Live from the Workbench 02-07-2016

It has been a busy few weeks in the studio! Although I’m still an expert at overestimating how much work (or blogging) I can accomplish in a given timeframe, I was pleasantly surprised by the output. This bodes well for me working my way through the body box this year…

Or at least getting a handle on the whole concept of ‘finish X before you buy more Y’. The current goal is to only buy more items when a custom job requires it or when I am replacing something that was sold in the Etsy store. *crosses fingers*

Have-Dones

Escape Velocity and Rumtumtugger

I finished and posted Escape Velocity,  Rumtumtugger, a brindle corgi, and the copper sabino draft head to Etsy. I had planned on posting more, but I’m oddly reluctant to list more than one thing a day and I had a bunch of auto-renew listings already in the queue.

I’m done with the auto-relists until April, so this gives me plenty of time to start working through my backlog.

I finished building the cardboard flat storage drawers on the photo table, which you can see in the studio photo above. Some of the drawers are a little crooked, but by the time I got to the bottom I had the technique down. Thankfully the off-kilter shelves hold flat things just fine and means I finally have room for all those plaster castings! (Note to self: This doesn’t mean I need to run out and cast more.)

Gesso Fail

I polished up and posted on how much each plaster magnets costs to make and updated the Etsy store to match. There are still a few sculptures that I need to get an average weight on and a few more magnet combinations I’d like to experiment with. So it’s a post-in-progress, but I seem to have a lot of those recently.

I learned the hard way that is a BIG difference between the two Liquitex gessos! The Basics is almost transparent and so rough and has to be sanded after applying. The Professional is smooth and creamy and what I’ve used for white markings in the past. So it looks like I’ll be heading back to the store to get more of the ‘real’ stuff. *mutters*

All in all not a bad few weeks… now I just have to get some more photos done so I can start posting things again! 😀

Will-Do’s

Bringing Balance to the Etsy Force… err Store!

My general plan for the Etsy story is to try and post a model horse every fourth item, so when you look at the gallery on the main store page there’s plenty of horses in sight!

But that means to balance out all the plaster magnets I’ve got done I need to get some horses finished up to match. The black-bay splash overo Thoroughbred is almost done and as soon as I decide how much chrome the red bay Thoroughbred needs that one will follow. *ponders*