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!

Back from MAGfest with new inspiration and energy

I just back from the best convention experience of my life. Magfest 7 was like stepping into someone else's life for a weekend. The guests welcomed me like an old friend and it wasn't long before even this shy gal was laughing and playing with the best of them. I can't thank everyone at www.x-strikestudios.com and www.pbc-productions.com for making me feel like family.

Besides the zombies and the comedy, I got some great face time with a formally invited guest at the con. A professional author's table was set up behind my table, because of the island set up we were using the same chair space. Robert Aldrich put up with kirby attacks, over the shoulder spying, and all of my other less than tolerable habits, and then took the time to give me some hard learned advice. If you want all of his sage wisdom you'll have to grab him at the next con he'll be at. I can't say enough kind things about guy, so check out his website

http://www.teachthesky.com/

Anyway his input along with being surrounded by happy people who are doing what they love is kicking me into gear. My aunt asked me via email what art form I wanted to focus on. The answer is all of them. I'd like to think I've got a keen eye for charcoal drawing, but I also want to keep stretching the possiblities for cosplay with limited budgets. I want to perfect a realistic human form with sculpture, but I don't want to give up my tiny miniatures either. I will follow as many paths as I like, and since I decided that I feel the veil of creative block lifting in my mind.

I no longer will worry about if I'm working on the wrong project; if I must dedicate every last ounce of energy to one field alone. That worry was keeping me for accomplishing anything, and honestly I feel all of these can improve each other. The miniatures help me work on my detail for larger sculpts, the larger sculpts help me develop 3 dimensional cosplays from flat possibly impossible designs, and the drawing helps to understand the shades in a curve for realistic sculpting.


Now I need the work, I am burning with the hunt for the next commission, I actually sent off samples to Robert Aldrich begging to be used in a future book in his series. Here are the pictures I sent, feel free to comment below. The Tiger was drawn before my art class, everything else during.

How the time flies!

I haven't updated in a long while, mostly because I've been busy almost constantly! For Halloween I made two fairy costumes for little girls I know, a five year old and a 2 year old, I'm still harrassing the mother for pictures!

I finished the 3 cosplay costumes for Nekcon, if you went to the Phoenix Wright Mock Trial then you saw my work :)

Then I developed more merchandise, and headed down to North Carolina for housesitting.

Now I'm preparing for Magfest in Northern Virginia. Aand the holidays of course.

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm away because I'm busy!

The Saga of Kat is far from over

I just got back from AnimeUSA in Crystal City and I met some amazing fan based buisness people inspired me to keep mushing on ahead. So I thought I'd start using this blog to the full of its potential. Hurray!

First off let me begin an online portfolio of my custom orders and personal cosplays.

These were a custom bulk order for the anime convention Anime Mid-Atlantic LLC.

They are a recreation of their mascot Tanuki. They were given to the voice actors, industry representatives, and other invited guests as gifts. I love them dearly and I'd like the thank smoot for lending me the first season of Battlestar Galatica to watch while I churned out all 30 of these angry little raccoon girls. :)

Made from colored polymer clay, the tails were painted on. Email me if you want to order a bulk item like this.





These were made for a friend, you may recognize them as the pikmin from the nintendo game Pikmin.



Aren't they cute?!! Made from polymer clay, with a wire aramature.








I made this for myself. I love Ghsot in the shell so much, and I wanted to test what I could do with wire armatures. I think I may remake this guy when I get some free time, since I've learned so much about building armatures since then.

I still love this little tachkoma and it always makes me smile when I see it sitting next to my computer. So cute, I wish the picture showed that the large back section actually floats off the ground. I'll make it more obviously next time :)



This was my first commission from 8thdayanime.com

Her name is Autumn and I love her character design, because of these orders I've been able to invest in some sculpting books and materials. Keep your eye on future sculpts from them since I already see so many things I can improve upon.













This is Alice from 8thdayanime.com You can see her original character design on their site. Check out hte cute little demon on her pigtail!


















I need to get back to work but I'll post more in the next few weeks. Now I'm off to make christmas charms for the etsy store. As always any questions can be sent to me at dragonkuh@aol.com