#bydrawingbynumbers

Neeew project up! This one is so different from my other work that I almost feel like I should apologize for veering so far away from my keychains and decor, but it's awesome and I am not sorry for making it.

So this one is a cat scratcher that looks like a bed. I've got it up for sale on Etsy and I'm planning to put together the digital files for sale as well in the near future so if you're interested in that it's next on my list.

I was inspired by those laser cut pieces where they put together a bunch of layers to make a 3D shape and cat scratchers are putting together a bunch of layers of cardboard together anyway, right? So why not make it a bit more interesting, right? Well it turns out the reason is that it's way more complicated and took me FOREVER to get right but now here we are. I had to make a 3D model in blender, slice it up by the appox thickness of the cardboard, convert those slices to vectors, cut out each layer individually, engineer a frame to help me put it together, and all of those steps involved some trial, error, and redesigning. I'm happy with the result, but also relieved to be able to move on to the next project.

Finally finished another project to go up for sale! You can get these gator toys here and fiddle with it yourself the way I have been constantly since I first got the prototype working. I'm planning on releasing a digital file for it as well but I wanted to get the physical product listing up as soon as I could.

I've been in a bit of a slump for the past few months, I've been working on lots of things but none of them came together the way I needed them to, so I think I got a bit discouraged and lost my motivation. I was working on this one as something small to try and just get the ball rolling again, but while doing that I also started taking a local class of building a business, and I've been getting a lot of advice on what to try with my shop.

Ghosty Glow in the Dark Keychains are up! I was going to wait until closer to Halloween, but I've been informed that it is close enough! I think it's just been so hot here that I didn't even register how close to fall we were. I'm looking forward to it not being insanely hot out!

I have been so busy this month getting things set for vending machines and markets and holidays in general that I almost forgot to post about this one entirely.

Last year I came up with these twist clips for putting Christmas lights on the tree that can clip directly to a branch, hold multiple light strands and even have ornaments hung from them, and actually look nice! Why has no one come up with a way to fix Christmas lights to your tree that looks nice and not just bleh! I spent so much time searching online for it before I decided I'd just have to make it myself.

This is a surprisingly common refrain for how my projects start, you would think that as a species we would have long since invented everything but it turns out not even close.

Finally finished these Bookshelf Bookends. Figuring out a way to paint all those individual books in a way that didn't take forever and drive up the price way too much involved some creative problem solving, but it worked out in the end. Having a list of projects to work on turns out to pretty helpful for avoiding anxiety-inducing news, especially when it's something you can work on by hand so you aren't in a position to be constantly checking different news feeds.

Now I have Chompy Gators along with the Fidget Gators. My Etsy listing is live here. I think I've gotten the alligators out of my system for a bit now, but I have a looong list of other projects to see how many I can get through this summer.

New Etsy stuff! It's post earrings, sorry for all those out there who don't have pierced ears (including me), but I had a ton of earring posts I really needed to use and at least they are still pretty cute to look at. These actually got done a while ago since they're basically cute doodles I cut out of the extra material I had from other projects, but it took me a while to get around to the extra little bits like the cards and photos while I was also doing bigger projects.

Was gonna post these last week but I think that last week was a mess for a lot of us. Here are some icy pine branch earrings I made from laser cut acrylic, on sale on Etsy here.