New Ornament Display I Made...

Left side, unlit, Right side is lit up.

Picked up a nice vine tree for about $10, a 20 light LED string with battery pack for $4, made hooks for the ornaments to hang on and drilled through the supports to add them, and finally, an amazing star topper with a cone. Results: A unique way to display my metal ornaments for craft shows! This thing makes me happy.

Workspace

This is what my work bench looks like today. I would rate this as moderately askew:

Manic Metals - New Things Are In Store

I'm having a hard time getting started this morning...

NEW BANNER/AVATAR:
In the works. Also getting a real 2x4 banner made, for my craft shows. Also creating new business cards, a new logo, a full travel display, and some promo stuff - it should be an interesting couple of weeks...

CURRENT NEWS:
Working on multiple new ideas and I'm taking a ton of photos - I have new work, and it's going up soon. Lots of new and interesting things to check out! As always, you can find my shop at www.ManicMetals.com. Photos are usually posted on my facebook page first - get a preview of things to come there - www.facebook.com/manicmetals.

UPCOMING SHOWS:
See me in person! Hold things instead of just looking at pretty pictures! I have an upcoming craft show or possibly two - Mayday Underground Craft is holding a craft show at the Rochester Armory on November 5th from 10 - 4 p.m. and I will be there selling all my jewelry and home items to anyone who wants them. First 50 people through the doors get goody bags, so I would come early! I may also be at the Nazareth Craft Show on November 11th, but those details aren't set in stone yet.

That's all I can think of right now, gotta go make some more stuff and put the finishing touches on my ornament tree for my Christmas display. I don't like thinking about Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but I have to if I'm going to have ornaments ready by then! There's a timetable somewhere that says you have to be three months ahead of whatever holiday you're creating for if you want time to make and sell it, they aren't kidding...

Unfortunate Side Effects

I'm not the smartest person in the world. The mahna-mahna song from the muppet show is usually going through my head on a daily basis, driving me more insane than I already am. I am somehow lucky enough to have a kind of idiot-savance (I don't think that's a word, but it really illustrates my point beautifully, so I'm using it) when it comes to working with my hands. I can figure out how machines work, how to fix the plumbing, pretty much anything hands on I can do with relative ease. Things I don't take into account when I say this are: I have a rich background of DIY projects, grew up in a house that taught me to hang cabinets and lay floors because we lived in a victorian monstrosity that ate all free time with work, I've always been drawn in to tutorials and other interesting tidbits on how things work, and I genuinely like to attempt this kind of stuff. Because none of this ever flashes through my head before I answer, this leads to problems - I figure if I can see it and learn it or fix it then it can't really be that hard. And so, when someone asks me how to do something I know how to do I almost always reply with, "Oh, that's so easy!", which makes me look like a giant douchebag when they try and it isn't easy for them. This is a problem...

Creation

Everyone knows that food is awesome, and if there's cake involved then doubly so. Today I made cake balls for a cookout that the family is attending this weekend. Because I have the kid there's been no actual work this week, just playing around in the backyard, visiting the Strong museum, practicing the uke, and baking. What do you think?

The flavors are: Devil's food with chocolate frosting and dark chocolate shell with red drizzle, vanilla cake with vanilla frosting and a red shell with white drizzles, and a marbled ball (mix of both the vanilla/vanilla cake and the chocolate/chocolate cake) with a white vanilla sprinkles coating and red drizzles. If you're wondering what the inside of the marbled cake ball looks like, well, wonder no more:

And it was damn tasty too. I'll try to get better about posting, we'll see how that goes. Next week it's back to the norm with Steve in day camp and me making things...