Making and Making

Roo investigates an Etsy product photoshoot:


In between important games of fetch, there is a lot of making that goes on in my little apartment. This week, it's been making silkscreen frames by hand, burning new screens, screenprinting onto shirts for friends and for the shop, drawing in my sketchbooks, making clay creatures for my other shop (which is brand new - check it out!), and working with metal clay for the first time. Everything was loads of fun up until my friend Julie and I decided it was time to try out the metal clay - yikes! It was harder than we thought it would be, and we realized we should have watched more tutorials or read up more on how to use it first... The clay kept drying on us and cracking, despite adding water, and we found it to be very temperamental. Despite all of our stressing, we were both able to make some things we were happy with. Now comes the scary firing part, which we will do later next week - eep! We have a torch and everything.... I'll post again with some (hopefully) finished jewelry pieces later in the week!

I actually made a few fun things for myself this week: a hot pink tee and a little sculpture! It's rare for me to keep things I make lately, since I am putting more effort into selling my work, but certain things I just can't part with:



In other news, things have been really, really good lately! My sales on Etsy have been steadily increasing, and that keeps me SO motivated to keep going and make more goodies. It's so nice to know my art is finding wonderful new homes, and I love the sweet emails and feedback I get from happy customers. It really makes my day! I'm so encouraged and full of new ideas, and I'm excited about the things to come for my shops on Etsy and for my wholesale and consignment deals. I ordered a ton of new shirts to print on that should arrive next week, so I'm looking forward to that and to trying my hand at making my very own lip balm. That's been something I've wanted to try out for a while, and I found a bunch of information online about it. I am totally addicted to lip balm, and it's so awesome that I can now make all the flavors that I rarely find in the stores (like gingerbread cookie, banana, and strawberry-banana!). Julie and I are ordering our supplies for the lip balm soon, so I will keep you posted on how that goes, and hopefully I can make a YouTube video of the process once I get it down.

This week, two old friends are coming to stay with me for a few days, and I am SO excited! We will be hitting up all those great Gainesville haunts (The Top!), going thrifting, and catching up. It will mean taking some time off from my little one-woman business, but that's a good thing, since I'm becoming a bit of a workaholic. :)