in usa" to free shipping, but I started converting the items in my shop accordingly. Starting with all of my miniatures, and I am happy to say that I've sold some of my favorite mini foods because of it! Remember the allow for the 3.5% that etsy takes of a sale if you're going to insert shipping into the actual price. Besides that I can't think of a reason to not do this with smaller items.

The watermelon slices were one of the first things I made that were fit to sell, and anyone who saw them in person swooned over them, but not a single slice sold online. Until today! I'm so happy to be shipping some out finally. The watermelon batch was a large one so if you're interested the listing has been renewed.



So if you're having trouble selling, try the free shipping method! I'll keep you all posted if it keeps working for me!

I'm off to work on my commission :)

Adventures in crafting!

This week we find our beautiful heroine hacking through the jungle of unsorted craft supplies. Only those who have dredged through the jungle truely know how dangerous the trek can be! But hark! What is that beautiful thing standing up out of the darkness? Ancient ruins? A monolith left by aliens? Pocky? No! It's a 5 shelf, adjustable, chrome plated shelving unit!!! It will bring peace and civility to the jungle that is the craft space. Or at least it will allow me to reach my clothes in th emonring without stepping blindly into forgotten scissors land. Check out this awesome birthday present I got to make me more productive than ever!


And don't be silly of course we got the bacardi box from the liquor store, (that's a great resource for boxes for all of your the run out of packing boxes so quickly!)

The Hop Devil, Victory Brewery box on the other hand.... yeah, we drank that.

Hey look! In the top right hand corner of the picture you can see my pumpkin drawing! And on the left side you can see all of the torsos of the Gobbleskat plushes I made for X-Strike Studios


All silliness aside, I'm doing a horrible job of attempting to get back on a normal sleeping schedule, and should hit the sack soon. But I wanted to show the results of me playing with my embossing materials (the ones I scored at a yardsale for 10% of their value!) I love the outcome, but when I look at the pictures I see all the errors and smudges I ignored at first.

So they may not be ready for retail, but I think they're a darn good step in the right direction and I love how two of them turned out, the first one I'm putting up in the etsy shop the second I'm keeping for myself. The rest I haven't decided what to do with. Maybe I'll offer one as a prize to the first person who shows me how to add pictures to a blog without having to drag them through the entire document!


G'night!

There is a Japanese Graphic Novel Series (or Manga for those in the know) that I have fallen madly in love with, a few years after they stopped printing it. So now I've been crawling all over anime convention dealer rooms asking about this fairly obscure manga that noone has.

Pet Shop of Horrors, it's a very episodic story, featuring stories of customers who buy from this strange pet store in Chinatown in NYC. Most of the stories feature either a mythical animal being given as a pet, or a normal enough animal that appears human to the customer. The stories range from tragic, to frightening, to romantic. Sometimes it's dependent on the customer not following 3 specific rules they agreed to when they purchased the animal (Gremlins anyone?), other times the customer was marked for death the moment they caught the animals attention. I being the awful romantic that I am, fall head over heels for the love stories. And I love the idea of animals being more active in the decision of where they live. The owner of the pet store doesn't sell an animal unless the animal approves of the customer.

So long story short I have 4 of a 10 volume series, and anyone who has the other 6 issues aren't selling! Oh woe is me! The worst part is my volumes are from random points in the series so I know some characters who havne't been introduced yet. I desperately want to hear the backstory of the little "lap ram" as I call him, who eats human flesh. He's adorable, about the size of a house cat, and constantly threatens to eat the customers, who wouldn't want to know that story?


So if anyone has copies and they're looking to sell, let me know! I love the twilight zone feel of these stories, and the ornately dressed and comic animals. Spread the word around! Maybe we can even work out a trade, a sculpt of your favorite animal from the series for the issues I don't have? Oh I'll stop my begging, until then please take a look at the item I'm most proud of in my shop.

Pink Feather Earrings

Greetings

I refuse to look at when I last updated this blog! I refuse!

Moving on, I've come quite a long way since then, but I have a lot further to go if I want to be successful. Since my last post I picked up two large clients; X-Strike Studios and Blue and Blond

For X-Strike Studios, an independent movie studio outside of Buffalo NY, I created 20 plushies of their favorite monster. The monster shows up in most of thier movies in one form or the other, resembles a turkey with a gas mask for a head, and two giant claws, one on each arm, instead of hands. The plushes were pains to make but I love how they turned out and the guys at X-Strike couldn't be sweeter about the delays in constructing such little cuddly monsters.




For Blue and Blond, a webcomic about goodnatured surfers, I was asked to create the tiny mascot for the comic, a surfing Guinea Pig named Ripcurl. He turned out darling and was a dream to make once I finished a prototype I liked. I created 20 little Ripcurl phone charms and can happily say they've been a huge hit with Blue and Blond's fans. So much so that some actually got swiped off of the comic's table at conventions!







Now I'm working on a few private commissions, and of course cosplays for friends. But I look forward to playing with the embossing equipment I picked up from a yardsale. ($100 dollars worth of supplies for $9.25!!) I hope that embossing make accent my disc pendants that noone else seems to like! I think these deserve at least a second look so here's hoping I figure something out. Take a look at these beauties, and let me know what you think!
Oh man has it really been that long since I've posted?! Well I'm off to play with fabric, wish me luck!