New Baby Rat Sculpture

I had intended for this to be part of yesterday's blog post but I still needed to put a few finishing touches on this new sculpture. Actually it's more like 3 sculptures in one setting. If you've seen my baby rat sculptures before you'll know that I like to take a realistic life-sized sculpted baby rat and put it in a cradle made from a household object like a tea cup or an altoids tin.

The latest one is an idea I've had floating around for a while, to nestle several inside a hollowed out book. Part of the problem for me is that I love books and the idea of destroying one is difficult for me, so I hit the local thrift store to find a book that I could feel okay with rendering unreadable. I found the perfect thing: Readers Digest condensed books. I have a strong aversion to abridging literature so these were perfect, they are plentiful, cheap, fairly thick, and hardcover. It's available in my Etsy shop.

Baby Rat Book Nest

Regretsy Book

The Regretsy book was released today and I am featured in it with my Baby Rat sculpture. Obviously since I'm posting this I fully appreciate the humor of the book and the Regretsy Blog and I look forward to my copy arriving (no I didn't have to buy one, I get one free for being in the book).

New Years News

So 2009 is almost over. This has been a real whirlwind year for me, the business has grown far faster and further than I ever expected. At the beginning of the year I had only a single line of cephalopod jewelry, the cuttlefish, and that has expanded to octopus, squid, and the nautilus. I've scrapped the old trilobite design for a new one and added horseshoe crabs and the specimen jars. My monthly sales have gone from around $300 a month to over $1000 monthly before the holidays and exceeded $2000 in both November and December.

Looking ahead to 2010 there's a load of stuff coming up. I just bought a new camera and I'll be redoing a lot of photos with it. I'll also be shooting with the intent of putting together an art book later this year that will be self-published (probably with Lulu.com) and hopefully a lot of fun.

Speaking of books, the Regretsy book is looking like it's coming together really fast and I'm probably going to be featured in it.

I have some new jewelry planned. One is a Cthulhu cameo pendant that will be press molded from polymer clay, fairly inexpensive and fast to produce. The other will be on the higher end. I've had some precious metal clay for a while and I'm hoping to get the silver cephalopods coming along soon.

In personal news, I'm looking for an apartment right now so I'm really excited about finally getting out on my own. Just me and my dog.

New Books Again

I love when boxes from Amazon arrive. This month I used my affiliate earnings to buy 3 books I've had my eye on for a while, Faux Surfaces in Polymer Clay, DIY: Design it Yourself, and Craft Inc.

I'm excited about doing some cool faux surface cuttlefish and stuff. The other two are more to help me on the business side of things and I'll be reviewing them on the Handmade Business Blog in the next few weeks.

New Books

I love my Amazon Associates account, once a month they pay me in gift certificates so I can indulge my book addiction (if someone clicks an amazon link from this blog or my Squidoo lenses and buys something I get a percentage). Last few months I've been getting astronomy related stuff but this month I got some clay related books.

I bought a metal clay kit back in February but haven't really wrapped my head around it yet, much different feel from polymer clay and it dried very rapidly (partly the dry winter air, I hope it won't be so bad this summer). The book has already answered some questions I had and it came with a free DVD that I need to watch soon.

The second is a book on polymer clay that I've been looking at for a while. It's all about different surface effects you can get with polymer clay. I'm always looking for new ways to finish my jewelry to give it different looks.

How to Build a Foamcore Bookstand

I was asked about how I made my bookstand tonight. I whipped up these plans and thought I should share it for anyone who would like to build one.

Click the image to view the full sized plans.