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

Bringing back "Other" payment option

A couple months ago I eliminated "Other" as an option for checkout in my Etsy shop so people can pay via Google Checkout. The reason at the time was that not enough people were using it to pay with Google Checkout but a fair number of people were selecting it by mistake when they really wanted to use Paypal.

Due to the ridiculous problems Regretsy has had with Paypal this week I'm bringing the option back and encouraging buyers to use it. I have to continue offering Paypal since it's the only online payment option actually integrated with Etsy's checkout and I can't afford to lose the sales if I removed it completely. Hopefully in the near future Etsy will finally offer integration with other payment services.

I know many Etsy sellers dislike Regretsy, I get it, I was featured on the blog too. I took it in the spirit of comedy and the idea that no publicity is bad publicity and I was even featured in the book. However regardless of how you feel about the content of the blog April has used it to raise a ton of money for some very worthy causes, including this recent one where 200 kids will get Christmas presents thanks to the reads of the blog going above and beyond the amount asked for to make it happen.