The Mouse Market

Playing Dress Up Sugar Cookie Mice Earrings

Over the past six months, I’ve received a handful of emails from businesses requesting wholesale or consignment information, and I’ve been very reluctant to do that sort of thing, partly because I don’t want to sell my pieces at 50% less than what I can make in my Etsy shop, since I’m already making such a slim profit margin given the time that goes into each piece, but also because I want to maintain exclusivity of my work. But…a few days ago one of the co-owners of a lovely gallery in Seattle, Assemble Gallery and Studio, contacted me about consigning some pieces for the holiday season, and after paying a visit to their website I fell in love with the place. Their workshop/lecture listings alone was enough to make me swoon–sewing! Bookbinding! Printmaking! *sigh*

Long story short, I’ve decided to work with them on a consignment basis this fall/winter, and while I will likely return to selling pieces strictly in my shop after the holidays are over, I’m definitely much more open to selling a select amount of pieces in various shops and galleries during the busy gift-buying season. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes, and if anyone has any wholesale/consignment tales of their own to share, comment away!

Red Velvet Cake

In other exciting news, I was finally able to purchase a pound of Silicone Plastique, which means that I can make high-quality molds for regularly-shaped pieces, something for which I previously had to shell out $4-6 per mold. That also means that I might start selling molds in my shop in the not-so-distant future, and I’m toying with the idea of creating mold and tutorial sets as well, i.e. a cupcake tutorial with a cupcake mold, donut tutorials with molds, etc.

Last bit of news: I created a holiday meal flyer for my upcoming show, advertising a selection of festive entrées and sides that customers can pre-order for the holidays. Since I won’t have time (or display dishes) to make turkeys or hams in time for the show, I at least wanted to show off a handful of pictures that I took of my recent custom order to gauge what sort of interest exists for such holiday pieces. We’ll see how it goes!

Blueberry Pancakes Custom Order

Last night, I wasn’t in the mood to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so we ended up making an assortment of quick and easy side dishes to munch on, including some tempeh strips tossed in peanut-satay sauce (the tempeh was made locally!), sweet potato wedges with honey-butter sauce, and the best pancakes in the entire universe. No, really. I’ve been collecting recipes from Yoga Journal, Vegetarian Times, and other sources for a few months, stowing them all away in a binder, but I’ve never used them, which is pretty silly, so last night, I planned out our week’s menu from the binder, and we tried the White Pig Blueberry Pancakes, a recipe from a B&B/animal sanctuary in Virginia.

Pizza Pendants Custom Order

The pancakes have more sugar than normal, which is undoubtedly why I like them so much, and they’re great with non-wheat flours, too, such as spelt or oat flour. You’ll need 2 c. flour, 6 T. cane sugar, 2 T. nonaluminum baking powder, 1/4 t. salt, 2 c. milk (almond or other non-dairy milks work great), and 2 c. blueberries, or whatever fruit you’d like to use. Combine all of the ingredients, except for the milk and fruit, in a bowl and whisk to combine. Slowly whisk in the milk and combine until smooth, adding more milk if necessary (don’t over mix, or your pancakes will be tough). Cook your pancakes on a greased griddle, topping each pancake with fruit before flipping it over to cook the other side. These pancakes are so light and fluffy with a deliciously sweet flavor.

Packaging for My Etsy Shop

On a less edible note, I finished a custom order for a stack of mini blueberry pancakes, which were supposed to mimic this photo. I’m quite happy with them, and hopefully, I’ll be able to keep my energy up today in order to finish a set of miniatures to fill up the last blank spot in my show display. I can’t believe that we’ll be leaving next Thursday! I’m really looking forward to the show, but I’m also super excited about our side trip to Knoxville. I hope the city appeals to us, because it certainly would be nice to finally settle on a place to move next year!

The Finished Holiday Spread

I was so tired while writing yesterday’s post that I don’t really feel as if I did my recent holiday meal project justice, considering that it took an entire week of painstaking mini work to complete. I’ve uploaded a ridiculous amount of photos to Flickr, so be sure to take a peek, and I’ll go into a bit more detail in today’s post about the things that I learned while making these foods.

Turkey w/ Finished Sage

As I’ve mentioned before, translucent clay is your best friend when making mini meats (and most foods, really). The holiday ham was primarily translucent clay, and I created two mixes, one with a dab of darker pink, the other with a dab of lighter pink, and I used those two mixes in a Skinner blend, which was then used to make the ham. I shudder at the vision of my earlier ham, which was so embarrassing that I ended up dismantling it and using the pineapples and cherries for another project.

Cool Weather Vegetable Crudités

I used to be quite averse to using paint of any kind in my work, and I can trace that silly rule back to one of Angie Scarr’s wonderful polymer clay how-to books (and they really are wonderful–it was my own fault for working the no-paint suggestion into my mini manifesto). There is something incredibly impressive about creating intricate color patterns solely with clay, and for the most part, I never paint details onto my work, but for the holiday turkey, I wanted to give the sage leaves a fuzzier, silvery appearance, and a white-blue paint mix, dabbed on with a dry brush, made sense. I’m excited to experiment with more carefully placed paints here and there in my work for added realism!

Holiday Meal Detail

Finally, in many of my recent projects, I’ve begun using crushed artist pastels to create peels and rinds, rather than a thin sheet of clay. For example, the apples in the turkey garnish and the radishes in the vegetable plate were both created by forming a ball of translucent and white clay, shaping it as desired, and brushing the outside with pigments. For the radishes, I baked them after coloring and sliced the tops off after they cooled. If you need to add details to the inside of the piece before baking, like I did with the apple halves, which required seeds and texture, you can slice before baking, but be sure to use a very sharp blade and a swift motion, or the pigments can get “dragged” into the white interior of the piece.

So, what holiday projects do you have in mind? I know that I’ll be making a small assortment of holiday turkeys, hams and side dishes for my shop, and I also have a project involving gingerbread, which will have to remain a secret for the time being. Hope you’re having a lovely week!

The (Almost) Finished Turkey

I know I’ve been neglecting the ol’ blog lately, but I just finished the holiday meal custom order that I’ve been working on for the past week, so I should have a bit more time in my schedule. I do need to replace a handful of foods to fill up a few holes that have appeared in my show display thanks to Etsy sales, but that shouldn’t take me too terribly long. After that, my goal is to make as many jewelry pieces as possible in anticipation of the September show, since I’ll only have two weeks in between my show in Louisville and the September event.

If things go according to plan and and I have a little wiggle room for modest spending after the show, I’m going to purchase the license for my online shop, and slowly but surely, you’ll see some changes begin to unfold at the Mouse Market. I know I’ve explained my tendency to get bored with the look of things from time to time, and the fires of change have certainly been lit beneath my behind, judging by the fact that all of my recent journaling has focused on my plan for Mouse makeovers.

Not-Yet-Varnished Veggies & Potatoes

For one thing, I’ve continued to experiment with the watercolors here and there, so hopefully I’ll be ready to launch my revised banner relatively soon. With the new banner, I’m aiming for a different “color atmosphere” with bright, yet soft, colors taking center stage, much like the decorating collages I put together in an earlier post (the pastry shop and kitchen collages). My goal is to transfer this color change to my Etsy shop as well so the photos look a bit more tied together.

Before I sign off, I want to leave you with a few random tidbits that might be of interest:

• If you have an Etsy shop, you might find this application super helpful.
• For a cute and clever use for Moo’s Mini Cards, check out how Etsy seller, Tamar, incorporates the cards into her product packaging.
• My Redfield Beauty Tomato Earrings were featured in a Try Handmade post, and the website is a wealth of handcrafted eye candy, so be sure to check it out.
• From the above mentioned post, I followed a link to a seed-selling Etsian, the Bear Foot Shaman. Their shop is awesome!

Happy Wednesday, and I’ll be back in mini-making action tomorrow!

Holiday Ham Extraordinaire

I’ve been working on a custom order for the past couple of days, and I’ve finished the holiday ham (along with a few other Thanksgiving sides). I’m thankful that I received this commission now, because I greatly underestimated the amount of time the ham would take. Now that I have a more realistic timetable, I have a much better idea of what to charge for future holiday hams, which is handy, because I was planning on making a few hams, turkeys, and various sides after my next show in preparation for fall and winter holidays. (See more pics of the meal on Flickr.)

Sweet Potato Casserole

I’m really excited with the way this order is shaping up. Most of the dishes required techniques that I had never tried before, and it’s been a serious challenge, which is good for my art. This is probably going to be the shortest post I’ve ever written, because apparently, challenges are pretty tiring, and I’m beat. More tomorrow…

Chicken with Mustard-Cream Sauce

A couple of days ago, I received a very unexpected email with a job offer for a full-time position with benefits and, for my lifestyle, a very comfortable salary, and after obsessing for most of the afternoon and realizing that I was getting nowhere with that neurotic method, I decided to meditate. By the end of the evening, I felt confident with my decision to turn down the job, and even though it was quite scary to walk away from financial stability, I know I’m making the right choice.

What’s interesting is that while talking the situation over with a friend, he helped me to realize that underlying my conflicting feelings about whether or not to take the job was a strong desire to put more money towards my homesteading goal. Right now, after my bills are paid and a good chunk of money goes back into my business, I have a bit left over for savings, and this is with a lifestyle that involves virtually zero eating out, no drinking, and rare, inexpensive purchases (e.g. a $3 tank top from a thrift store to replace rapidly disintegrating yoga gear). The point being, a little extra money could mean quite a lot in terms of our timetable for purchasing land and breaking ground on our cob house.

A Trip to the Farmers Market

So, last night I did some journaling and came up with a tentative plan for shaping up my finances. First, I need to know precisely how I spend my time, in terms of work, so starting Monday, I’m going to track my hourly activities for one week. From there, I should be able to pinpoint areas where I’m frittering away too much time online, for example, or ways that I can prioritize more important tasks on a daily basis. Some initial thoughts are that if I’m more disciplined about the time I allow myself to read blogs or drool over food pictures, I’ll be able to accomplish more in a shorter day (what a novel concept, eh?), and if I find that I’m only spending 10% of my time promoting my work, then perhaps I can increase my marketing efforts over time.

The Finished Bento Hutch Drawers

Some specific ideas that I hope to set in motion include rephotographing older items in my shop to ensure that my earlier (crappier) photos aren’t preventing items from selling, particularly during holiday gift-buying season, getting my shop up and running on this site–again, so any snags can be ironed out before holiday shopping begins in earnest–touching up my product descriptions and including links to similar items in every write up, developing my first cohesive product line and creating advertising to release on various blogs and sites to promote that line, and working on a wider variety of tutorials. If I can tackle these tasks within the next 3-4 weeks, I should have a good head start for the holidays. What are your plans for preparing your shops for the gift-buying season?

P.S. If you’re in need of eye candy, check out this absolutely wonderful photography portfolio.

Deluxe Bento Prep Station

For those of you who subscribe to the Etsy newsletters and/or frequent the forums, this might be old news, but I just found out that Etsy shops will be getting a spiffy makeover, including wider pages with bigger thumbnails in gallery view, a less obtrusive shop announcement, and a shifting of the sidebar. You can read more about it here, and be sure to check out the screenshots–they really do look quite fab! (And speaking of Etsy, if you have a moment please check out this lovely blog post featuring yours truly!)

Singing, Happy Eggs

In similarly exciting news, I’ve finished all but one piece for my dollhouse show, which is a lucky thing, too, because I just received a commission for a tasty holiday meal that will take a good amount of time (and I’m so eager to see the finished meal!). My last miniature show piece is…[drum roll, please] a bento-making station. I bought a green kitchen hutch as part of my last supply order, and I’ve been itching to try my hand at mini bento for quite some time, and the hutch has kindly agreed to participate in my little experiment.

Bento Kitty & BBQ Pork Buns

[Update: I wrote this post last night, and this morning I went ahead and filled the cabinet, so everything is completed with the exception of the cookbook.] My tentative plan is to fill the top shelf with little metal bento tins and a box of rainbow colored tissue papers (for decoration and presentation of the finished bento boxes); the middle shelf will feature two bowls of dyed rice, a little glass jar filled with chopsticks in an array of bright colors, and a platter of hard boiled eggs with little kawaii faces; and the bottom shelf/counter will contain a bento tin in the process of being assembled, a cutting board with a cookie cutter and various food shapes, and two plates, one with colorful veggie pieces, the other with animal-shaped buns. There are also two (very shallow) drawers under the counter, and I might design a little cover for a bento cookbook to slip inside one of them.

Tiny, Little Drawers

In the future, I’ll buy a lighter colored cabinet or table, because the dark green of the hutch wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Adding decorative paper to the inside of the shelves certainly helped, but I’m excited to see what my next piece will look like with a white or pale pastel cabinet. For whatever reason, I’m really enjoying creating the complete food sets at the moment (such as the fully stocked pastry case), and while I know I certainly couldn’t make a living selling these sorts of things exclusively, I’m curious to know if an entire roombox with removable accessories would be of interest to buyers. I’d love to make a fairy tale box!

Mix 'n' Match Ice Cream Hair Pins

The other day, I was flipping through an issue of Yoga Journal, and there was a piece by the editor in which she was discussing the mental shift between having to do something and getting to do something. She says, “The stuff I sometimes complain about ‘having’ to do (making school lunches, finding time for meditation, meeting my deadlines) is actually the stuff I ‘get’ to do (nourish my loved ones, enjoy a relatively calm mind, create a magazine that helps people enjoy their practice).”

Birthday Sprinkles Ice Cream Earrings

Then, after putting in a good ten hours of mini-making yesterday, I decided to treat myself to a movie, and I popped up a bowl of popcorn and settled in to watch a film called Paris (I’m a big fan of the director, Cédric Klapisch). The movie ends with (spoiler alert!) the main character riding through the streets of Paris in the back of a cab en route to the hospital where he’s scheduled to have a heart transplant, and as the faces slide past his window, he remarks at how lucky everyone is just to have this opportunity to be alive and to go about their daily activities, temporarily oblivious to the fact that, one day, they will die.

Double Fudge Cake Earrings

That might sound a tad morbid, but what I took away from the YJ article and the film was this overwhelming feeling of gratitude for the fact that, even when things are a little crummy, maybe with bills breathing down my neck or too much work and too little time, I’m alive, I have loving family and friends, a roof over my head, good food in my belly (a great gerbil ), and the list goes on. When work gets long and tiring, I can remind myself that I “get” to make miniatures for a living, and I have the strength in my hands and eyes that enables me to do what I love and share it with wonderful people. And if that’s not something to be grateful for, then I don’t know what is!

Fairy Tale Tableware

As you may have guessed, I’m not serving on jury duty today–yippee! There’s still a chance that I’ll be called in tomorrow or Friday, but after that, I’m a free Mouse. Last night, I finished a few more mini pieces for the show, and all I have left to do is a produce basket filled with…well, produce, and a green kitchen hutch that will be filled with as-yet-undecided minis. I might do a cool dessert preparation station or something along those lines. Then, it’s back to crazy jewelry production as I feverishly attempt to increase my inventory for the September show.

Japanese Tea Time Collection

I received an exciting package in the mail two days ago: my very first Re-ment pieces! I’ve been searching for 1/6 scale dishes in which to cast bowl and plate molds for future use, and these were the only pieces that I could find. I know there has got to be another source for 1/6 scale dishes, so if anyone has any info, I’d greatly appreciate it. I’m particularly excited about the strawberry picnic basket and the fairy tale plates. My plan is to create tasty-looking 1/6 scale treats to go along with each Re-ment piece, leaving them unglued so shoppers can reuse the plates and foods however they choose, and sell each as a little set. (That is, unless I decide to keep them for myself, because they’re so darn cute.)

Merry Strawberry Picnic Set

One last bit of news: It looks like my online shop launch is going to be postponed. I’ve been struggling with WP e-commerce, and I was beginning to wonder if was merely going insane (still a possibility, I suppose) or if the software was buggy. After reading a bunch of reviews, I believe it’s the latter, and the WordPress plugin that seems to be earning the best reviews from developers is Shopp. I’ll have to wait until after my show, because the license is $55, but after reading through all the specs, it sounds pretty wonderful and just what I’m looking for. I’ll probably buy another domain name just for my shop, so I don’t have to worry about separate themes for different pages, but everything will still be accessible from this site. I can’t wait to have this nonsense finished!

P.S. Later this afternoon, I should have the chocolate cake earrings, and a bunch of new ice cream accessories posted on Flickr and in my Etsy shop, so be sure to take a peek.

Chocolate Orange Pudding Prep

Augh! I so do not want to report to jury duty this week! I have so much to do before my show, particularly since we’ll be gone for a full five days, and when we get back, I’ll have less than two weeks to prepare for my biggest show of the year thus far. Plus, sales have been a tad slow for a week, most likely because I haven’t been listing much, and I desperately need to have money put away to cover rental car and hotel costs for the show. I’m sure in the grand scheme of things jury duty is a tad more important than miniature cupcakes, but I’m still feeling a little stressed. It’s possible that I might luck out and not be called in, but considering that the group of jurors before mine was called in today, it’s not looking good. Fingers crossed that my brush with justice can be postponed…

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Earrings

Last night, I managed to finish three dessert preparation boards, and today I need to complete two sugar cookie prep boards, a produce basket, and one red velvet cake. I’m also working on a host of new jewelry pieces, including more sugar cookie earrings, rainbow and chocolate cake accessories, rainbow ice cream earrings, and new sushi pieces. Whew! Speaking of cookies, I’ve been feeling a little limited by my choice of miniature cookie cutters, and I might try making one really good version of different cookie shapes out of clay, creating a silicone mold with the shapes, and using those molds for new cookies. When I have time, that is.

Tiramisu Prep

For now, my goal is to wrap up the last few miniatures for the dollhouse show (I’m so close!), and then I can focus all of my energies on creating enough jewelry pieces for the September monster of a show, as well as fitting in a few days of tutorial work so I can release the next issue before the end of this month. Stay tuned, and be sure to take a peek at my Etsy shop and Flickr for more items and pics!