"Have you ever tried doing markets? You should sell at markets!"
How many times have I heard this over the last five years? And I was never interested, because I didn't want to pay the table fee, or travel, or buy table decoration, when I could reliably sell everything I made online.
Oops! What happened??
Well, I stopped reliably selling everything online.
Aside from the limited ru...
2025-04-02 10:32:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Ok so trying to do weekly updates was an interesting challenge, and one that I mostly managed to stick to (let's ignore that one post that came the Monday after). But I'm not quite convinced that forcing weekly updates is the best model, as I'm not always interestingly productive (and honestly I feel like I'm just pouring all my anxiety into them). I decided to switch things up, and try posting whenever I'd finished something significant, instead. And then I made myself so busy that I couldn'...
2025-03-19 11:58:19 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been having loads of fun with the laser cutter recently. I took some time to sketch up a bunch of concepts for different earring (and maybe jacket patch?) designs. I've already implemented #3, #16 and #18, but I'd love your input on which ones to make next.
Every design has multiple layers, and some have more complicated construction than others. Here's a photo of one of the current designs, to give you an idea of what the finished product might look like.
2025-03-07 17:58:07 +0000 UTC
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My work week started early; I spent a few hours on Sunday having a huge workshop tidy, in preparation for hopefully getting in some new equipment.
I'm trying to do so many new things at the moment, and of course everything takes longer than I expect. I spent a bit of Monday catching up, and actually completed that big rainbow book from the other week.
While it was close enough to the end to take photos, I still needed to infill the covers: wrapping the leather around the boards leav...
I always want to start these with "a weird week" or "a slow week" or "not a very productive week". In my head, I'm never as productive as I should be. And yet I have friends (mostly software devs; I used to be in that industry too) making 4-6x the money that I do who tell me they're only putting in about 50% effort most of the time.
Anyway, not much to show this week....
I spent most of the first two days putting in applications for goth and alt markets around the area. I'm based ...
2025-02-16 18:14:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Bit of a weird week, this week. I recently bought a video camera for YouTubing. I saw the Sony ZV-1 recommended in a few places. It's several years old now but still a very popular choice, and I managed to get a second hand one in very good condition. 
I picked up a couple of very cheap tripods, a memory card, and a couple of spare batteries, and along with a lamp I bought several years ago (and b...
It's a short one this week; we took a long weekend to celebrate my partner's birthday.
One of my plans for the laser cutter involved making myself some brand labels! I usually sign my books by hand, but I've never had any good way to sign soft builds like bags. It's possible to buy labels, of course, but I never quite got round to it.
The laser cutter software includes a materials test feature. I'd previously used it to test the engraving on a scrap of red leather. Since the laser...
2025-02-03 10:09:01 +0000 UTC View Post
I’ve been planning to start Patreon and YouTube properly for years, always promising myself and hopeful commenters that “yes, tutorials are coming, within the next few months.” But I always found myself too busy, and it never quite materialised.
So far, I’ve found that self-employment as a creative is sort of like running a race with an armful of large, awkwardly-shaped items. Occasionally something gets thrown at me - like tax returns - or I’ll see an opportunity coming - l...
This is a slightly awkward place to start blogging, as some progress builds on things that happened earlier. For example: at the very end of last year, I made my first Influencer deal. Kind of crazy! I received a laser cutter for free, in exchange for producing some content. I got the thing set up early in January, and ran a few tests with it. I had a great time exploring all the different functions and settings, and found it to be a very capable machine. I put together a quick design, conver...
2025-01-25 18:44:13 +0000 UTC View PostI first tried to start a Patreon account back in February of 2021 and my plan then was to upload longer build videos, tutorial content, and the like. But Patreon didn’t allow video hosting back then (that I could find, anyway), so my only option was to upload to YouTube, and embed the file into the Patreon page. And of course, hosting externally meant that the content was no longer hidden behind the Patreon paywall. It is possible to upload videos to YouTube without making them public - the...
2025-01-18 13:21:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Attached to this post are full and print-fiendly versions of The Mimic Compendium, which contains a variety of homebrewed mimic items and monsters. 16 full colour illustrations, and a couple of bonus black and white pictures.
This is version 0.5.3 and is not yet complete. In future I hope to add some NPCs, maps and scenarios.