MSRaynsford

I made two of these large   boxes  before, they're quite the talking point at maker faires or other public appearances. I decided that I needed my own box (especially as the first two went to their rightful owners last week). It's currently a bit plain, I have made mine with an inlay on the lid which will hold something at a future point. Expect to see that as an individual project in the future.

Etsy allows people to request custom orders now. My first request was for some lizards as large as I can make them. I went through the process and basically it creates a one off private listing only visible by you and the requester. You get charged to list the item and you get charged when the customer accepts. There are 2 significant issues with this. If the customer decides not to accept the order I still get charged a listing fee Because the order is only visible between me and the customer, if I make an item like this which I think other people might like, I now have to go and list it again and get charged a second listing fee. Of course this has no effect on people who come to the blog direct but it's a minor irritation for my etsy sales and hopefully other people reading this might think about heading straight to the public listing for their custom orders.

I took Eli to the weekend event with me, just for an afternoon and that was certainly enough. I wanted him to have a weapon though so I made him this wooden effect sword from LD45 plastizote. It's just painted instead of latexed and isoflexed so the colour rubbed off pretty quickly but as you can see he absolutely loved it and the whole experience.

I've made these before but now I have a 40W laser and some nicer 6mm laser ply I thought it was worth trying them again. They're much better in the larger size but I'm going to revamp them to change some features around and make them better still.

After the sticky failure of Lino  we switched to laser rubber to get the thistle stamps done. Large stamps like this are less than fun. 3 hours of lasering for the A4 stamp and 90 minutes for the A5. All the while stinky rubber smells waft around the garage. Maybe I'm just getting fussy in my old age but I might need some serious convincing before taking on other large stamps.

Apparently at the start of Iron Man 2, Tony Stark shows the 'original' arc that supposedly was used in the first film. The thing that amuses me is that the arc is different to the one used in the first film. I've not watched the film since to confirm if this is true but I was sent some screen caps by a fan who requested a custom arc to match that one. I duly laid out the details and made the arc and because it's a simple job gave away a custom arc for the same price as the normal ones. Somebodies lucky day.

It was a bit of a quiet week around here, that was largely due to being very busy and then going away for the weekend. I made up some stock of LRP items and went off to the field in an effort to drum up some business. It wasn't the most successful weekend in terms of sales but I wasn't exactly trying and I'm hoping that some people will be coming to me with commissioned work shortly. In other news I'm now doing some secret work. I was contacted by a friend of the stars, someone who makes magic tricks for magicians, so by extension I now make magic tricks for magicians. I've signed non disclosure agreements and everything. It's exciting times but I do feel a bit sad that I won't be able to show you guys everything all of the time. Guess I'll just have to increase my productivity to compensate for it.