A week of new things to come!

Hello my friends and TGIF! I hope this week has treated you all well and that you are getting ready for a nice and relaxing weekend.

First, I just want to thank you all so much for the kind words and encouragement on my last blog post. It truly isn't always easy for me to be so open and vulnerable about my personal struggles with depression and anxiety and your support really does help lift my spirits.

In this new age of social media, that is an endless loop of curated and often times false narratives, we need to see more authenticty to remove the stigma of always having to be perfect and productive. Sometimes, life gets hard and overwhelming and it's totally okay to not be okay for a while as we process that and focus on healing. I hope sharing my experience last week was able to help someone who may also be feeling a bit lost right now.

Okay, now with that said, let's talk a little bit about my creative shenanigans this last week and what new handmade releases are coming next!

I was overjoyed that many of you loved my creepy cuties last week and are excited to see more characters with a similar vibe. I have been exploring some of my old designs to get inspiration and possibly resurrect some misfits of the past that fit the theme of this new collection. The clown costumes on my kitty and bunny last week had me thinking of my Freak Show dolls from 2017 and how those could look really cute painted in those vintage rose tones. I also wanted to explore creating something new and found myself digging through a box of unfinished projects and unused items.

Some of the struggle of being an artist is always finding yourself inspired by something at the time and making plans to create things based on those current inspirations. As you create and develop the idea that you have, you may find it isn't quite how you envisioned it. Perhaps you find you don't enjoy the process of making it and lose interest. Or you just become busy with other projects and it gets pushed aside and forgotten. In my case, this happens A LOT and I often times will feel guilty about abandoning an idea before its finished and leave it to pick up again later. This week I found some old potion bottles I was working on in October and it felt like a good time to revisit that idea and see what I would do with those bottles now. 

With the rise in interest of tiny trinkets I see a lot of people sharing jars and boxes of little items that they have collected. Often times I find them incredibly cute and fun to look at with all the unique textures and multicolor of items inside. So I thought it would be exciting to create some jars of my own and sculpt some of my characters to adorn the tops of these jars and really give them some personality! Functional art is always a great way to bring joy to someones day in more ways than one and with these little jars you can have a decor piece that is customizable to whatever you wish to put inside them! You can use candy, buttons, herbs, crystals, dried flowers, sprinkles, your cats whiskers or fur, the options are really endless! To give the jars even more personality I added some chains, charms and a bow which I think looks edgy and cute! I think I might film my process of making one of these jars so that if you are feeling inspired to create one, perhaps you can learn a trick or two from my process.

Other than creating these jars and sculpting some new characters for next weeks shop update I have been doing well. After an insane cold snap here is Wisconsin with temps getting to -30 with the wind chill, we are finally starting to see some, dare I say, "warmer" temperatures? It's sad when 17 degrees feels "warm" after such frigid temperatures, but here we are. The threat of exploding trees now behind us, I was able to spend more time with my family this week which is always nice and I look forward to going with my brother to a convention tomorrow that will host lots of vendors with old school 90's finds from video games, music, electronics, clothing and nostalgic toys and collectibles. I am excited to experience a blast from the past when life wasn't so depressing! *elder millennial problems*

I hope you have a very nice weekend and enjoyed reading a little bit about what's been going on in my studio this last week. Stay strange my friends, till next time!