Sea Otter Ornament Video

I had a little fun playing with animoto this morning and made this short video for my sea otter ornaments. My last holiday shipment will be sent out Thursday morning (Dec 20) so you only have today and tomorrow to get in any last minute orders.

Quick Announcements

Lots going on so I'm just going to list everything real quickly.

• I'm at the Portland Flea-for-All this weekend (Nov 17-18).
• I'm at the Portland Flea-for-All Friday-Sunday next weekend too (Nov 23-25)
• Also next weekend is Black Friday, I'll be holding a 10% off sale throughout the Etsy shop Friday-Monday (Nov 23-25) the sale will also extend to my booth at the Flea-for-All. And because I'm a sucker for puns I'm calling it the Holiday Tentacular! If you are impatient the sale will go live sometime Thanksgiving night instead of at midnight so I can settle into my turkey coma.
• New stuff is being added to the shop right now. Along with new cephalopod jewelry there's also tentacle earrings. seashell necklaces, and super adorable sea otter ornaments.

River Otter Ornament Video

I recently finished making a cute little river otter Christmas ornament for a customer who requested one. When I sat down to sculpt it I decided why not make a timelapse video. Okay, it was also an excuse to use the new HD webcam I got. I hope you enjoy it and if you want to request a custom ornament or jewelry please contact me. If you want it in time for Christmas I need to have the request by November 15th.

And the winner is...

So the final tally for voting on the new animal ornament is in. The Dumbo Octopus won.

However I already make octopus ornaments so really that is just a variation not a new animal. So here is what I'm going to do. I will make a dumbo octopus variation on my octopus ornaments but I still need a new ornament design so that brings us to the runner up: the Sea Otter.

So I'll be making otters as well as dumbo octopus. I hope to have some of the new ornaments of both designs in the shop within the next couple weeks.

Holiday Preparations

I'm ramping up production for the holidays and I'm asking for input. Every year I add to the roster of animal ornaments than I make, like the platypus and ceolocanth. Last year I added a beaver thanks to my brother mistaking on of the platypuses for a beaver.

This year I'm letting my fans pick. Go over to facebook and vote on which animal you want to see me make this year. If you don't like the options you can add your own. I'll use the animal with the most votes by Sept. 26 (in the event of a tie, I'll be the deciding vote).

Tree Octopus

It's funny the way ideas will suddenly hit you. I've had a couple octopus sculpts sitting on a shelf for the past month or so that I wasn't sure what do do with them. I made them for Perma-Pets but misjudged their size so I couldn't quite fit them into the jars. Then last night I remembered the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and I realized the octopuses would be the perfect size for Christmas (or Squidmas) ornaments. A few minutes later I'd added wire loops to the tops of their heads and ribbons for hanging.

Red Tree Octopus

Peachy Tree Octopus

Animal Ornaments

Put together a little video on my animal ornaments. Hope your enjoy it.

Xmas Beaver Ornaments

I actually started making these and listed them in my Etsy shop last week but neglected to write a post. Every year I try to come up with a different animal Christmas ornament to add to the seasonal section. I now have platypuses, ceolocanths, frogs (discontinued as a regular item but available by request), and this year's addition: the Xmas Beaver!

Yes, I'm having a very juvenile glee at showing people my beaver. I apparently have an inner 12-year-old boy despite never having been one.

So why a beaver? Rude jokes aside it actually is because of a misunderstanding by my brother. He had seen one of my platypuses briefly looking at my website and he asked me if I still had beaver ornaments. I said no, I have platypuses, but the idea stuck in my head the rest of the day and finally I just decided that I'd have to make them. Seeing that beavers and platypuses have very similar shapes since they both live in freshwater environments it wasn't hard to figure out how to sculpt one. The heads are a bit different and the legs of beavers don't have webbed flipper-like feet but the bodies are pretty much the same and the tails are the same shape though they have different textures.

New ornaments in the making

Original froggy ornament

So a while back I made this frog ornament. Cute but a bit rough. However lots of people liked it and it has since sold AND I've had a request for another one.

So I've been looking around locally to try to find clear glass ornaments to use without much luck. However I got lucky over the weekend, I went down to Portland and stopped into the Joann's there to get more of the varnish I use on my jewelry and of course they had exactly the ornaments I needed in the holiday section.

Hooray for big craft stores. I wish there was one a little closer to me but that's what I get for living in a small town in the middle of rural Maine.

8 little glass balls for frog ornaments

Here are the new glass balls. I'm planning on making a few changes to the design. First of all wire instead of fishing line to hang the tadpoles inside the balls, ribbon instead of leather cord for hanging, and maybe glue some beads in the bottom of the ball to look like eggs (haven't decided on that yet). Also I'm thinking of not just plain old green frogs but maybe a few of the really colorful tropical rain forest frogs as well.

Behold the Xmas Platypus

This idea has been floating around in my head for actually a couple years now and I just never found the time to do it. I was thinking this week that I should start getting ready for holiday sales and what better way to start? I don't take Christmas or other holidays seriously so I like strange and silly stuff. He's sculpted in polymer clay and painted in acrylics with holly leaves and berries on his tush.

This is up for sale, you can find it in my Etsy shop.

Gearing Up for the Holidays

I'm working on new stuff for the holidays, mostly jewelry, some ornaments, and small sculpture. What would you like to see more of?

I don't know if I've announced this before but if you wish your order to be gift wrapped just tell me so in the notes when you order or drop me an email right after ordering to let me know. Please don't wait long, I'm likely to have already packaged it up and shipped it. I can also include a card if you let me know what you'd like to be written on it.

Green Dragon Ornament

I sculpted this a few days ago and rather like how it turned out even though it wasn't what I planned. Originally the dragon was on a glass ball that I painted the inside so it was all gold and green. I kind of dropped the ornament after baking the dragon so I had to carefully remove the dragon from the broken glass and made the egg to attach him to. I only dropped it about 6 inches onto the counter taking it out fo the toaster oven but it doesn't take much to break a piece of hot glass.

The dragon is sculpted from various shades of premo polymer clay tinted with pearl ex pigments. The egg is scrap premo painted in acrylics. It's about 3 inches tall with a satin ribbon hanger. It is up for sale here.

Christmas Goody

So Christmas went pretty well, everyone got sculpted ornaments from me. My best friends and her husband especially like the dragon ornament I made them. My parents were sneaky this year, I had no idea they knew I was looking into a toaster oven for baking my smaller sculpts with. So they got me this very nice one, which is much better than the cheap $20 one I was looking at which was much smaller. Now I don't have to feel so guilty about the wasted electricity or possible fumes from baking my sculpts in the kitchen oven. I'll still need to use the kitchen oven for the occational really large piece but most of the time I won't need to.

If you look to the right you can see that I've added a Tip Jar. If you enjoy my blog or my artwork please consider leaving a donation or better yet purchasing something from my Gift Page to get something for your money.

2007 Retrospective

So now that 2007 is nearly over it's time to start reflecting on what I've accomplished. Most likely I wouldn't have thought of sharing this if not for Troy McDevitt from the Clubhouse forums who posted a thread asking everyone to cram their 2007 portfolio into one 600x400 pixel image.

Now there's still a little while to go in 2007 so I have a few small projects that I may get finished before the end of the year but nothing significant. While I was compiling this I was able to reminisce over the creation of each piece, what I learned, and the progress I've made. With everything I sculpt there's always something in the end I know could be better but even so I'm really happy with the rate at which I'm improving. As long as I keep learning and improving that's what I think is the most important thing.

Going left to right from the top: Satyr (January), Octopuppy (January), Perma-Pets (ongoing series, started February), Squid (August), Odin's Runesong (September), Lionfish Mermaid (November), Baby Rat (May), Hatching Turtle (July), Frog Ornament (November), Cthulhu's Gems (ongoing series, started June), Cephalopod Pendants (November), Gargoyles (ongoing series, started May).

Doing a Good Deed

The local middle school always has a charity project for the year, where they pick a charity and do events throughout the year to raise money for it. Part of this is the annual charity art auction right before christmas. I've donated 2 pairs of gargoyle ornaments in decorative tins. I hope they're a hit!

This year they are raising money for the Pine Tree Camp, a camp in Rome, Maine, that gives children and adults with disabilities the chance to experience camp activities such as swimming, boating, and team sports. They are currently building Maine's first ever fully handicapped accessible treehouse! Which is just the coolest thing ever.

The auction will be December 12th at Telstar Middle School in Bethel, Maine, from 5pm-8pm. I'm going to try very hard to be there to talk to the kids running the show and see their artwork.

Dollar Store Find

So I was with my best friend Thursday night and on the way to her house we stopped at the dollar store. She's cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time for her crazy in-laws and the dollar store had a bunch of cooking stuff in for the holidays, she needed some pie plates and a turkey baster.

I wasn't planning to get anything until we got up by the checkout and saw these. For $1 for 4 ornaments I had to grab a package. I figure that even if my decorating fails I'm only out 25¢, some time, a bit of clay and paint. I'm thinking that the first one I do will be based on how much these look like clear bubbles. On the outside I'm going to sculpt a frog and inside suspended on some clear mono-filament will be a few little tadpoles.