Okay, so I had to push my etsy deadline back one last & final time. It WILL be open, with multiple listings, on Saturday Oct. 10. I finally figured out how to make the boots I wanted. That was a serious, serious process. I swear I spent almost all day last Saturday running errands because I kept finding out that I needed this or that. Those days can be so frustrating sometimes. So I ended up buying a clay "pasta" machine (for about $12 with my 40% off Michael's coupon) a bunch of sculpey, and a tacky glue pen. My main problem was that I didn't make the feet in the form of the shoe I wanted, which meant I needed to make a mold of what I wanted the shoe to be shaped like, apparently called a "last" in the shoe making world. Once I got that part figured out, everything kind of came together. Once I get it all nailed down, I'll put up a how-to.
Regardless, I should have about 10 dolls done by tomorrow. I've taken a long weekend starting tomorrow (so exciting!) We finally got a silkscreen in workable condition. I forgot what process that was as well. Lots of trial and error.
On a sidenote, it's so interesting how the really frustrating things can end up being the most fruitful. I was thinking about it, I'm always reading stories or watching interviews about highly successful people who beat the odds, and they're always noting "hard work" as the main force that got them there. (An great book on this is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.) It's such an over-used term that I kind of just took it for granted. Well of course it took hard work. School took hard work. Relationships take hard work. But I think a lot of the "hard work" they're talking about is not giving up when something doesn't work out, not taking no for an answer in a sense. When I look back at certain things, I would say the most life changing, good things, they happened once I had reached a point where I should have given up and didn't. I think you know when you get to that point. And you think, okay I've been working on this for so long, I've tried so many different ways to make this work, and it's just not happening for me. It's when your mind-set changes to, "I know that I can do this, and I'm not quitting until it does" that things start to come about. Another interesting thing, I've noticed that this has happened a lot more often since I hit my late 20's. I remember my Mom telling me that she enjoyed her 30's much more than her 20's because she was much more certain of herself, and it seems to be the consensus that women are generally much more confident in their 30's. I would say it definitely rings true for me. Phew, okay, off my soap box.
So, dolls should be done by tomorrow, as well as the gift/wine bags they'll be packaged in. Then I'm hoping to make more wine totes to sell individually and once I have enough of those, I'm on to dinner napkins. Of course, this will involve more silkscreen making, and a lot more hard work-determination.=)
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